PC Poll - Which progression system did you prefer?

[theFlu]

That is a nice bonus but hardly a big deal.

Here's a partial list from my current game:

spears 11
knucks 13, machine guns 13
clubs 16, sledges 16, shotguns 16
bows 17
explosives 22
rifles 28
robotics 29
blades 75/75
handguns 100/100

Want to wager a guess at my skill distribution? Might not a big deal for the game, as I've gotten good off-spec gear from quest rewards, sporting a Q5 Sniper atm, could've taken Q6 Autoshotties twice, etc etc.. But it seems rather significant for the crafting progress.

- Yeh, I've also bought some books from trader, but deffo not 50 of them.

 

[Riamus]

Here's a partial list from my current game:

spears 11
knucks 13, machine guns 13
clubs 16, sledges 16, shotguns 16
bows 17
explosives 22
rifles 28
robotics 29
blades 75/75
handguns 100/100

Want to wager a guess at my skill distribution? Might not a big deal for the game, as I've gotten good off-spec gear from quest rewards, sporting a Q5 Sniper atm, could've taken Q6 Autoshotties twice, etc etc.. But it seems rather significant for the crafting progress.

- Yeh, I've also bought some books from trader, but deffo not 50 of them.

I'd have to look over mine but I didn't have anywhere near that big of a gap.  At most, maybe 20 more.  Though I admit I didn't max the weapon perk right away and only had a couple points in it, so that could be the difference.  Even so, I was able to get pretty much everything up pretty quickly but it varied by magazine and some of them definitely went up faster than others regardless of perks.  I do feel it's not quick enough to stay with questing after the magazine drops were reduced but it was still not bad.  If there is that big of a bonus, then I think that needs to be reduced.  It was stated repeatedly by Roland who was playing A21 long before we could that it was a very minor increase, which is how it should be.  Though, again, I think the boost should be entirely removed because it's clearly a cause of frustration for MP and really isn't necessary.  Magazines are easy enough to come by that you don't need that safety net.

 

[theFlu]

It was stated repeatedly by Roland who was playing A21 long before we could that it was a very minor increase, which is how it should be. 

Your first mistake was taking Trolland seriously.. He's always confident and optimistic, and enjoys a proximity to the dev team, so when he's off, he's just convincingly off.

Though I admit I didn't max the weapon perk right away and only had a couple points in it, so that could be the difference.

Yeh, this playthough I did max the weapons asap, so that list is sort of worst case. It has some books looted after maxing out blades, so the diff could actually be a little larger as well, but I had just reached the 100 on handguns.

Though, again, I think the boost should be entirely removed because it's clearly a cause of frustration for MP and really isn't necessary.  Magazines are easy enough to come by that you don't need that safety net.

I dunno, removing the boost would mean I'd have crafted absolutely nothing in this one; I was barely staying ahead of what the trader loop was giving, mostly by bad luck - the good items that drop/are sold/are rewarded have been better than I could craft but just the wrong types.

But you might be implying "remove the boost and improve the drops to even it out". Would work great for MP, but I'd guess it means effectively no crafting for SP.

 

[Riamus]

Your first mistake was taking Trolland seriously.. He's always confident and optimistic, and enjoys a proximity to the dev team, so when he's off, he's just convincingly off.

Yeh, this playthough I did max the weapons asap, so that list is sort of worst case. It has some books looted after maxing out blades, so the diff could actually be a little larger as well, but I had just reached the 100 on handguns.

I dunno, removing the boost would mean I'd have crafted absolutely nothing in this one; I was barely staying ahead of what the trader loop was giving, mostly by bad luck - the good items that drop/are sold/are rewarded have been better than I could craft but just the wrong types.

But you might be implying "remove the boost and improve the drops to even it out". Would work great for MP, but I'd guess it means effectively no crafting for SP.

