PC The loot linearity is killing my interest in this game

[beHypE]

Naw, The people who have a gripe and  come to these forums are finding common ground on this issue with others but I think the majority of folks who never visit the forums are perfectly happy with it.

To my understanding, the game has never been more popular as far as player count goes, right now

Not trying to imply you're wrong but you're just as biased. For all we know people who didn't like it just stopped playing and aren't "perfectly happy with it". For all we know A19 had awesome marketing especially with these weird times where a lot of people have way more time to spend playing video games... for all we know the numbers would've been even better with A18's loot system, or small tweaks to it instead of a complete and unfinished revamp.

Like I said, I have no clue whether any of those sentences are true or not. But neither do any of you, and I've read enough times that "current numbers don't lie". Also, keep in mind one of the big loss of the linear progression is replayability. A19 is still very new, let's wait for 2-3 months before we draw any conclusions.

 

[Roland]

A19 is still very new, let's wait for 2-3 months before we draw any conclusions.

If the numbers go down in 2-3 months it will only be due to people gearing up for Christmas and not having as much time to play.

Guaranteed!

 

[FridayPie]

I'm with Roland about loot system. In that the loot system is unfinished. But game was in development for YEARs and  development is supported by feedback of users... Right now it hangs by thread that game is moddable (unless player is one of those religious freaks who say that one never should use mods, devs always know what you want exactly, what game meant to be- and I met those). Making a boring early access game is a path to failure. 

One of main features of loot based games, of RPG-based games, of survival games.. is RANDOMNESS. Being somewhat unpredictable. And Randomness defines replay value. Even in minecraft  it is so, by highly random world plus creative building. A19 so far killed the former while A18 demolisher really curbed the latter in MP (they are ultimate griefer tool).

Highly unfinished. But it is not balanced. At all right now. Maybe linearity could work if this was a single player game with adventure elements: e.g. easier quests, some event that gives you  (level1) shotgun, etc. But it's boring as SP now because of your race with time. Higher difficulty becomes unplayable. Loot also seems to show bias to chosen attribute, so with GS12 I started to get parts for turrets.  Or shotguns if I leveled strength. But turrets are now broken in A19 and should be disabled for MP (if someone experiences odd slowdowns and crashes that happen periodically with vanilla game, it's likely dozens forgotten\lost\self-duped turrets stuck in the sky  thousands meters above ground). Oh and in MP server administration usually forbid to build anywhere near city, trader or quest areas because it creates a lot of grief and help request (it's in claim zone!).

Suggested low level survival by holeing up somewhere is  not possible. you have to build your house from level 1. Surviving 

7th, even 14th night with lvl 1 shotgun or pistol in wilderness is possible. Surviving 1st night with blunderbuss and wooden bow (which barely does damage) is not. Trying do it  POI  in city usually results in catastrophe..  spawning zombies far beyond your GS.

You can get an empty treasure chest. Or empty sealed crate. Whole POI of empty sealed crates happens because loot system thinks that level 1-10 player is "not worthy" (and that's roughly 2-4 hours of play with large scale online map). Single water can in quest's chest "Buried supplies" (and 4 zombies you barely can kill, while random enrage of two of them at same time may one-shot you). To reach higher GS without killing anything impossible because food is gated behind levels and need to have lucky looter.  This gating makes game un-enjoyable, forcing to throw away time just on grinding , dying, starving  and being unable to reach appropriate GS because food is..  ALSO based on GS, tata! ANd for sale it is in such low supply that 1-2  high level players totally drain map traders and vending machines, because they need that food to make better food.

In MP players race with real time and against each other. And their progresses is stopped by zombies from higher GS 9+10+50 higher) than they are just because someone online in same region. Non-random loot stays boring. Current loot system may give an empty treasure chest.

