PC 'Specialization' in single player

[BobTheBard]

Vehicles.
Running is so tedious and maps are so spread that vehicles are more than just a convenience.

Not going to argue that vehicles aren't the single biggest convenience Intellect provides, because they are. But that's less of a testament to the necessity of vehicles than to how bad running/sprinting is. It's interesting - Vehicles aren't significantly faster than running, but they enable you to have such a long range because you're not stopping all the time.

But at the same time, you don't have to have them. You can sprint everywhere, and even cover a decent amount of distance in a day. It's just annoying as hell.

 

[LuckyStar]

Not going to argue that vehicles aren't the single biggest convenience Intellect provides, because they are. But that's less of a testament to the necessity of vehicles than to how bad running/sprinting is. It's interesting - Vehicles aren't significantly faster than running, but they enable you to have such a long range because you're not stopping all the time.
But at the same time, you don't have to have them. You can sprint everywhere, and even cover a decent amount of distance in a day. It's just annoying as hell.

It's not a matter of speed so much for me as the Storage.

If I'm going to spend a day looting, I want to bring back as much as I can.

 

[Cadamier]

I agree with the Op. Playing single player is much harder than playing MP. In MP you have the advantage of - if agreed upon - one person specializing in this or that, 'evenly' distributing.... Or more accurately Efficiently distributing perks/skills to multiple players so as to take advantage of the entire tree! Whereas in SP - you have little choice and they get steep! I play both MP & SP. In MP - we're restarted and we're only about day 5, not sure of the levels, but one has a bike and more are on the way already... The 'farmer' just needs a hoe to start production. This time around I have diverged from the group and am Happily on my own lol I'm probably going to forgo the motorcycle... Minibike is good enough.

Sure - you can do without int, but I doubt you'll go very far - especially if you play by yourself in SP! I have a feeling that you'll get frustrated by rads during horde night... And will eventually have to resort to the 'perks'/'luxuries' provided by int.

 

[Limdood]

intellect as a required stat would be solvable with a few changes:

1) allow lucky looter to apply a bonus to quantity of ammo found

2) allow the barter perks to modify the ammo available at a trader, or add some modifiers that make it give traders more consistently available and more numerous amounts of ammo

3) make vehicles purchasable from traders and/or quest rewards

This is the big one:

4) move better barter, daring adventurer, and charismatic nature. Potentially to a new charisma stat (it obviously won't be as big or necessary as intelligence, but it could be made only 5 points and very cheap to buy, since making people invest just as many points into a new stat utterly defeats the purpose), but you could also make them not under ANY attribute...they just take points to increase

This solves the issues of:

1) getting decent gear - more applicable trader tools/weapons, and easier access to quest rewards by being able to get better barter and daring adventurer

2) ammo - being unable to craft ammo will eventually leave your magazines empty. Access to more found and bought ammo helps offset this.

3) transportation - vehicles are the biggest thing exclusive to intelligence only. Allowing vehicles to be purchasable or earnable from traders (at extreme prices and maybe level 4/5 quests only) gives a no-intelligence player access, but not choice or consistency in obtaining one.

most people will still use intelligence, but this would allow people to CHOOSE to play without feeling like an attribute was required, which i feel is important to the "RPG" aspect of the game. It's clearly trying to push a "choice" aspect, so I feel that no attribute should be REQUIRED, and you should be able to play a reasonable (hard, maybe, but at least consistently possible) game without [insert any ONE attribute here].

 

[Mosiah]

Intellect is the ultimate quality-of-life convenience tree. You don't actually need any of it, but having it and the benefits it brings (especially the ability to centralize) is just so good that most of us, myself included, consider it mandatory. It lets us work smarter, not harder. Which is definitely the point of being an intellectual.

Don't get too hung up on the tea comment, please. It's not what this topic is about anyway - i meant what i wrote in the OP.

Point is, there is nothing in the other trees that would help you survive the grand, glorious, hell that is the 7th night. You can decide not to put your points in the INT. You can learn to sneak, grow plants, use armor effectively, increase your inventory. It's all great. Up until 20 irradiated cops come knocking on your door.

At that moment, you realize, how incredibly meaningless those points are. That those 4 days spent looking for that anvil, so you could save the points to learn how to shoot a bow(or anything else) were SO wasted. You realize, you should have invested more in INT. But unfortunately, everything there is kinda point expensive. Just the forge itself costs 4 points in INT. And this yields just the ingots, not even the tools. So you slowly starting cutting points from everything else.

Aaaand then you realize: 'If i invested so many points in INT, why would i even bother with intristic immunity, if for the same points i can now craft antibiotics'(Since i already invested a lot of points in the INT attribute)?? And there we go with the INT build.