I'm sure there's a balance that can be reached, though.  Right now, magazines are too slow (at least unless you are maxing a perk quickly) to keep up with the rest of the progression.  I think they made a mistake in how they handled the issue of having too many magazines in the b313.  Reducing the magazines meant crafting got a serious nerf, which is contrary to what they said they wanted.  They really needed to also adjust the number of magazines needed to keep the rate high enough to keep up OR lower quest rewards and trader inventory levels to balance them out that way.  Right now, crafting is really not worth much, imo.  You have to perk specifically to craft if you want to keep crafting even with everything else.  That, combined with the huge costs of crafting most higher tier items makes buying things or waiting to loot them a better option.  I have no interest in crafting a thousand duct tape in a game just to craft everything from start to finish instead of focusing on looting, quests, and trader inventory (I rarely buy things but it's there as an option).

The problem with the boost is that it is causing people in MP to feel like they are missing out on magazines if they aren't out looting.  Getting rid of that removes that problem for those players.  Balancing the game after taking out the boost would certainly be possible, so I think it's the better option.

 

[For4ger]

The "Learn by Looting" system has 3 important drawbacks:

1) Each player is forced to run POIs or quests in search of magazines, which kills the roles of 100% resource gatherer, hunter, builder, etc.

2) Too much paper has accumulated in the game, at the same time there are a bunch of skill books, and crafting magazines, and crafting schemes for modifications and some other things. Collection and study tires routine.

3) In multiplayer, disputes began to constantly occur about who should give certain magazines, besides, when clearing the POI, you have to clog half of the inventory with books saved for comrades.

In my opinion, you just need to go back and refine the "Learn by Doing" system by changing the crafting level - instead of creating a million stone axes, the leveling of their crafting skill should increase when using them. An example - the more you shoot from a bow, the better you understand how it works, the more good a bow you can craft. That's all, everyone plays as he likes and progresses.

 

[Riamus]

The "Learn by Looting" system has 3 important drawbacks:

1) Each player is forced to run POIs or quests in search of magazines, which kills the roles of 100% resource gatherer, hunter, builder, etc.

2) Too much paper has accumulated in the game, at the same time there are a bunch of skill books, and crafting magazines, and crafting schemes for modifications and some other things. Collection and study tires routine.

3) In multiplayer, disputes began to constantly occur about who should give certain magazines, besides, when clearing the POI, you have to clog half of the inventory with books saved for comrades.

In my opinion, you just need to go back and refine the "Learn by Doing" system by changing the crafting level - instead of creating a million stone axes, the leveling of their crafting skill should increase when using them. An example - the more you shoot from a bow, the better you understand how it works, the more good a bow you can craft. That's all, everyone plays as he likes and progresses.

They've said LBD is gone for good so you might want to think of other options to improve the current system as those suggestions might end up being listened to by the devs (or not... who knows).

I have been saying that the perk boosts need to either go or being changed significantly because that is the reason why you list #1.  The boost has too much impact and not being perked into something while being perked into a few other things can make finding something you aren't perked into far less likely because you have a good chance of just getting what you perked into.  If they are going to use the perk boost, then the boost should create another loot table on top of the normal loot table that allows the player to have a possibility of getting 1 extra magazine on top of the normal loot instead of a chance to replace the magazines with any of the perked magazines.  Replacing in this way means you can replace every magazine with things you're perked into and therefore cannot get other magazines very easily and this helps to make the magazines very unbalanced.  I've explained the extra loot table idea in the past but if someone wants clarification on how that would work, let me know and I can explain it again.  The other option is to not have any boost, which I also think would work just fine.  Either option would make it so that there isn't such a huge discrepancy in magazines looted and so there isn't any need for everyone to loot.

I also think there are too many magazines.  They could combine some of them and at least reduce it a bit.  For example, there's no reason to have a magazine that only unlocks 2 items (plus quality levels).  That's just bad design, imo.  Combine some of the magazines that fit together well and it'll reduce the amount of different magazines to deal with, which will be a benefit for players.  The number of magazines can be overwhelming until you memorize who gets what.

I think disputes can be limited by talking over who gets the magazines right from the start and coming to a decision rather than waiting until you start looting and then fighting over who gets what.  That being said, group dynamics isn't really something the game should be solving for you.  That's something players should solve, either by working out compromises with one another or changing groups.  People today aren't very good at actually talking with each other and working out their problems.  But that doesn't make it the game's job to fix your problems for you.