About those who says this is unfinished product. I'll be frank. It was more finished 3 years ago. Then it became different game with adding quest and new RPG system. A lot of things that were logical or made sense were broken. We had zombies reacting for smell once. We had properly behaving animals. Using omelette metaphor, this omelette is done after  re-stuffing eggs into bigger shells along with fragments of older shell.

 

[FridayPie]

In my current game I'm over level 100, and all three of my primary tools are still blue. I only recently upgraded a blue bow (the regular one) I was using. I still have blue armor pieces. It's been a long long time since I dragged a playthrough this many days. I'm actually using electricity and building large structures etc. I didn't like being forced to deal with the horde; but now, I'm okay with it. As 7d2d sees more balance (it swings back and forth), we get scraped up out of our old stagnant comfort zones.

IT actually very predetermined by your character choices, perhaps there is also some odd seed\chaos source used for RNG. Currently on one server (vanilla aside from admin modlets) I'm level 80. I didn't bought anything , only looted. It's a 12th A19 playthrough. I started purely in combat and played system so that I became nearly unbeatable at level 60, using assault rifle and shotgun.  I can't even craft much beyond basic materials, vehicle from recipes. I can craft weapons only at level 3, but high base stat and high kill count mandates me to swim in  level 6 gear. Lucky looter doesn't do a thing at all. Loot system had shown reaction to stats and GS, before it just drops lots of ammo. But it's the only way to do that. Trying to build at same time, to branch into mining and crafting forces to spread points and delegate time in way that game stops favoring you. My base is only  small patch of farm to make me food. You need kill count, period. SO you need stealth and firepower.

1. only strength and hp matters. You need farming, boomstick (for early on,blunderbuss and shotgun), automatic weapons, some lucky looter early on

2. Light armor and pain tolerance Stealth. You don't need Pack Rat. You can get all those slots by pockets.

3. If you get good crossbow , aim at archery. Most of kills would be stealth ones. Easy Gs early on, at 20-30 lvls you will get all gear up to tier 3.

4. Now may focus at barter  and combat support skills. 

5. Mining is last priority. Most of mats you need you harvest or buy, especially in MP where resources are literally unlimited.

Essentially loot system forces player to fall into this pattern,  any step aside is punishable by reduced effectiveness and boredom, jumping in place considered attempt to fly and cheat  

Average kill / death  count in PVE: ~4500/1. Usually you'll have 2-3 deaths early because of random biker charge, stray feral from other high level player, starving. Someone else I know had 12000/0 after playing a week, using same pattern. It becomes boring for different reason, nothing that game throws at us can kill us in 1 to 1 combat, even a demolisher. Heck , I killed one in melee.

 

[grieferbastard]

I would say game stage/level needs to skew the ODDS of what you find -

But the fact that I literally can't find anything 'good' in early game stage means there's absolutely 0 reason to waste loot crates and such (which are finite) until after gamestage 50, at least. I should stick 100% with my own created gear until I have done enough grinding to open a gamestage where the loot is worth the inherent risks of going through a POI.

I've always loved the struggle of the Shotgun Messiah factory. However I made the terrible mistake this time of going through it before day 21. It was worthless. A complete waste of time. I'd have much wiser to have spent the time just dully mining a hole slowly down chasing veins of iron/coal/nitrite to make gunpowder to make shotgun rounds.

On the plus side I've found out you can essentially create your OWN Horde Night on demand in that area though! I fortified a segment of the Shotgun Messiah factory and thought I'd test my defenses, so I went out at night, shot at some zombies and drew them back. What resulted was endless hordes of zombies and ferals and zombie bears in groups of 20 or so, drawn to the gunfire and flashlight I assume.

So instead of doing POIs I should mine ammo for a double barrel shotgun or pistol or AK and make a kill box down there and farm XP down there all night until the gamestage advances to the point where crates are worth opening.

I love A19 in a lot of ways but it has made clearing POIs early game when it's genuinely risky an utter waste of time. Literally self-defeating.

