PC So was the point of A19 to get rid of "Realism"?

[eXSe]

I too feel that there should be a clear advantage for the player to upgrade to better tools. Maybe even lessen the stamina use with the upgrade to better tier and level to reflect the craftsmanship required to make those items.

I mean, people invent better things to ease their day to day, not to make it harder on themselves. Right?

 

[Kalen]

@Tin have you looked at the range of possible values?  I wonder whether there is enough room to not allow overlap between 18 levels of progression. 24 levels if we add the chainsaw and the auger to their respective hand tools. 

You're probably right on that.   I may be in the minority here, but I'd rather they did away with random stats on items.   That way they'd have more wiggle room to ensure a smoother progression in item stats.   It really bugs me that a higher tier or higher quality item can be inferior to a lower because of random stats.

 

[Tin]

@Tin have you looked at the range of possible values?  I wonder whether there is enough room to not allow overlap between 18 levels of progression. 24 levels if we add the chainsaw and the auger to their respective hand tools. 

With the way they are currently doing it? I would say yeah? it can be done. 

but it would be a pita if they (TFP) want to maintain the: 5-6 levels of quality, for every item that uses a quality rating.

I'm just letting "whomever" reads this, that the current way it is done leaves me feeling, a bit less enthused, during the transition phases.

I know what I would "try"(er adjusted) but  I'm just one fish, in an ocean of opinions (edit: (Only based on a19. No idea what 'may' or "may not" be in A20))

Spoiler

For instance (just talking from my perspective):

I wouldn't even bother with putting quality ratings on primitive weapons/ tools.

Let the skill/perks handle any "bonus" increases for those. You break them? make another.

They are cheap and easy to make. The "get you by stage".

You shouldn't want to be using them for any length of time. Not when you "know" there is better, more reliable things out there. 

I would also just have all primitive stuff able to be made by the player from the get go.

You have been living in this world. Basic knowledge should be a thing, whether you lost memories or not.

That opens up a little more room for the other weapons/tools, to be adjusted with more ease.

In turn will help give more solid/distinctive increases between the/ primitive/ iron/ steel/ High tech/ stages.

Also allows for the loot container list, to be more manageable.

I also would just change the quality system a bit by:

Primitive: 

Only has the one "quality level" default. A Quick transition stage to get people comfortable in the game. 

Since its the quasi tutorial stage. 

(lasts at most to Week 1 or 2)

Iron:

Has 3 quality levels.

Need to spend a bit of time in this stage. 

The stage where the player is just getting established, to mostly established.

Starting to look for things to test to mettle, being a bit more able to take risks. 

(last around week 2-21)

Steel:

Has 5 quality levels.

Takes quite awhile to get through. 

Players are mostly finished being established (pending on play style).

Adjust to the uptick of the game stage increases.  

Taking more risks. Starting to put themselves in more danger.  

(last around week 21+)

Unique's/ Legendary: ?   

week ? 

*The week length stuff I haven't done. Mostly what I would like to strive for in doing at some point*

Again just my opinions.

 

[Boidster]

Again just my opinions.

Your ideas are almost exactly the same as my own. I'd add that I don't think primitive weapons or tools should accept mods (nor should plant fiber clothing).

 

[Solomon]

I too feel that there should be a clear advantage for the player to upgrade to better tools. Maybe even lessen the stamina use with the upgrade to better tier and level to reflect the craftsmanship required to make those items.

I mean, people invent better things to ease their day to day, not to make it harder on themselves. Right?

Also true, why would i waste my time in smelting and hoarding iron if the stone on the stick is better tool?

 

[meganoth]

Also true, why would i waste my time in smelting and hoarding iron if the stone on the stick is better tool?

The forged iron cost of the few tools is relatively unimportant. But if you don't waste your time with smelting iron you won't be able to build a lot of stuff made of iron and steel and won't be able to pay recurring costs for darts or the repair of dart traps, darts, blade traps, steel blocks, iron doors.

 

[Solomon]

The forged iron cost of the few tools is relatively unimportant. But if you don't waste your time with smelting iron you won't be able to build a lot of stuff made of iron and steel and won't be able to pay recurring costs for darts or the repair of dart traps, darts, blade traps, steel blocks, iron doors.

I didnt mean it as an actual ingame sceniario but as if you are at home trying to invent better tools.

Like would you replace your old computer to the newest ones if your old one still performs better than those?

