PC Pay to Improve instead of Earning it

[Ghostlight]

Lying to yourself? We’re talking entertainment here and not something like alcoholism or mental health.... I guess it is a form of lying to yourself. But then By your definition actors on the stage are lying. Kids playing pretend are lying. People bluffing in poker are lying. Renaissance Fair goers are huge liars....
It’s fine. I can see you aren’t a role player or at least don’t care to employ such a use of your imagination to this game. I like doing it and am just recommending a different way of playing the game that a bit of “lying to yourself” AKA “role playing” can bring. If you are against it maybe some lurker is not and will give it a try and find the same fun I do.

Would I be lamenting the loss of LBD if I was happy to "roleplay" round its removal? Sheesh.

I think the fact you are having to roleplay around the new system to get some satisfaction or fun (or whatever) from it speaks volumes.

 

[jdm311]

Lying to yourself? We’re talking entertainment here and not something like alcoholism or mental health.... I guess it is a form of lying to yourself. But then By your definition actors on the stage are lying. Kids playing pretend are lying. People bluffing in poker are lying. Renaissance Fair goers are huge liars....
It’s fine. I can see you aren’t a role player or at least don’t care to employ such a use of your imagination to this game. I like doing it and am just recommending a different way of playing the game that a bit of “lying to yourself” AKA “role playing” can bring. If you are against it maybe some lurker is not and will give it a try and find the same fun I do.

Role-playing is all well and good, but a player thrives on efficiency. In 7d2d, you want to spend your time wisely doing things you need to do to survive. The game rewards you for looting, killing zombies, mining, building, etc. and steers you toward doing the actions that will most efficiently benefit you. Doing an action that doesn't benefit you for doing it is inefficient when you can go about another unrelated way to get the desired outcome while still gaining rewards. Forcing yourself to play inefficiently because the game no longer feels like progression is gained logically is unnatural. For example, I could role-play to mine before upgrading mining skills, but it's much more efficient to put points into miner 69er and mother lode before mining because there are better returns. I can loot and clear zombies from POIs to earn the skill points to put into those skills.

 

[DMPlayin]

When I read that, I thought "That's exactly the problem". For me, the game was great before A17. Now, it is becoming just another common game.

100% this.

In Eric Bischoff's autobiography (and for those that don't know, he's the only man who has even beaten wrestling kingpin Vince McMahon at his own game), he said that when creating Monday Nitro to compete, they either had to be better than, worse than or different than.

Couldn't be better than. The WWE had been around for a lot long longer and were much bigger.

Couldn't be worse than. No one would have ever given them a chance.

So they went with different and different made them stand out and for fans of WWE to switch their allegiance.

I don't expect TFP to compete with the dozens of people working at Rockstar Games or Bethesda (and when I say Bethesda, I mean Skyrim and Fallout 4 Bethesda) and while I think they're doing an absolutely amazing job with a much smaller group, they made a mistake when they tried to make their game like others instead of keeping what was good about it being so different it stood out.

 

[Roland]

efficiency

ding ding ding! And here we have the true motivating factor for LBD. When it comes down to it all the talk about wanting the feeling of progressing by doing pales to the actual desire to be efficient and have a system in place that can be exploited for the sake of efficiency.

Did I like LBD just fine? Yes. Because I played the game organically and so it really was no different than how I play now or how I played before it was implemented. But do I think it was good for the game? Nope. LBD became the reason for the game existing instead of simply the method of progressing. The idea of progressing by spamming something repeatedly overwhelms the game in unnatural ways because the desire for efficiency is too strong to resist for those whose whole purpose for doing things is to skill up.

This was so apparent on the forums when you were able to view threads about the gameplay before Alpha 11 and then after Alpha 11. Post Alpha 11 more and more threads were about gaming the system to gain maximum efficiency even if it meant playing in non-realistic ways for an actual survivor of an apocalypse.

Now, I don't personally care if all someone lives for is to get xp and skillpoints as quickly and efficiently as they possibly can but I can understand that the developers didn't want their game to be viewed as a game about efficiency spamming of repetitive activies.

I also hope that there will be mods that return the feature for those people who want to feel the rewarding feeling of efficient power leveling. I will definitely play that mod as well.

 

[Roland]

Would I be lamenting the loss of LBD if I was happy to "roleplay" round its removal? Sheesh.
I think the fact you are having to roleplay around the new system to get some satisfaction or fun (or whatever) from it speaks volumes.

I don't have to. I choose to sometimes and choose not to other times. Freedom.

 

[Hollowprime]

I think a mixed LBD + level up points would be great. Example: You'd have to plant and caress a lot of plants and crops to level up farming. You'd have to cook a variety of things to level up cooking. You'd still have to use melee and ranged weapons to level them up and you'd have to mine to learn how to use mining tools.

Perhaps even have the ability to upgrade current weapons as you use them which would require a lot of rare materials.