 

[Kubikus]

TFP has made a ton of stupid design decisions and such with this game each alpha, but none are as bad as this linear loot system. I don't know why TFP seems hell bent on removing choice from the player in a sandbox like game. First zombies can dig, so the option to make a underground base for whatever reason is pretty much gone, now zombies can swim (and swim faster than the player either... figure that one out), so Hiding on a lake if you don't wanna bother with horde night had its option taken away. Now we have the linear loot system, which removed any replay value the game used to have.

I believe to know the reason: They design the game for a first and single "playthrough". If it's your very first game, and possibly your last one, the steering of the player by the game mechanics should be quite alright. You won't be overpowered within days (thanks to the loot), you won't miss out on items and recipes you need (thanks to the perk system). The homogeneous world design forbids any surpises. Etc. etc. Digging zombies for example: Say you play for the first time and build a base underground. Without digging zombies, horde night would be boring.

People who play the game over and over and over again for years and have hundreds and thousands of hours are not their target. Myself, I used to play this game every single day up until A17. Since then, I can play maybe 5 ingame weeks, check out the new stuff, then I'm bored out of my mind and don't touch the game for months, aka until the next alpha is released. I don't even think about it. I wait for gold, then look what can be done with modding.

 

[Solomon]

People who play the game over and over and over again for years and have hundreds and thousands of hours are not their target. Myself, I used to play this game every single day up until A17. Since then, I can play maybe 5 ingame weeks, check out the new stuff, then I'm bored out of my mind and don't touch the game for months, aka until the next alpha is released. I don't even think about it. I wait for gold, then look what can be done with modding.

You dont even need to get that far, people who clock in a mere 10-30 hour can already see the repetition of the game and because of the many nerfs to aspects of the game our choices on what to do got limited too.

 

[Baxitus]

Can I somehow replace an XML file that turns off linear loot? And if so, where can I download this file? Or is there a mod, to do it?

Edit: Okay, i found a Mod called "FAWK-LOOT-ALL" to do it. I will test it this evening.

 

[Noctoras]

Mind you, I'd have at least at some chance of a higher "age" item dropping, kind of like winning the lotto. (no clue what % would work, but A chance)

That's the way I see it too and the way most people seem to see it.

What the game is currently missing is randomness. Random worlds (RWG) are far from random, loot is basically level gated, making the game too predictable a grind, especially early on.

 

[Boidster]

I would say game stage/level needs to skew the ODDS of what you find -

That is literally what it does. This thread covers it in some detail for a specific container. However the odds to get some items are 0% for several levels before getting to 0.1% or whatever. Sounds like people would like that 0.1% or 0.01% chance of T3 gear dropping on day 1 - "winning the lottery" as canadianbluebeer put it. I can understand that. It's a very easy mod to make. Just edit these three values in loot.xml:

    <lootprobtemplate name="ProbT1">
        <loot level="0,9" prob="0"/>

    <lootprobtemplate name="ProbT2">
        <loot level="0,48" prob="0"/>

    <lootprobtemplate name="ProbT3">
        <loot level="0,88" prob="0"/>

If you put "0.001" in there, you'd have your lottery chance. It's a complex calc, but it essentially works out even so to a 1/1000 chance for T1, T2, or T3 weapons, tools, or armor, and a 4/1000 chance for T2 or T3 ammo from, for example, a Shotgun Messiah crate, at GS 1-10. Once you get to GS 10, 49, or 89 (for T1, T2, T3 respectively) then you'll revert to the normal probabilities which start at 0.04 (again, complex calc is involved; this does not mean "4% chance").

I would not want them putting that into the vanilla game, personally, because I do think finding a T3 implement on Day 3 is game breaking. At least until/unless we get (or I mod in) item degradation. Or play like Roland is playing right now, with no repair kits allowed. At least in that case that T3 lottery win would be a very precious commodity and I would want to use it only sparingly until I was high enough GS to find replacements more easily. As it is now, find a steel pickaxe and I am geared up forever in the pickaxe department. Boring.