I like the magazines but I think they need more balancing and some changes like the changes related to the perk boost.  That being said, everyone has different opinions on what is good or bad.  You like LBD and that's fine.  I hate LBD.  And even though it's the highest vote in this poll, it's still less than half the people who like it.  And this is just one poll from a relatively small number of players and not a good representation of the entire player base because the people who hang out on this forum are generally of a different mindset than those who don't and who only play the game.  It is possible that this would be the same percentages if every player of the game voted but it is more likely that the percentages will change one way or another and likely by a noticeable amount.  That might be more people liking LBD or it might be more people liking the one of the other options.  Also, as others have pointed out in this thread, a hybrid option is probably the best option for everyone but that isn't on the poll.

 

[pottervogel]

I love sniper-stealth builds. I love crafting. I'm way more screwed in this alpha than in those before. ^^

 

[Roland]

Your first mistake was taking Trolland seriously.. He's always confident and optimistic, and enjoys a proximity to the dev team, so when he's off, he's just convincingly off.

All I can do is give my own experience and when I played there were times when I felt like the boost wasn’t doing anything and then other times where it did seem to be present. I never felt like the only books I was finding were the ones I was boosted in and so my assessment from my own experience was that the boost wasn’t overpowering. 
 

My fear was that people would read about this boost for months leading up to playing and have expectations that didn’t match with what they experienced. I’ve read both kinds of feedback from players by the way- that the progression is too fast because the boost is too powerful and from others that the boost seems nonexistent. 

 

[theFlu]

All I can do is give my own experience ...

Ye, no offense intended; not that I think you took any. I do understand your position and disposition, I was kinda just stating the obvious that anyone can be wrong, even convincingly so

I’ve read both kinds of feedback from players by the way- that the progression is too fast because the boost is too powerful and from others that the boost seems nonexistent. 

This, though, is rather curious. As we're talking about a case were the minimum "samplable" amount of RNG rolls is in the hundreds, the results should be pretty consistent. You can have bad luck on a single book never showing up, but you can't really have horrible luck with 300 rolls between a dozen book types, at 6x odds for one or two (as I seem to have experienced). That's assuming the non-weapon books aren't in competition, but even increasing the magazine type count to the full 23, odds are still high for a consistent distribution.

Are the players all SP? Are they using a single point in the skill, or "all"?

Are they comparing it to the unspecced book drops, or are they comparing crafting to trader? Because I could kinda say it's been both, specced ones are way quicker than anything else, to the point of being overbearing; and yet too slow to really keep up for crafting (this run the trader loop items haven't aligned with my spec, otherwise I wouldn't have needed to craft a thing, but there's been plenty of "wrong type improvements" to pick/buy.)

 

[Roland]

Ye, no offense intended; not that I think you took any. I do understand your position and disposition, I was kinda just stating the obvious that anyone can be wrong, even convincingly so

Sure. And this is why it is valuable to get thousands of players playing and why balancing still needs to happen even though the update took a year and a half to happen. I’m open to having been convincingly wrong…

The problem is in the experience of the individual. The boost might be overwhelmingly obvious after thousands of die rolls but if they nerf it then there will be those individuals who have bad luck and never get the magazines they need. 
 

For a fun game is it better to err on the side of generosity or stinginess when it comes to random chance? With generosity comes the greater chance that efficient and lucky players will rocket up the ladder while unlucky and inefficient players will still have fun because they are finding what they need albeit slowly. 
 

With stinginess, lucky and efficient players will be slowed which will be fun for some but annoying for others while the unlucky and inefficient players are completely stuck.

 

[theFlu]

The problem is in the experience of the individual. The boost might be overwhelmingly obvious after thousands of die rolls but if they nerf it then there will be those individuals who have bad luck and never get the magazines they need.

