PC The New Gamestage Design and Replayability

[Ripperos]

Love the game, but a little bit worried about the game-stage introduced; it has kind of ruined the replayability of the game for me and my friends I will try to explain.

There used to be more randomness in the game, which made each new game very different from the last game; which made the replayability of the game really high (We have probably started more than 100 new games together). There were several mechanics that made each game unique:

- Loot Dependencies: Some things could not be built if you did not find the right thing (component or recipes). While this was frustrating for some, it was also a mechanic that made the progress of the game very varied. This caused games to develop very different, and it forced you on some serious loot runs, where you could spend weeks looking for that specific components, and building forward camps, closer to cities - just to be able to sleep close to large loot areas. I get that this might be very frustrating for some people, but for us it provided interesting challenges, and boy there were some massive high-fives when someone actually found that component unlocking some awesome progress! 

- Random loot drops: The new game stage development, where loot drops is determined by game development turned looting into a grind for us. There is really nothing fun in looting, because you keep finding very much the same thing, and it is almost never better than what you can craft anyway. Again, the magic of finding a really high-level good thing is gone; and I even stopped doing looting in close easy access perimeters to the base - because it is simply better to wait until later; you know you are not going to find anything proper until the next game stage anyway. (Gunsafes etc, is pretty useless to open early as an example, compared to the time it takes to open them with simple tools)

- Mining: We just to have to build large mining labyrinths, just to find the right ore; and now it is simply too easy. Again, it has removed one of the game dependencies, so now you can always get what you want when you need it, causing each game to play out the same. (And yes it was grindy!!)

It does seem like the game it getting streamlined into "the right way to play it", and I get that it can be important from a story telling perspective; but it really has removed a lot of the replayability. We used to have highly diverged characters where we needed to swap skill-books between ourselves; some needed to focus on specific areas of the character development - and handing over sweet loot to each other, because another character could make use of that high-level item you found. This almost never happens anymore. Our charcters are much more similar, our games play out the same way, with the same progression both in the game and on character level. Any diversity is more of "taste" and habit, rather a practical need for the team. 

Now, I get that you devs are just in the early stages of the rebuild of the game stages; but I really wanted to highlight this as a real concern for us who like to start new games. We used to start a couple of new games each month - not it is one every 3 months, basically just trying out the new versions. And it is not because we don't like the game, we love it; but it has become very stale - and very "been there done that". New missions and POI are of course good, but for us it does not work if it is at the expense of the core gameplay experience, sadly

So are there any thoughts about maybe having some option, for "override game-stage loot drop" at least? (I understand that the skill dependencies and build progress might be harder to randomize as it is a deeper mechanic). Also, it would be fun to hear how the rest of you fans feel about this new gamestage progression system -hit or miss? Are we just whiny or do you feel the same?!

Thanks for a great game and many fantastic hours in it

 

[Jost Amman]

There used to be more randomness in the game, which made each new game very different from the last game; which made the replayability of the game really high (We have probably started more than 100 new games together)

I'm not sure I understand... are you talking about the game here?  :heh:

 

[Khalagar]

Love the game, but a little bit worried about the game-stage introduced; it has kind of ruined the replayability of the game for me and my friends I will try to explain.

The loot hasn't really changed all that much for the points you raised. You still have to explore to get loot, and it's still random, it's just more gated than it was. It already was gated to where you weren't very likely to find a t6 steel chest piece day 1. Now they just made it take longer to get it, which IMO is a much better system because it makes your loot and crafted gear WAY more impactful.

You don't just skip past the entire loot pool and never use 90% of the gear. In A18 there was basically no real reason to use stone or iron anything, because you'd find a steel pick and just throw out all your other stuff that was now garbage. Now you go out and look for gear that's better than your current stuff, while breaking through the loot tier level.

