PC Progression feels off

N

Nessdam

New member
So have started a game with a friend on 1.0 and just got to day 21. We have had a run most of the major updates since Alpha 16, so we have experienced what the game has been in most of the later updates.

We play on a random generated world with mostly standard settings, only increased the difficulty with one or two stages from the beginning of the game.

We are in late mid-game atm, have gotten lv5 double barrel shotguns and some other decent weapons, and lv5 iron tools. We are still on trader tier two however and this is where i feel that progression is odd, as we have been doing quests regularly, mostly only looting POIs outside of quests when we double looting it. Trader tiers are not keeping up with our gear at all. Feral and irradiated zombies have become common now in tier 2 POIs, which does not feel quite right, more fitting to start seeing them in tier 4 or 5 IMO.

Since around day 17 or 18  we have had multiple instances of irradiated screamer(s) spawning and attacking our base. And we are used to screamers spawning from time to time in the alphas, but that was when we began to ramp up heat generation, while we still only have a single furnace and two campfires.

We have also found far to many 'armored up' magazines without specking a single point into an armor skill, one of us has already maxed that magazine and have created 1 lv6 armor piece none of us are wearing (Nerdy chest). Both of us still mostly rocking lv5 primitive, mostly because we haven't felt the need to change yet and have prioritized other stuff.

Thoughts?

 
Nessdam said:
So have started a game with a friend on 1.0 and just got to day 21. We have had a run most of the major updates since Alpha 16, so we have experienced what the game has been in most of the later updates.

We play on a random generated world with mostly standard settings, only increased the difficulty with one or two stages from the beginning of the game.

We are in late mid-game atm, have gotten lv5 double barrel shotguns and some other decent weapons, and lv5 iron tools. We are still on trader tier two however and this is where i feel that progression is odd, as we have been doing quests regularly, mostly only looting POIs outside of quests when we double looting it. Trader tiers are not keeping up with our gear at all. Feral and irradiated zombies have become common now in tier 2 POIs, which does not feel quite right, more fitting to start seeing them in tier 4 or 5 IMO.

Since around day 17 or 18  we have had multiple instances of irradiated screamer(s) spawning and attacking our base. And we are used to screamers spawning from time to time in the alphas, but that was when we began to ramp up heat generation, while we still only have a single furnace and two campfires.

We have also found far to many 'armored up' magazines without specking a single point into an armor skill, one of us has already maxed that magazine and have created 1 lv6 armor piece none of us are wearing (Nerdy chest). Both of us still mostly rocking lv5 primitive, mostly because we haven't felt the need to change yet and have prioritized other stuff.

Thoughts?
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Note that armor magazine drop chance is apparently tied to attribute points, so more points in attributes means more armor magazines.  That's what I've heard and haven't verified, though.  But I maxed armor very quickly in my games.  Not sure why you'd stick to primitive armor, though.  The regular armor looks better and is better, but that's up to you.  :)

What version of the game are you on?  The original 1.0 EXP version prevented going up in trader tiers from shared quests.  In the following patch, that limitation was removed and now (by default), you can only go up in progression 3 times per game day.  You can change that in settings.  It's possible you're doing regular questing but not getting tier points for it, which leaves you behind in tiers compared to game stage.

 
Riamus said:
Note that armor magazine drop chance is apparently tied to attribute points, so more points in attributes means more armor magazines.  That's what I've heard and haven't verified, though.
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Yes, that is absolutely true. They are flooding you with the armor magazines. Not sure if that is something permanent or just for the EXP testing.

Here is the responsible XML:

<effect_group>
<!-- Increase the chance to find armor crafting skill magazines with each perk rank up to crafting skill 100 -->
<passive_effect name="LootProb" operation="perc_add" level="1,10" value="1,10" tags="armorCSM">
<requirement name="ProgressionLevel" progression_name="craftingArmor" operation="LT" value="100"/>
</passive_effect>

<!-- Once armor crafting skill reaches 100, set the probability bonus of finding armor crafting skill magazines to 0 -->
<passive_effect name="LootProb" operation="base_set" level="1,10" value="1,1" tags="armorCSM">
<requirement name="ProgressionLevel" progression_name="craftingArmor" operation="Equals" value="100"/>
</passive_effect>
</effect_group>




If I'm reading it right, it adds a 1% chance to find armor magazines per each attribute point. This effect has been added to every attribute.

