Ralathar44
New member
I just did a pure agility run to day 35+ and I did not have that experience. My base was fully concrete and mostly fully reinforced concrete by day 30 and I spent no time mining. I constantly progressed via recipes, books, materials, resources, dukes, etc and the moment I got a forge I could craft the weapons I was skilled into. I'd say there IS a problem with getting loot though. The problem is that there is no Tier 1 pistol, sniper, machine gun, or int weapons. The devs know this and have plans in that direction. For now, the blunderbuss handles the early game quite well though.It seems to me that the actual problem with loot in A19 has been shifted towards the strangely specific and weirdely controversial topic of sealed boxes. I think it's important to get something very clear: The problem with loot is in the gameplay itself, not just in the realism aspect. There's no incentive in looting when the game forbids you of getting anything else that's not made of stone for days. It's simply bad design.
Looting wasn't just incentivized for me, it was vital and it was constant progression. Since I couldn't craft tools higher than Q1 and have no motherload skill farming resources was not really an option. So getting those higher quality levels of stone axe and stone shovel mattered. Scrapping all those chairs mattered. All the cobblestone pallets, stone pallets, cement pallets, and scrapped/smelted looted metal items mattered. Every recipe found mattered. And buried treasure quests kept me stocked on clay

Scavenging was great progression for me. And I'm a base builder at heart, in A17 the first thing I did was build a cobblestone base for D7 from scratch even though it took 5/7 days I had. So the transition from me being mining/farming/base building focused in A16 to the "choose your path" philosophy they've been slowly making more and more prevalent made me step outside of my comfort zone. Similarly the transition from "you can do everything" to "choose what you are good at" over the last several updates has required adjustment. And the game is built with that in mind. How you skill determines how you play and how reliant you are on looting or how reliant you are on mining. Both should be using the trader, as only makes sense from both gameplay and "realism/immersion" perspectives.
I don't think everything is balanced/polished yet. But I disagree vehemently that it's bad design. It's very good design. Unlike A16 and before the game now allows you to have many different playstyles effectively. You're not forced into being reliant on mining, you're not forced into being reliant on scavenging you're not force to being reliant on a specific weapon or combat style. You can focus on what you want effectively. Don't want to scavenge? Mine + trader. Don't want to mine? Scavenge + trader. miners will craft tools naturally and scavengers will craft weapons naturally.
Technically everything matters, but it's all a tradeoff. Realism vs gameplay. Realism vs development resources. Nothing happens in a vacuum. In gaming realism matters but it's worth much less than gameplay and typically realism comes as the sacrifice of gameplay. Red Dead Redemption 2 is a good example. That game was extraordinarily realistic in some parts, and many people liked that and many people hated it. Some liked the immersion, some HATED how long it took you to do any little thing like taking multiple seconds to loot each body. People loved the combat the story and the character development but even people who liked the game were often very divided on the gameplay.Realism and immersion MATTERS no matter how many walls of text anyone writes. Of course, things aren't black or white. You can't ever have any game that's 100% realistic in every aspect, of course some things won't ever make sense. That doesn't mean creators should forget about immersion, it's simply absurd to suggest so. Movies aren't 100% accurate to reality either. Should we stop making movies that make any sense then?
Should we take multiple seconds to loot each body in 7DTD? It'd be more realistic and immersive. Where do all the bodies go? Why are there all these yellow bags? Where are the bugs? Where are colds and flus? Why don't we sleep, shower, or poop? Why don't we ever wash our hands even or clean our dishes? Do we even HAVE dishes? What is frustrating nonsense and what isn't?Content creators should always try to make their games as immersive as possible, if it's within their possibilities. When they stop caring about that, they start deviating from their own game and begin adding frustrating nonesense.
Who makes that call? You? Me? By what metrics do we determine what to make realistic/immersive and what not to? What do we do when players and devs value each of those little aspects differently? Do we listen to a few posters? Do we listen to the devs? Do we do a poll of the community and determine game development by committee?
Disagree. Someone looted that safe and because they didn't want to carry their now obsolete gear they replaced they left it in the safe and closed the safe. That's completely logical. Or maybe someone found an empty safe and used it to store their own tools out of convenience because they may not be fancy/high tech but it's the thin line between them living and dying and so are valuable to them. Our survivor is superman/woman. Normal people cannot take 3 seconds to craft a working stone hatchet from a few twigs, some grass, and a few stones that took them somehow 30 seconds to pick up. Even rudimentary tools take time and effort to craft.Finding a spear and a T1 bow in a locked gunsafe in a gun store is simply nonesensical. It's a lazy system that forces the player to be weak because the game lacks what it needs to prevent players from getting too strong too soon in a way that's fun and makes sense. It breaks immersion and undermines gameplay, which makes the experience less enjoyable in return. Why? Because immersion matters. Saying stuff like the prying animation thing is just a strawman argument that tries to lessen the value of immersion in videogames.
This is part of the problem with "realism" evaluations in video games. You're evaluating the worth of things via gameplay terms but then trying to apply realism/immersion to those very same concepts. It's an inherent internal conflict in your expressed outlook. You freely transition back and forth between gameplay and realism when it fits how you feel but it doesn't line up consistently when evaluated logically. You can't cherry pick like that when making that argument.
You literally just got through saying "Content creators should always try to make their games as immersive as possible, if it's within their possibilities." but then when discussing other immersion like the need to pry open wooden boxes (that people have made a big point of being "sealed!") to get undamaged contents it's suddenly a strawman. This is why your arguments are self defeating.
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