 

[Boidster]

For what it's worth, I made a "Loot Lottery" modlet that adds a tiny chance for higher-tier loot in standard probability tables. Ought to affect most normal lootables - crates and whatnot. Will not affect quest loot nor zombie bag drops.



Yes, but it is quite small, as outlined above, so more than likely you will not notice any difference. But there is a chance for a T3 on Day 1. (Much, MUCH better than lottery odds, BTW.)

 

 

[grieferbastard]

That is literally what it does. This thread covers it in some detail for a specific container. However the odds to get some items are 0% for several levels before getting to 0.1% or whatever. Sounds like people would like that 0.1% or 0.01% chance of T3 gear dropping on day 1 - "winning the lottery" as canadianbluebeer put it. I can understand that. It's a very easy mod to make. Just edit these three values in loot.xml:

    <lootprobtemplate name="ProbT1">
        <loot level="0,9" prob="0"/>

    <lootprobtemplate name="ProbT2">
        <loot level="0,48" prob="0"/>

    <lootprobtemplate name="ProbT3">
        <loot level="0,88" prob="0"/>

If you put "0.001" in there, you'd have your lottery chance. It's a complex calc, but it essentially works out even so to a 1/1000 chance for T1, T2, or T3 weapons, tools, or armor, and a 4/1000 chance for T2 or T3 ammo from, for example, a Shotgun Messiah crate, at GS 1-10. Once you get to GS 10, 49, or 89 (for T1, T2, T3 respectively) then you'll revert to the normal probabilities which start at 0.04 (again, complex calc is involved; this does not mean "4% chance").

I would not want them putting that into the vanilla game, personally, because I do think finding a T3 implement on Day 3 is game breaking. At least until/unless we get (or I mod in) item degradation. Or play like Roland is playing right now, with no repair kits allowed. At least in that case that T3 lottery win would be a very precious commodity and I would want to use it only sparingly until I was high enough GS to find replacements more easily. As it is now, find a steel pickaxe and I am geared up forever in the pickaxe department. Boring.

I absolutely get what you're saying - what I would say is that we need tiered repair options. To put it simply a steel pickaxe needs a steel grade repair kit to repair.

I would also like to see mods being the real 'end game' unlocks and valuable things to find. Rather than a legendary shotgun for example, a legendary shotgun mod that, for example, lights everything you shoot on fire. This way you can find a legendary mod early and it gives a bit of a boost to your blunderbuss; however it'll make your autoshotgun that you get much later the raised middle finger of god.

If I find a steel pickaxe on day 3, but repairing it means I literally have to keep clearing POIs and scrapping other steel things to get steel to make steel repair kits to keep using as I can't yet make steel myself, that's a GOOD thing. It adds value and has an intrinsic sustaining cost.

It's not that I want RNG lottery winning to be a thing - it's that currently clearing a POI before day 21 and level 50+ gives you trash. There's no point in doing it, I'm expending more resources than it'll give me and breaking down all the office equipment will give me more actual real valuable useable goods than the loot crates. So shift loot crate loot to be rare mods or crafting materials or things I can't craft a better version of at whatever game stage I'm in. Or make it so finding steel grade gear early means you've got to constantly be clearing POIs trying to find other steel goods to break down to repair it.

I would also agree in general with several people that the traders are, in their way, broken and game breaking for this sort of circumstance. That's a different conversation however.

Edited to add -

Or replace quality with quantity. If the loot crates in early game gave me, say, 2,000 scrap iron or 1,000 nitrite, that's 'paying me back' the half a day I spent trying to clear the big POI to get there. If there's too much concern over higher tier gear then make it large caches of raw materials. Concrete, cobblestone, coal, iron, lead, brass, paper, etc.

 

[FridayPie]

Naw, The people who have a gripe and  come to these forums are finding common ground on this issue with others but I think the majority of folks who never visit the forums are perfectly happy with it.