 

[meganoth]

I didnt mean it as an actual ingame sceniario but as if you are at home trying to invent better tools.

Like would you replace your old computer to the newest ones if your old one still performs better than those?

Everybody probably knows that the potential of an iron axe to be better than a stone axe is there. But if you have to build one without any experience your first exemplars might be just good enough to be smelted again for the next attempt.

If you could choose at the start to work either with stone and iron, you naturally would choose iron. But assuming you first had to build losts of stone axes you might be actually so good at building stone axes that your first iron axe would disappoint

If you were inventing better tools, your first prototype will probably be worse than a standard quality tool. Only after you improved that prototype through lots of iterating you will end up with something better.

Example: The first LCD screen ever built was probably something with 16x16 pixels black and white. While normal cathode ray tubes at that time showed 800x600 pixels in color. But the developers probably already knew that that new technology could some day replace CRTs.

 

[Roland]

So the high quality stone tools are better than the low quality iron tools because we crafted and used the stone tools so much for the first couple of weeks we really really learned them by doing. And until we gain some experience with the stone tools through doing they may not be better.

It IS still alive....

 

[Solomon]

Everybody probably knows that the potential of an iron axe to be better than a stone axe is there. But if you have to build one without any experience your first exemplars might be just good enough to be smelted again for the next attempt.

If you could choose at the start to work either with stone and iron, you naturally would choose iron. But assuming you first had to build losts of stone axes you might be actually so good at building stone axes that your first iron axe would disappoint

If you were inventing better tools, your first prototype will probably be worse than a standard quality tool. Only after you improved that prototype through lots of iterating you will end up with something better.

Example: The first LCD screen ever built was probably something with 16x16 pixels black and white. While normal cathode ray tubes at that time showed 800x600 pixels in color. But the developers probably already knew that that new technology could some day replace CRTs.

That  would make sense were we playing a game with learn by doing systems but thats not the case.

A quality 1 iron axe will never be better than your quality 5-6 stone axe, no matter what you do. It will stay that bad and even after countless hours of using the iron axe it will be still bad because our tier system is on crafting and not on usage.

Also just to note it but realistically speaking if our situation ingame was true it would make more sense to make the stone tools even better because material costs are the lowest while the quality is exponentially bigger so it would look like as if LCD screens just died out middleway at 1024x768 resolutions because cathode rays got to the point where they are cheaper and offer triple resolution.

 

[meganoth]

That  would make sense were we playing a game with learn by doing systems but thats not the case.

A quality 1 iron axe will never be better than your quality 5-6 stone axe, no matter what you do. It will stay that bad and

even after countless hours of using the iron axe it will be still bad because our tier system is on crafting and not on usage.

An iron axe will certainly be better than the quality 6 stone axe, when you learned to craft it better. Iron axe is iron axe, the quality is just a minor variable like the age of the survivor is.

A game uses abstraction to have situations make sense generally, not in excrutiating detail. So LBD is actually happening in this game because first you craft (or find) iron axes that are worse than the stone axes you (or the other crafters) learned to craft at high quality. Then with time your crafting gets better and your iron axes surpass any stone axe because iron is the inherently better material for axes. This is LBD, the learning is just simulated with putting perk points into miner69.  The detail you have to ignore is that strangely you also FIND better and better stone and iron axes as if the other people in this world learn too.

Also just to note it but realistically speaking if our situation ingame was true it would make more sense to make the stone tools even better because material costs are the lowest while the quality is exponentially bigger so it would look like as if LCD screens just died out middleway at 1024x768 resolutions because cathode rays got to the point where they are cheaper and offer triple resolution.

Realistically iron as a material is far superior for axes than stone. No stone axe can ever be made as sharp as an iron axe without the stone chipping. This is a fundamental physical property of the material. So if you put say one month of research into building stone axes and one month of research into building iron axes then the resulting iron axe would normally be better than the stone axe. In the game it is simulated that you always start with stone tech (because iron tech is not available from the start) so you put that month of research into stone axes first. Then iron tech becomes available to you and the month of iron axe research starts. And you need that time to catch up with iron tech before you are equally good at iron tech as you are at stone tech. At which point the inherent quality of the material decides which axe is better.

