That addresses one area but many more issues with the LBD in Skyrim (after requiem as that dose a lot to fix spam crafting) were with your other skills.
Of course, crafting was not the only thing that was problematic. As I said I did have a 300+ mod list I don't keep around anymore (because even if I replay that game most of them will be outdated), which did a great job at fixing these issues with the LBD. As with the next example.
Adjusting the xp gains do not fix this - the problem is that any XP gain set around organic leveling broke the instant that you changed your play. For instance, there may be a sweet spot in leveling spellsword but that immediately becomes game breaking if you play a direct mage - the adjustment would be way to high for a focused character.
Adjusting the xp gains would hardly do anything indeed. In your example, just changing the exponential increase of skills and making any skill harder to master, would do it. For example mastering a specific amount of magic trees should be as hard as making a good all-around spellsword character who has spread his skills into more trees.
There was a small mod about specilizations, which also went further than that. It tracked the total points among your skill trees (not all by default, but you could configure it) and changed their xp multipliers on the fly. Mod was also completely configurable.
And bringing that to the thread - therin lies the problem with trying to implement a LBD into the vanilla game. ANYTHING you do to allow a LBD armor skill to scale naturally will break the instant players start hugging catus plants or use a stack of healing items and a let a zombie pound on you.
There are just to many ways to power level a LBD system that cause problems.
It may work better for YOU but in a general sense most players will optimize the fun out of the system through obvious power leveling. Then those that specifically avoid this will end up annoyed at the inability to level those skills as they inevitably end up balanced for the general player base - not those that are using the system 'properly.'
I think that, when it comes to these things, something is impossible to fix/solve, only if someone hasn't yet thought of a solution (excluding engine and technical limitations).
In your example, a very obvious mistake was letting armor level up by all damage taken. Let's suppose that if we get this out of the way players will still be able to abuse armor/medicine powerleveling by abusing healing items and letting a controlled zombie pound on them.
The correct way to go about it imo is not "restricting the players from power leveling" but preventing them from doing so e.g. making it very counter-productive to do so.
A16 did nothing to achieve that - the opposite (only talking about your example, don't want to write an essay here).
-Medicine, for example, was useless because death was inconsequential/beneficial. If medicine was a more useful, valuable commodity players would not be able to abuse it in the first place.
-For the same reason (not caring about death), players did not care if they contracted diseases or had injuries. The diseases and injuries themselves were also things to laugh at.
-The character got skill level ups from "lower tier" healing items (and items in general) indefinitely.
-Time not being more of a precious resource.
Why wouldn't players hug a zombie to level their armor? There was no reason to NOT do it. If infection and death alone, were things to be feared and avoided at all costs nearly none would do it. Even at a hypothetical end-game, with the player being able be to craft all the healing items in the world - a single element can be used as a limiter. Death spiral training? - skill deterioration. You can always make adjust the value of an action. It's their world. The real questions for TFP are - are these worth doing? Do the above fit their vision?
And that is what the people complaining about the system as it stands now are actually complaining about - there is a specific manner that you can power level in and doing so is not fun.
Of course there are still people that will find that one thing that slightly outpaces all others in EXP gain but once balanced that is a very small portion of the player base and has far less impact on overall game play.
The system as it stands right now is not well balanced yet so the power leveling is much more noticeable but that will be flushed out in the end.
LBD as it was, with all the flaws it had, was "grindy" by all accounts. Fact. People did use to complain about its shortcomings.
Once A17 hit though, "grinding" complaints were popping up in this and other forums like mushrooms. But don't take my word for it, common sense can explain it.
A17 can be seen as even more grindy than A16, because while A16 compelled you to do various leveling activities (which could individually become terribly grindy), A17 compels players into a single activity (zombie killing at early game, mining at late game).
But like you said, if TFP balance a variety of activities xp-wise, this will not happen on this degree and A17 will be dramatically improved when it comes to leveling venues and "grindy" feel. Of course for that to happen, linearly increasing the current ways to get xp will not work - for example, mining xp which depends on block damage, changes dramatically throughout the course of the playthrough. The balance should be imo, in a general sense, determined by player invested time (perhaps including invested time to cover the cost of the activity) and nothing else.
As a video on game design I watched stated:
"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game."
- cant find the original source of this though
I think this is a basic trueism in games. The developer needs to find a way to guide the player in a manner that does not lead to this. I have never seen a LBD system that is not rife with this problem in the general player base.
If I had a nickel for everytime I said that or something similar in these forums
Careful when you say this publicly, lest people get triggered about others assuming to know what they like best to have fun! It's like a going to a good gourmet restaurant and ordering a popular course. Ketchup may be your favorite sauce but the chef won't provide you with ketchup, because you may think that ketchup makes everything better, but bathing everything in ketchup will destroy the recipe (I just like food similes).
Like you said the developer needs to find a way to guide the player - it is not the player's fault,
(Roland), that he tries to level at any pace he may find more natural for him, since there are strong incentives for him to do so. The design must pace the player instead. Don't judge from experience, it is never enough, deconstruct the reasons why until you hit a wall.
The general EXP pool that we have now is MUCH less prone to that problem.
While this is true, what we disagree about, is whether the A16 system is salvageable. And we can't 100% prove by facts that this is or isn't the case in 7DTD. I am confident about it and believe there are infinite ways to achieve that simply because everything is fully malleable. Also, I would personally prefer a hypothetical flawless A16 system, than a flawless A17 system. That's why I discuss about it in the first place. However, I don't know if that is worth doing at this point.
It is interesting to see that 7 days to die can bring us both in considering as a FPS AND and RPG game it is pretty trash. I have never liked any voxel game either, minecraft was an utter bore. Hell, I don't even like most survival games. There is just something about this one that keeps me here and has for over 1000 hours.
Well, I am a huge survival game fan and I did run a minecraft server for quite a few years, with a ton of custom settings, custom terrain, LBD plugins etc
It is pretty subpar as an FPS or an RPG though, yes. Imo the combat is its worst aspect (animations, hit detection etc). But it's a voxel game that doesn't look like a voxel game, plus its potential and its replayability are huge.
PS: Sorry for the wall, once again failed to be more succinct