To my understanding, the game has never been more popular as far as player count goes, right now

A groundless statement. First, to visit forum one should be approved on forum (manually , apparently). I spent 5 years waiting for my account application to be approved (and about two dozen attempts). Second, not all of them English speaking or kind that bother with saying anything. TO be honest, personally (emphasis, personallY) I don't know anyone who doesn't despise new loot system when playing online, and that probably about a hundred of people in two communities. It's not designed for it.

Loot is also source of money, because everything else  is meager at sell cost.Stone tools cannot be sold of course. Even buried supplies quest rn. is waste of time until you get GS about 5 (that means, somehow one should kill about hundred of zeds if game wasn't modified).WIth 4k map that got 8 traders and 50-100 active players (not on same time, but coming at different time), it becomes sad grind of trying to get some loot from POI full of green glowing zombies as player of level one. WHich not impossible, and in a way is thrilling. Like running away from store after shoplifting while thick green cops are on your tail.  Now one cannot get loot too.

I agree that getting tier 3 at lvl. 1 is game breaking but again, have to resort to that by begging other players. Or to get food. Because they all own the map and map progresses with them. Imho, skill level should affect tier available, not GS. I.e. you can't recognize a particular pile of scrap you see as a partially disassembled assault rifle if you don't know what an assault rifle looks like.

Because  there comes another stupidity.. I prowl for hours with 6 blunderbusses and bow to sneak-attack and opportunity kill  zombies one by one, until I reach 200-300 kill-count. It's not Z survival, it's a Hitman game now. A green biker (and occasional normal one) may end me in two hits, no running possible, etc. Now I can get some weapon parts and put points into skill for parts I've found. Maybe. One of my toons have zero skills at all in combat, just engineering (but not into turrets, they are broken)/bartering/looting, and bathes in violet gear only because he got 1 death and 4k kills. Boring, tedious,  constantly in red by food because food is drained  on low levels faster than fuel from 4x4 tank and loot doesn't contain food until ~GS 10-20.

 

[meganoth]

A groundless statement. First, to visit forum one should be approved on forum (manually , apparently). I spent 5 years waiting for my account application to be approved (and about two dozen attempts).

Approval on the forum is not manual, not even with the old forum software. I don't know what went wrong and it isn't important anymore since you are here. But just for correctness, that problem was on your side.

Second, not all of them English speaking or kind that bother with saying anything. TO be honest, personally (emphasis, personallY) I don't know anyone who doesn't despise new loot system when playing online, and that probably about a hundred of people in two communities. It's not designed for it.

Loot is also source of money, because everything else  is meager at sell cost.Stone tools cannot be sold of course. Even buried supplies quest rn. is waste of time until you get GS about 5 (that means, somehow one should kill about hundred of zeds if game wasn't modified).WIth 4k map that got 8 traders and 50-100 active players (not on same time, but coming at different time), it becomes sad grind of trying to get some loot from POI full of green glowing zombies as player of level one. WHich not impossible, and in a way is thrilling. Like running away from store after shoplifting while thick green cops are on your tail.  Now one cannot get loot too.

I agree that getting tier 3 at lvl. 1 is game breaking but again, have to resort to that by begging other players. Or to get food. Because they all own the map and map progresses with them. Imho, skill level should affect tier available, not GS. I.e. you can't recognize a particular pile of scrap you see as a partially disassembled assault rifle if you don't know what an assault rifle looks like.

Because  there comes another stupidity.. I prowl for hours with 6 blunderbusses and bow to sneak-attack and opportunity kill  zombies one by one, until I reach 200-300 kill-count. It's not Z survival, it's a Hitman game now. A green biker (and occasional normal one) may end me in two hits, no running possible, etc. Now I can get some weapon parts and put points into skill for parts I've found. Maybe. One of my toons have zero skills at all in combat, just engineering (but not into turrets, they are broken)/bartering/looting, and bathes in violet gear only because he got 1 death and 4k kills. Boring, tedious,  constantly in red by food because food is drained  on low levels faster than fuel from 4x4 tank and loot doesn't contain food until ~GS 10-20.