The LCD screens were in reality much worse than any CRTs for the first decade of their existence. When the first LCD screens reached the resolution of a CRT, they were sold for >$5000 a piece while a CRT cost $300 (values just rough estimates, it was a long time ago). But the CRT was at the end of its technological range, you could pour endless money into research and would not get much better CRTs. LCD were at the start, their material cost was prohibitive, but it promised to be so much more powerful.

If you look at it today, the material a CRT is made of still could be produced much cheaper than an LCD if you had to start from zero. Building a factory than can produce electronic chips costs hundred times more than building a factory to build class tubes and needs many more advances in technological knowledge. But one of the secrets to make LCDs cheaper is mass production, so the prohibitively expensive cost of making the factory gets spread over millions of produced LCDs.

 

[Kalen]

A game uses abstraction to have situations make sense generally, not in excrutiating detail. So LBD is actually happening in this game because first you craft (or find) iron axes that are worse than the stone axes you (or the other crafters) learned to craft at high quality. Then with time your crafting gets better and your iron axes surpass any stone axe because iron is the inherently better material for axes. This is LBD, the learning is just simulated with putting perk points into miner69.  The detail you have to ignore is that strangely you also FIND better and better stone and iron axes as if the other people in this world learn too.

LBD is in the game as an abstraction?  That it such a stretch that you can't possibly believe that..... 

if you can craft quality 5 stone axes you are also crafting quality 5 iron axes which invalidates your statement of:

"first you craft (or find) iron axes that are worse than the stone axes you (or the other crafters) learned to craft at high quality"

A stone tool, IMO, should never out perform an iron tool.

 

[meganoth]

LBD is in the game as an abstraction?  That it such a stretch that you can't possibly believe that..... 

if you can craft quality 5 stone axes you are also crafting quality 5 iron axes which invalidates your statement of:

"first you craft (or find) iron axes that are worse than the stone axes you (or the other crafters) learned to craft at high quality"

A stone tool, IMO, should never out perform an iron tool.

You are correct about the fact that you learn crafting all axes at the same time.

So you actually learn (aka perk into miner69) to craft axes generally independant of material. But might not know a few tricks so that a steel axe has to be learned by a separate schematic.

I don't think a stone axe of quality 5 can ever be better than an iron axe of quality 5 in the game (provided you have the stamina). So the stone tools you craft never outperform the iron tools you craft at the same time. Does that work for you or not?

But lets say you don't perk into miner69. Then you will find stone axes made by people who didn't have a forge but learned how to produce very good axes. Compared to the iron axe of quality 1 that you can craft, those artisan stone axes are better and when you find an artisan iron axe it will be much better.

 

[Kalen]

But lets say you don't perk into miner69. Then you will find stone axes made by people who didn't have a forge but learned how to produce very good axes. Compared to the iron axe of quality 1 that you can craft, those artisan stone axes are better and when you find an artisan iron axe it will be much better.

I get your point.... I just dont agree.   I maintain that an iron tool should always out perform a stone tool.   Even when the iron tool is QL 1 and the stone tool is QL 6.

It's not game breaking, of course.... but it is annoyance.

 

[beHypE]

@meganoth I don't wanna sound like a prick but I think you've read too many counter-arguments madmole has written in the past. I mean we're not talking abstraction, realism, immersion here, and no matter how you wanna roleplay this whole quality progression thing, it won't change the gameplay aspect of it. We're talking about game design resolving around excitment due to upgrading your gear. And right now, that expected thrill of advancing to the next tier of items is inexistent. I don't care how dull you think the blade of a noob blacksmith should be on his first craft - I care about how much I should be thrilled to find an iron tool when I currently wield the very first item (let that sink in) that I craft in the game...

 

[Solomon]

An iron axe will certainly be better than the quality 6 stone axe, when you learned to craft it better. Iron axe is iron axe, the quality is just a minor variable like the age of the survivor is.

A game uses abstraction to have situations make sense generally, not in excrutiating detail. So LBD is actually happening in this game because first you craft (or find) iron axes that are worse than the stone axes you (or the other crafters) learned to craft at high quality. Then with time your crafting gets better and your iron axes surpass any stone axe because iron is the inherently better material for axes. This is LBD, the learning is just simulated with putting perk points into miner69.  The detail you have to ignore is that strangely you also FIND better and better stone and iron axes as if the other people in this world learn too.

But thats the exact problem here!

My argument is that it makes zero sense that a Q5-6 stone tool is better than any version of the iron variants. Theres no way, not even when you max out miner69 that a Q1 iron axe is better than a Q5-6 stone axe and that is a problem.