More grindy, yes a bit. But it adds way more replay value where you aren't "done" with the game by day 14-18. I personally feel like the "grind" is in a very good place too, because you use different gear now throughout each stage. You don't find a lucky steel pick day 1 and then use it for the rest of the game and auto scrap every iron pick you see.

and it is almost never better than what you can craft anyway

Ehhhh, crafting is in a meh spot over all at the moment. Crafting *has* to be better than just looting, because otherwise crafting characters would be even more useless. Crafting characters are in a pretty meh spot though because of blue prints and non-craftable parts. There really isn't a lot of reason to craft in A19, as the optimal min max approach is to just do nothing but missions and spec into the mission reward perk and get / buy everything good. Doing that, you'll have WAY better gear than anything you can craft pretty fast.

Crafting is really only strong for the first few days when you can get a forge + iron tools out faster than people can find them, but it falls off a cliff really fast after the first week

- Mining: We just to have to build large mining labyrinths, just to find the right ore; and now it is simply too easy. Again, it has removed one of the game dependencies, so now you can always get what you want when you need it, causing each game to play out the same. (And yes it was grindy!!)

The ease of finding resources is just QoL stuff, but mining as a whole is also in a really bad spot similar to crafting. There's essentially zero reason to mine in A19 besides doing a shale run one time per playthrough to get tens of thousands of gas, which is basically a lifetime supply.  Every other resource is either not useful because crafting is meh, or is gotten far easier elsewhere. Cobblestone and cement are now in absurd abundance through the construction site bags, and bullets are so numerous you don't need to craft them. Mining as a whole is really only for niche situations like getting iron for junk turrets, which even as the resident Junk Turret Enthusiast™, I'll say is pretty pointless because Junk Sledge is just better than Junk Turrets most of the time. They drain iron too fast for their damage output  to really bother with besides for gigantic hordes

As someone who spent the last like 10 alphas being a hardcore mining / crafting focused character, both are kind of bad compared to run and gun looting in A19 and even I barely bother. Mining is high effort extremely low reward for the most part, the stamina drain is just too absurd to justify the effort compared to just buying / finding / getting rewarded bullets. You need rock candy + a stack of miners coffee which is extremely rare for some reason + an entire night spent on the endeavor to really get much out of mining. Anymore, I just do quests at night too instead of mining or crafting, as basically everything runs all the time anyway on high game stages so it doesn't matter if you clear at night instead of during the day

I think mining needs a pretty hard bit of elbow grease and tender love and care to make it more worthwhile, but the resource node system is a great change imo.

 

[meganoth]

Love the game, but a little bit worried about the game-stage introduced; it has kind of ruined the replayability of the game for me and my friends I will try to explain.

There used to be more randomness in the game, which made each new game very different from the last game; which made the replayability of the game really high (We have probably started more than 100 new games together). There were several mechanics that made each game unique:
 

There are two effects in play. The game changes with each alpha and it very well could impact replayability in a negative way. But the other effect is on you personally that you have seen everything, done everything and know what will happen and what you probably will find after a hundred replays. Look at other games you have played and you will see that at some point the magic was gone and you felt you didn't want to play it anymore.

The big problem is to find out which part of your experience now is because of which effect. And objectively there is no way. The only halfway objective way is for the developer to get that information from new players and see if on average they loose interest faster.

I have the same impression of sameness of each playthrough by the way. And at least with the mining I fully concur, it is just too easy to find huge mixed ore veins and (like Khalgar said) you also get too much of the stuff while looting. There is some need for balancing there.

 

[Ripperos]

"There are two effects in play. The game changes with each alpha and it very well could impact replayability in a negative way. But the other effect is on you personally that you have seen everything, done everything and know what will happen and what you probably will find after a hundred replays. Look at other games you have played and you will see that at some point the magic was gone and you felt you didn't want to play it anymore.

The big problem is to find out which part of your experience now is because of which effect. And objectively there is no way. The only halfway objective way is for the developer to get that information from new players and see if on average they loose interest faster.