However you can only level up the very basics of those abilities. You'd have to focus only on a small number of special perks. .

It looks similar to the old LBD but the difference is you can't level up mining, but only miner 69er and motherload. You can craft higher quality tools by progressively upgrading the previous tool but you can't add more mods to them without perks.

You can craft and upgrade all armors maybe even military but you can't add mods to them without perks.

Also the more you run and act with a heavy armor the lighter it becomes.

You become more deadly on headshots by dealing said headshots and so on.

But it's possible this would require a tremendous revamping of the current perk system. I'm not sure the devs want to take that approach anymore. They instead prefer to remove crafting components and complexity from the game.

Edit: Another approach would be to have the attributes level up by doing things in their category as they are now and they would be independent from leveling up. However, the perks as we have them now would require skill points gained from leveling up. Leveling up could be possible only by killing zombies and doing quests . You'd have more skill points at first but you'd still have to get your ass out there and kill things and do quests and stuff.

Everyone should be happy with those changes.

 

[BlueButterfly98]

Lying to yourself? We’re talking entertainment here and not something like alcoholism or mental health.... I guess it is a form of lying to yourself. But then By your definition actors on the stage are lying. Kids playing pretend are lying. People bluffing in poker are lying. Renaissance Fair goers are huge liars....
It’s fine. I can see you aren’t a role player or at least don’t care to employ such a use of your imagination to this game. I like doing it and am just recommending a different way of playing the game that a bit of “lying to yourself” AKA “role playing” can bring. If you are against it maybe some lurker is not and will give it a try and find the same fun I do.

Look man, we get you feel defensive about the new system but there's no need to be mean. We liked the old system, we know it's not coming back. But that doesn't mean we won't miss it. Cool off a bit.

 

[Weyrling]

That would imply you can level and gain whatever skill you wanted.You double the experience you need every ~14 levels.

With current experience gain leveling in a normal pace caps at around level 80.

Yeah I enjoyed the old system's soft-cap on player potential, you could become decent at everything if you played long enough even without grinding like a madman.

Now we basically have a hard-cap since you need about 1.3million exp to get to level 100, while level 200 requires 3billion exp, level 250 is 36billion (more) exp and nobody is going to legitimately get to level 300 because it's another 100billion+ exp on top.

Cumulatively it costs roughly 147 billion experience to reach level 300 and while making it nigh-impossible to become good at everything is fine, making it practically impossible to even become decent at everything seems a bit excessive.

You actually have to grind way more to become reasonably good at things compared to the past, it's just that this grinding isn't specific to what you want to be good at, and instead involves killing tens of thousands of zombies (or making several million block structures from scratch, for a pure builder).

On the bright side atleast gear progression is way easier, except of course how weapon+armor crafting has been relegated to a mid-game activity which eventually becomes obsolete.

I still don't get why they'd add in a component system but still just spawn in fully-functioning gear, you need to scrap so many tools to make a new tool that you're nigh-guaranteed to loot a Q5 tool before you can craft one.

If half (or 3/4) of all equipment you would normally loot was instead just components it would require looters to loot more but crafters to loot less, which seems more sensible than requiring crafters to loot so much there's no reason to craft anymore.

Which relegates gear-crafting to the bad luck last-resort of gear acquisition. As opposed to the infrastructure+resources shortcut of gear acquisition it should be.

 

[Roland]

Look man, we get you feel defensive about the new system but there's no need to be mean. We liked the old system, we know it's not coming back. But that doesn't mean we won't miss it. Cool off a bit.

In what way shape or form was the post you quoted mean? You’re inventing stuff now which isn’t nice.

Now I feel a bit defensive...

 

[HungryZombie]

Oh I don't hate it as such. But I find it bland, silly, generic, boring , unimmersive and unsatisfying.
Also I just built my first Gyrocopter, took off for the first time, then promptly pressed 'E' when trying to remember how to point the nose down. And the fall killed me, so I'm in a BAD MOOD. Grrr

What happened to the Gyrocopter?

 

[Jeraal]

In what way shape or form was the post you quoted mean? You’re inventing stuff now which isn’t nice.
Now I feel a bit defensive...

I didn't read your post as mean neither. Snarky and or condescending, yes. But not mean

 

[Roland]

I didn't read your post as mean neither. Snarky and or condescending, yes. But not mean

Oh brother.... okay, I’ll let you guys chase me off. There is absolutely nothing snarky or condescending about suggesting a way to play the game that involves role play. But of course you know that since your goal isn’t to hear alternate viewpoints or to try something different. Your goal is to silence anyone who doesn’t share your view.

I posted what I wanted to convey and perhaps it will help someone who actually tries it to gain a bit more satisfaction while they play. Not everyone believes that efficiency is king...