You can talk all you want about progression or abstraction but neither of those actually adress the issue here.

As you said literally in your post here:

Realistically iron as a material is far superior for axes than stone.

Not even gameplay wise it makes sense to have overlapping technological stages, i dont think theres any game what does that for the sole reason how little sense they make.

Also again gameplaywise you learn to make all tool qualities the same time so theres also no sense in having the stone age tools ever being better than iron age ones.

 

[meganoth]

@meganoth I don't wanna sound like a prick but I think you've read too many counter-arguments madmole has written in the past. I mean we're not talking abstraction, realism, immersion here, and no matter how you wanna roleplay this whole quality progression thing, it won't change the gameplay aspect of it.

Sorry, but you might not be talking realism, immersion here, but this started as a dialog between me and Solomon. And it was definitely about realism and immersion and me bringing abstraction into it. Just read the first 3 posts between me and Solomon. Kalen might have widened the discussion now (without saying it exactly) but as usual the longer a discussion goes the more it branches out.

When people make realism arguments they often go about it the easy way and look for any fact that isn't like reality. Just that that doesn't work in such a game as this. You could point to everything as unrealistic because ALL things in the game have a simple fact that doesn't fit and isn't simulated perfectly.

We're talking about game design resolving around excitment due to upgrading your gear. And right now, that expected thrill of advancing to the next tier of items is inexistent. I don't care how dull you think the blade of a noob blacksmith should be on his first craft - I care about how much I should be thrilled to find an iron tool when I currently wield the very first item (let that sink in) that I craft in the game...

The "very first item you craft in the game" is a q1 stone axe and I don't think the q1 iron axe is worse than that.

I would not say the current progression is ideal. It has game play disadvantages. I said it somewhere else already: For game play reasons I would accept q1 iron axes being worse than q6 stone axes IF q1 iron axes were generally found BEFORE q6 stone axes. Why not, does it matter that there is a "stone" in the name if it comes later and is an upgrade?

I would also accept q1 iron axes being worse than q6 stone axes if all you need to make that q1 iron axe better is two points in sexrex.

 

[meganoth]

But thats the exact problem here!

My argument is that it makes zero sense that a Q5-6 stone tool is better than any version of the iron variants. Theres no way, not even when you max out miner69 that a Q1 iron axe is better than a Q5-6 stone axe and that is a problem.

You can talk all you want about progression or abstraction but neither of those actually adress the issue here.

As you said literally in your post here: "Realistically iron as a material is far superior for axes than stone. "

Yes, and while that fact is true I still could deliberately build an iron axe that is objectively worse than a good stone axe (in reality). Wanna bet? What I can do deliberately could be done by some idiot without knowledge per chance.

Not even gameplay wise it makes sense to have overlapping technological stages, i dont think theres any game what does that for the sole reason how little sense they make.

I would not make that claim lightly, there are sooo many games. In a fantasy RPG the magic wood club+3 of ice life stealing would actually be much better than the simple mastercraft iron club.

Also again gameplaywise you learn to make all tool qualities the same time so theres also no sense in having the stone age tools ever being better than iron age ones.

At the same quality the iron tool IS better than the stone tool.

 

[Boidster]

does it matter that there is a "stone" in the name if it comes later and is an upgrade?

That is my personal contention, that people are hung up on stone as a material. Probably doesn't help that the stone axe is pictured as a none-too-sharp hunk of rock tied to a stick. If they shifted the technology tiers from stone-iron-steel to iron-steel-titanium, I'd bet a good portion of the wailing and gnashing of teeth goes away. I'm not advocating for that change, mind, just pointing out how people are hung up on the material rather than the mechanic.

 

[Kalen]

That is my personal contention, that people are hung up on stone as a material. Probably doesn't help that the stone axe is pictured as a none-too-sharp hunk of rock tied to a stick. If they shifted the technology tiers from stone-iron-steel to iron-steel-titanium, I'd bet a good portion of the wailing and gnashing of teeth goes away. I'm not advocating for that change, mind, just pointing out how people are hung up on the material rather than the mechanic.

Not at all.... the name is irrelevant to me.   The fact is that a Tier 2 item should be an upgrade to a Tier 1 item.  In the current system that isn't always the case.  In fact, in my experience, the majority of the time the first Tier 2 item you find isn't better than the current Tier 1 item you are using.