 
In fact, because the initial value of an attribute is 1 point, the appearance rate of an armor magazine is six times higher than others even when you have not acquired any skills.
I prefer to play by solely focusing on raising a single gun skill, but even then the progress made with the armor magazine wins.

This update is focused on armor, so yeah, that's how it goes.Wow.

 
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Riamus said:
Note that armor magazine drop chance is apparently tied to attribute points, so more points in attributes means more armor magazines.  That's what I've heard and haven't verified, though.  But I maxed armor very quickly in my games.  Not sure why you'd stick to primitive armor, though.  The regular armor looks better and is better, but that's up to you.  :)

What version of the game are you on?  The original 1.0 EXP version prevented going up in trader tiers from shared quests.  In the following patch, that limitation was removed and now (by default), you can only go up in progression 3 times per game day.  You can change that in settings.  It's possible you're doing regular questing but not getting tier points for it, which leaves you behind in tiers compared to game stage.
Click to expand...
Nice to know!

We have not switched armor yet mostly because we noticed the high drop rates of the armor magazines.  Thus we decided to postpone crafting armor until we could craft the best ones we wanted, especially since we could use the required resources elsewhere. We also have only had a single death so far, so we did not really feel the need. Armor is next though.

We play on the latest experimental and update when available. But we started in the earliest so that probably slowed down early trader progression. It does feel like you really have to focus trader progression for it not to fall behind your game progression though. To go from tier two to three you have to complete fifteen tier two quests. Unless you do mostly buried supplies i think you gain greater game progression than trader progression just from doing the quests. Might be wrong though

Interesting to see that the armor magazines drop rates is tied to attributes though, explains a lot.  Guess that is mostly temporary or at least will be adjusted for actual release

 
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Nessdam said:
Nice to know!

We have not switched armor yet mostly because we noticed the high drop rates of the armor magazines.  Thus we decided to postpone crafting armor until we could craft the best ones we wanted, especially since we could use the required resources elsewhere. We also have only had a single death so far, so we did not really feel the need. Armor is next though.

We play on the latest experimental and update when available. But we started in the earliest so that probably slowed down early trader progression. It does feel like you really have to focus trader progression for it not to fall behind your game progression though. To go from tier two to three you have to complete fifteen tier two quests. Unless you do mostly buried supplies i think you gain greater game progression than trader progression just from doing the quests. Might be wrong though

Interesting to see that the armor magazines drop rates is tied to attributes though, explains a lot.  Guess that is mostly temporary or at least will be adjusted for actual release
Click to expand...


There also was a bug fix in the latest patch which made a lot of players loose trader progress, not single points but whole tiers. So whatever you experienced now, forget it, it will be quite different next time you start a game.

Like you I play a single savegame from first experimental to now and I was thrown back to tier1 quests with the new update. Happens in experimental, but that doesn't mean normal progression (without patches, changes and bugs) is too slow.

I didn't check XML, but I heard that the number of quests you have to do is the same no matter which tier. This is because in higher tiers you need more progression points but you also get more points per quests.

I am not sure the attributes giving points to armor is temporary. Since ALL players specializing in some attribute need armor, but only two attributes have armor perks that remove movement and stamina penalties it might be sensible to not penalize other attributes in crafting too.

 
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binf_shinana said:
In fact, because the initial value of an attribute is 1 point, the appearance rate of an armor magazine is six times higher than others even when you have not acquired any skills.
I prefer to play by solely focusing on raising a single gun skill, but even then the progress made with the armor magazine wins.

This update is focused on armor, so yeah, that's how it goes.Wow.
Click to expand...


[Edit: Corrected the math]

Mmmh, lets do the math: There are 23 magazines and you can think of a bag initially filled with 23 marbles if all had a loot chance of 1. If we add 5 additional marbles because the attribute is already at 1, then there are 28 marbles in the bag, 6 of them armor.  That is a 21.4% chance to get an armor magazine, realistically a player will often put his first 4 points from the tutorial quest into perks, so there are 32 marbles, making it a 18.7% chance to get an armor magazine.