For the general case I would agree, but for this particular RNG-system, the results are mostly going to differ via player choice of action. You need a 100 "lucky" rolls to max out a gun craft. The common RNG-functions are usually designed not to be true RNG, but to have a "more even" distribution within subsamples. The 5x boost system alone isn't going to cause massive variation, you'll have enough rolls to to produce 99.99% stable results. Roughly, for suitable values of "stable"

I would also argue, even the absolute edge cases are the natural consequence of choosing to create any "pure" RNG-based system. Both ends of luck should be designed for. If the design fails with "too bad" or "too good" luck, then it's a failure in design. "For a fun game is it better to err ... " No. Design it for the edges as well, not just the "expected values". With large enough sample size, all the possible variance is to be expected.

Will even a perfect RNG-design satisfy players? Nah. Some won't even like RNG as an idea, so... And everyone gets frustrated when they happen to be that unlucky 1:100.000 .. 90k concurrent players makes for good news, but also a decent sampling for edges..

 

[aleos]

Not native speaker here - Well I have read all posts here and the only negative aspect of LBD seems to be about crafting only. Even most of pro lbd system are admitting that it was kinda a weakspot. Nobody is talking about the real strengths of other skills in lbd system and the most important rpg element, the 'class' system. The player had to chose what skill tree he wants to invest time into by his playstyle, his actions. That made co op games so special and versatile. And in long term u could be very much every class. In my opinion the only (real) big weakspot in lbd would be time, in addition to craftingof course. That's what most critics call tedious. I get that. For casual players probably tedious indeed. 

But guys let's be real. Every player abuse every system to his advantage or playstyle. 

The new lbr system has no skill system and perks are no skills. So rpg is very much broken or superficial. It's simply nonsense to buy skills instead of gaining them. I know it's a game.  But hear me out. Here what's happening now: u supposedly get your crafting skills by looting mags. So I go questing day by day mostly in snow biom or wasteland. I loot also tools and weapon during these runs and get xp + coins too. I put few points into looter and adventures for better trading and tadaa u don't need to craft tools or weapons again at all. after each quest/loot run u get enough coins for good gear  to buy if u haven't found one already by looting already... at the end u leveled a lot and put points into perks where u can be a master in skills like explosives without having ever used it before and mining without doing so previously that much... talking about single player. Co op makes no big differences since we are playing the same now. Everyone want the mags or loot. In the streams I see the same game strategy over and over again.

Where the lbr shines though is in the cooking , workstations and vehicles progress. That's amazing. Don't care about other crafting stuff though at all. 

Besides that

- rwg and new poi's are amazing

- different difficulties per biom is a blessing

- better performance is amazing and a blessing at the same time

I hope there will be a better solution than lbr like it is now. It should be called 'looting for crafting' like it is now.

 

[VALL]

The entire Learn by Doing system could have been fixed by just balancing out how the xp was generated for crafting and balancing that more in line with looting. Also, when you maxed out say...a stone axe. You could just craft 60 more stone axes until you were at level cap. But if you just treated it like the real world, when you maxed out your carpentry skill, there is no more xp to gain - you are a master stone axe builder. You can't get better at something you are already maxed at. So, if they would have just put xp caps in place the crafting would be fixed and we wouldn't have whatever has happened to this game that plays like a fps rather than a crafting survival game. I am not sure why they abandoned it and went in all of these crazy directions and a mountain of books. Praise be to the modders, I feel they are my only chance at enjoying the game at this point, Although..I do have to give some credit to TFP, they at least know how to graphic good.

 

[meganoth]

The new lbr system has no skill system and perks are no skills. So rpg is very much broken or superficial.

The new lbr system was implemented to fix crafting and only crafting. The overall progression system with perks was not changed except to remove all the recipes that are no longer in the game. So I don't see rpg as broken, I only see people now having too much focus on magazines even though crafting is not even important currently as the quest rewards are not well balanced at the moment.

So I go questing day by day mostly in snow biom or wasteland. I loot also tools and weapon during these runs and get xp + coins too.

Note that this biome-difficulty was designed by TFP as a way for **experienced** players to have a fast track for the XP/perk and equipment progression if the normal game is too boring or slow for them.

Whether that works out, depends on the player. If you can easily survive wasteland then you should increase overall difficulty until even snow gets you to get into trouble. If you are already on insane then you need to mod the game because you are just too good for the difficulty range vanilla offers. 

 

[John Black]

...