 

[Styx7x]

Haven't tried it myself yet, but best bet is JaxTeller718's Action Skills (Deceptive Adaptation):https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?94906-JaxTeller718-Modlet-Collection

or the original it was based upon, Deceptive Pastry's Return of Action Skills:

https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?99334-Return-of-Action-Skills-perks-that-level-as-you-use-them-(Test-Release)

10000% I recommend JaxTeller’s Action Skills. The original needs some updating in the code to work with A18 fully, but Jax’s implementation is incredibly satisfying and brings back the rewarding feeling of LBD. My group of friends’ server has it deployed and we all love it.

 

[Technech]

The problem is that we had LBD for ages, and many of us loved it. We got spoiled basically. Had the bland, casual-friendly system we have now been in play from the start we'd not be complaining.

To be honest, if the bland, casual-friendly system we have now been in play from the start, I would never played this game. LBD was what sparked my interest, as I love those kind of games.

 

[Technech]

Yes you are right, but I will always reminisce fondly.
That LBD system we had, it wasn't just that I liked it, nope much much more. I thought - as a player of video games for 40 years now - it was one of the best such systems I have ever encountered in any video game. A work of real genius. I'm not mad, I'm mourning.

Amen.

 

[Ghostlight]

What happened to the Gyrocopter?

It crashed to earth near my corpse. It was 76% health after that, though it may already have been damaged, I am not 100% sure.

Luckily, the guys I was playing with saw the funny side.....

For the record about 5 mins after re-spawn, I did the exact same thing a second time.

 

[Technech]

I find it a bit funny how Roland always brush aside anny complaints of the new system with "you can choose to ....". You know, that argument is perfectly valid for the oposite view also. You could choose not to spamcraft or powerlevel armor skils. I enjoyed spamcrafting, It gave us some meaningfull things to do in our base during nighttime (when Zs was a real danger at night).

I never bothered to spam my armorskils or healing skills, as I did perfectly well with natural progression.

But gething that purple stonehamer after a lot of crafting gave me a sence of acomplishment. Now, I raid some PoIs for the trader, and have more purple chainsaws and augers than I care to count.

 

[Dimpy]

That would imply you can level and gain whatever skill you wanted.You double the experience you need every ~14 levels.

With current experience gain leveling in a normal pace caps at around level 80.

Good point. That's another major difference between A16 and A17. I don't like how much attention I have to put into making a proper character build early game to make sure my character isn't crippled late game by incorrect perk spending. This kind of thing is fine for Diablo, but in 7dtd i've never found staring at the perk screen and planning a character build to be particularly fun. Would MUCH rather have long term-planning/consequences applied to more tangible aspects of the game like what to loot and how to build my base.

Some of this could be addressed with a soft respec. The idea is that leveling would be adjusted to happen at roughly the same rate instead of exponentially decaying, but at the higher levels the player loses a random stat/skill at an increasingly fast rate. The end result is a similar number of total skill points as what we have, but at higher levels, you'll still be able to change your build.

 

[Brian9824]

I find it a bit funny how Roland always brush aside anny complaints of the new system with "you can choose to ....". You know, that argument is perfectly valid for the oposite view also. You could choose not to spamcraft or powerlevel armor skils. I enjoyed spamcrafting, It gave us some meaningfull things to do in our base during nighttime (when Zs was a real danger at night). I never bothered to spam my armorskils or healing skills, as I did perfectly well with natural progression.

But gething that purple stonehamer after a lot of crafting gave me a sence of acomplishment. Now, I raid some PoIs for the trader, and have more purple chainsaws and augers than I care to count.

The issue was the ONLY way to raise a crafting skill or defensive skill was to use it in a way that wasn't actually playing the game. At least now you get gear by doing quests, playing the game, etc.

Before you got gear by sitting on a cactus spamming bandages or making macro's to make tools while you went afk, or using workbench tricks to craft high value items and then scrap them and repeat.

- - - Updated - - -

Good point. That's another major difference between A16 and A17. I don't like how much attention I have to put into making a proper character build early game to make sure my character isn't crippled late game by incorrect perk spending. This kind of thing is fine for Diablo, but in 7dtd i've never found staring at the perk screen and planning a character build to be particularly fun. Would MUCH rather have long term-planning/consequences applied to more tangible aspects of the game like what to loot and how to build my base.
Some of this could be addressed with a soft respec. The idea is that leveling would be adjusted to happen at roughly the same rate instead of exponentially decaying, but at the higher levels the player loses a random stat/skill at an increasingly fast rate. The end result is a similar number of total skill points as what we have, but at higher levels, you'll still be able to change your build.

There is an elixer trader sells that resets your skill points so you can reset whenever you want.

 

[Dimpy]

There is an elixer trader sells that resets your skill points so you can reset whenever you want.

I know. I was speaking for my experience in A17, since I haven't played A18 yet. The availability of a hard reset does potentially come with its own set of problems though.