This will likely go down in further play as one usually puts more points into perks than attributes, but it does look that there is some more need for a balancing fix.

Anyone know what Allan's forum name is? It seems he is doing books and loot stuff, so it might be useful to ask him whether this is an oversight or intentional.

 
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I think another tier of progression could be used to help slow people down 

-Another tier or 2 for zombies

-Scrap tier 

-a few new gun teirs. 

 
Nessdam said:
Nice to know!

We have not switched armor yet mostly because we noticed the high drop rates of the armor magazines.  Thus we decided to postpone crafting armor until we could craft the best ones we wanted, especially since we could use the required resources elsewhere. We also have only had a single death so far, so we did not really feel the need. Armor is next though.

We play on the latest experimental and update when available. But we started in the earliest so that probably slowed down early trader progression. It does feel like you really have to focus trader progression for it not to fall behind your game progression though. To go from tier two to three you have to complete fifteen tier two quests. Unless you do mostly buried supplies i think you gain greater game progression than trader progression just from doing the quests. Might be wrong though

Interesting to see that the armor magazines drop rates is tied to attributes though, explains a lot.  Guess that is mostly temporary or at least will be adjusted for actual release
Click to expand...
You'd probably still be better just using whatever armor you find as you play rather than sticking to primitive.  I believe (I may be wrong) that primitive armor has no protection against debuffs (cuts, scrapes, broken bones, infection, etc), so switching to even tier 1 regular armor has a decent benefit.  But if you're not having trouble in primitive, there isn't anything really wrong with sticking to that.  I only crafted tier 6 armor myself, but I did use whatever armor I found in the meantime.

All tiers of quests require 10 quests to be completed at the current tier level.  Example:  Tier 1 gives you 1 point each quest and you need 10 points.  Tier 2 gives you 2 points per tier 2 quest and you need 20 points.  And so on.  Now, if you're doing tier 1 quests when you're tier 2, you're only getting 1 point per quest, so you'd need 20 tier 1 quests to complete tier 2 (50 tier 1 quests to complete tier 5).  But as long as you're doing the same tier quests as the tier you're on, you'll only need to do 10 quests per tier.

meganoth said:
Anyone know what Allan's forum name is? It seems he is doing books and loot stuff, so it might be useful to ask him whether this is an oversight or intentional.
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I recently saw someone ping @ Allan about something in either the dev diary thread or one of the update threads, but I don't know if they were guessing or if that's his real forum name.

 
Riamus said:
recently saw someone ping @ Allan about something in either the dev diary thread or one of the update threads, but I don't know if they were guessing or if that's his real forum name.
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If it is then he is veeery passive with 0 posts and he hasn't logged in even once since the forum software changed

 
meganoth said:
If we add 6 additional marbles because the attribute is already at 1
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I haven't installed the experimental, so I'm going off based what I'm reading here, but: Is this taking into account you have 5 Attributes, 1.2 marbles per, or .. 3 "non-armor" attributes giving 2 each, or ..? I can keep guessing, but... :)

 
Perhaps some difficulty settings would help?

I've been trying to find the sweet spot for the game play I like like, and haven't quite got it pegged down yet.

Things seem to become easy when you have established some solid cooking skills. The difficulty drops rapidly. I find myself doing stupid self-imposed limitations to make it challenging.

Maybe turn down loot levels?

Suggestions?

 
Gideon said:
Perhaps some difficulty settings would help?

I've been trying to find the sweet spot for the game play I like like, and haven't quite got it pegged down yet.

Things seem to become easy when you have established some solid cooking skills. The difficulty drops rapidly. I find myself doing stupid self-imposed limitations to make it challenging.

Maybe turn down loot levels?

Suggestions?
Click to expand...


You know how you play, I don't, so it is hard to suggest anything. But generally:

1) ask yourself where you get the too good gear from. Then make sure you can't get it anymore the easy way, through XML changes or settings.

2) if you are so good a player that fighting irradiated with tier1 weapons is easy for you then simply turning up difficulty should help. But I don't know if you are already at insane or not

If you want more specific advice you would have to tell us a lot more about how you play currently and other stuff, gamestage, gear, ...

 
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