It is the responsibility of the server owner to mod the game for 50-100 active players. The vanilla game is setup for up to 8 players, persistent servers with more players need to adjust and balance a lot of stuff to make it right. As you said, the game is not designed for this, and I don't mean the loot system only, the whole game is not.

Naturally that is easy to say and hard to do while the game is still changing so much. But you have problems that would not occur in a real vanilla game (like having to cope with greenies at level 1).

Yes, the new loot system is not good for servers where a level 1 player needs end-game weapons on day 1 to survive. Apply to your server owner to fix this. Or play on a server with a previous alpha running.

 

[warmer]

ya know what would make the looting more "interesting" would be if the lucky looter skill was more extreme, but swung your results negative and positive.

Example

x = random number between -50/+50

lvl 10 player has a loot roll of 100 +x

lvl 10 + lvl 3 lucky looter roll is 100 +x(3)

Where as lvl 10 with potential is 50/150

lvl 10 + lvl 3 lucky looter potential is -50/+250

anything <0 = no loot

It would make the good rolls make a bigger difference than it does now. Making it once again possible to find a shotgun on day 1 perhaps?

 

[Laz Man]

ya know what would make the looting more "interesting" would be if the lucky looter skill was more extreme, but swung your results negative and positive.

Example

x = random number between -50/+50

lvl 10 player has a loot roll of 100 +x

lvl 10 + lvl 3 lucky looter roll is 100 +x(3)

Where as lvl 10 with potential is 50/150

lvl 10 + lvl 3 lucky looter potential is -50/+250

anything <0 = no loot

It would make the good rolls make a bigger difference than it does now. Making it once again possible to find a shotgun on day 1 perhaps?

Then they would need to call it random looter or Russian roulette looter lol..

 

[Sjustus548]

It seems like the change in loot has made crafting the better option to go for again.  I'm currently using a quality 6 Stone Axe I found because I can't seem to find anything better in Iron yet and I have no points in tool crafting. I have 5 points in spears though so I've crafted a quality 5 Steel Spear that is far better than anything I'm able to loot currently.  Overall I'm not really minding the change.  It has been nice not to have find good tools and items on day one though.  Last map I started in A18 I found a steel pick in the first loot I opened and it just went downhill from there lol.

 

[Tehnomaag]

We played one map now with the a19 loot system at 30% loot quantity. Appears to be a bit better for progression than it was back in 18.4 - as getting a good gun early on in the loot (especially in combination with the old version of lucky looter) kind of trivialized the progression. 

Sure there are some edge cases where the new system screws you over. For example, we play with loot respawn off - so if you loot all the locations where crucible can come early you can be a bit screwed over late-game. However, as we had few traders on map we just used them to reset the mission POI's and ended up with a crucible that way. 

 

[The_Great_Sephiroth]

I admit to not reading the entire thread, so forgive me if my sentiment is repeated before my post, but my experience is great in A19 so far. Higher framerate, better graphics (did you guys seriously turn on ray-tracing on the MP5? It looks like RTX is active on that model!), and while the loot is bland, I have had a freaking Desert Eagle (Desert Vulture, but tell that to the weapon on my hip) on day three, some new sniper rifle, and some old favorites like the bolt-action rifle. I got military gear without too much fuss and am doing overkill by the first bloodmoon. I also found a new electronics store which got me electric fence blueprints among other things. I am quite happy with the reward to risk ratio. My only issue is always being hot no matter what I wear while in the desert.

Well, I'd still like to see the zombies get down to Thriller, but that would probably lead to a lawsuit...

 

[Boidster]

My only issue is always being hot no matter what I wear while in the desert.

There are a couple of modlets that will fix the Yucca Smoothie so it actually keeps you cool. Might help you in the desert.