In my opinion, you just need to go back and refine the "Learn by Doing" system by changing the crafting level - instead of creating a million stone axes, the leveling of their crafting skill should increase when using them. An example - the more you shoot from a bow, the better you understand how it works, the more good a bow you can craft. That's all, everyone plays as he likes and progresses.

I was thinking more in the line of inspecting items but since devs are in the habit of simplifying and dumbing down I never thought it worth trying to put my thoughts into words... non-english so PITA to accurately try and articulate things

 

[aleos]

The new lbr system was implemented to fix crafting and only crafting. The overall progression system with perks was not changed except to remove all the recipes that are no longer in the game. So I don't see rpg as broken, I only see people now having too much focus on magazines even though crafting is not even important currently as the quest rewards are not well balanced at the moment.

Note that this biome-difficulty was designed by TFP as a way for **experienced** players to have a fast track for the XP/perk and equipment progression if the normal game is too boring or slow for them.

Whether that works out, depends on the player. If you can easily survive wasteland then you should increase overall difficulty until even snow gets you to get into trouble. If you are already on insane then you need to mod the game because you are just too good for the difficulty range vanilla offers. 

Aah, OK, lbr is supposed to be for crafting only. Why isn't called loot for crafting then? The word  'Learning' implies of getting skills. Maybe I am taking it too literally.  Nevermind. 

Biome difficulty is actually one of my favorite features of alpha 21. Combined with the new map settings I am finally able to play wasteland only. Don't get me wrong, I am having a blast with these settings. And I am dying from time to time. I am far from being too good. Also Not bored at all. I just miss the rpg skills we used to have instead of actual systems. It feels still weird to buy an ability u never used before...

Thanks for explanation.  I will have to wait for undead legacy then...

 

[meganoth]

Aah, OK, lbr is supposed to be for crafting only. Why isn't called loot for crafting then? The word  'Learning' implies of getting skills. Maybe I am taking it too literally.  Nevermind. 

When Madmole called it that he added a big smiley. They don't take themselves and the players too seriously

Biome difficulty is actually one of my favorite features of alpha 21. Combined with the new map settings I am finally able to play wasteland only. Don't get me wrong, I am having a blast with these settings. And I am dying from time to time. I am far from being too good. Also Not bored at all. I just miss the rpg skills we used to have instead of actual systems. It feels still weird to buy an ability u never used before...

Since you seem to call lbr skills as "RPG skills": RPGs started with pen and paper RPGs and those did not have lbr. Most of the early computer RPGs (to my knowledge) had no lbr either. And even today most of the pure RPGs I know of do not have lbr.

 

[Riamus]

I love RPG games but this really isn't an RPG.  It is a game that has RPG elements but isn't a true RPG.  At least in my opinion as a mostly RPG player.  I don't expect this game to work like a true RPG.  If that is what people are expecting, they will be disappointed.

 

[caatalyst]

It's great to see a lot of conversation on this topic and clearly there is a lot of interest in the legacy gameplay and progression systems. 

What surprised me is despite all the demand, talented modders and ambitious overhaul mods there isn't one that simply intends to replace and reintroduce the core systems that made A16 such a fun experience which so want to see.

• Learn by doing 
  
• Action skills
  
• Original skill tree system
  
• Original books and skill point book system
  
• Item quality level 0-100
  
• Item degradation on repair
  
• No trader quests
  
• Big focus on exploration and RNG loot
  
• Corpses don't decay and can be looted / turn into corpse piles after
  
• Circular spike traps brought back
  
• Expanded construction block upgrades brought back (wet concrete etc...)
  
• POIs that aren't all dungeons
  

I suspect these are some of the most iconic legacy features folks miss.

I'd love to see these get made into a mod  for A21 as I'd love to play the A16 experience with the A21 graphics and new toys.

 

[Pr00ch]

Learn-by-doing is the answer, and has been since 2018... frankly, it seems like someone on the dev team has some personal vendetta against it for some reason lol.

I genuinely return to A16 from time to time and despite the mountains of new content that have been added in the current build, I find it more fun to play. Sure, it wasn't a perfect system, but it just needed some TLC instead of being ripped out and replaced with something fundamentally worse for a survival game.