I have the same impression of sameness of each playthrough by the way. And at least with the mining I fully concur, it is just too easy to find huge mixed ore veins and (like Khalgar said) you also get too much of the stuff while looting. There is some need for balancing here."

- Yeah that is a good point, I guess the difference for me is that the new games after the first 50 still played out differently - because there was less "gating" (Thanks Nomad for pointing out the difference  ). Because the progress was less funneled, and you could skip some parts due to finding something OP, or spend loads of time without finding that particular piece of tool to unlock things the next step - it just created more varied game experiences for me. It is less about the "find a particular Item I have never had before", and more about the dynamic of how you spend your time in the game I guess , and how the game developed. 

Thanks for the input!

 

[Ripperos]

The loot hasn't really changed all that much for the points you raised. You still have to explore to get loot, and it's still random, it's just more gated than it was. It already was gated to where you weren't very likely to find a t6 steel chest piece day 1. Now they just made it take longer to get it, which IMO is a much better system because it makes your loot and crafted gear WAY more impactful.

You don't just skip past the entire loot pool and never use 90% of the gear. In A18 there was basically no real reason to use stone or iron anything, because you'd find a steel pick and just throw out all your other stuff that was now garbage. Now you go out and look for gear that's better than your current stuff, while breaking through the loot tier level.

More grindy, yes a bit. But it adds way more replay value where you aren't "done" with the game by day 14-18. I personally feel like the "grind" is in a very good place too, because you use different gear now throughout each stage. You don't find a lucky steel pick day 1 and then use it for the rest of the game and auto scrap every iron pick you see.

- Yeah you are right there probably is alot more stuff today, it was the gating I was referring too; thanks for clarifying  I actually preferred the situation, where you could be lucky and skip a certain part of the loot pool, in some games, and be very dependent on them in the next (based on what you found). I guess this is what I tried to describe of the randomness. I started a new game today again, and running around with the blunderbuss is ok and all, but it just feel very forced, because you know that you have to do it, because the Shotgun is gated. I am totally onboard with having, less chance of high level drops based game-stages; but it feel very rigid right now.

And yeah - being done with the game after 14 days surely happened, but sometimes you were stuck until day 35, without having your minibikes  

Ehhhh, crafting is in a meh spot over all at the moment. Crafting *has* to be better than just looting, because otherwise crafting characters would be even more useless. Crafting characters are in a pretty meh spot though because of blue prints and non-craftable parts. There really isn't a lot of reason to craft in A19, as the optimal min max approach is to just do nothing but missions and spec into the mission reward perk and get / buy everything good. Doing that, you'll have WAY better gear than anything you can craft pretty fast.

Crafting is really only strong for the first few days when you can get a forge + iron tools out faster than people can find them, but it falls off a cliff really fast after the first week

All true - I liked the idea of utilizing crafting more on the core aspects - the Forge materials, and the Food maybe. For me it was totally cool that item specific crafting was locked by recipes or fx forge tools that were hard. It was always a good reason for going on looting runs. We still had a miner, who built up on the mining skills, and we gave him all the tool crafting recipes, so he could craft high level tools for us (And me handling all the farming and cooking - and then we had a "looter" basically). Now we still focus on different areas of character builds, but it does feel much less important in order to have; and we all go more generic. I do like the "special skill unlocks" with the  book system though; nice they brought part of that back; It does give a little bit of reason to loot even though it is more about the bonus stuff.

And you are right that parts of the looting reasons has been replaced by doing missions.

The ease of finding resources is just QoL stuff, but mining as a whole is also in a really bad spot similar to crafting. There's essentially zero reason to mine in A19 besides doing a shale run one time per playthrough to get tens of thousands of gas, which is basically a lifetime supply.  Every other resource is either not useful because crafting is meh, or is gotten far easier elsewhere. Cobblestone and cement are now in absurd abundance through the construction site bags, and bullets are so numerous you don't need to craft them. Mining as a whole is really only for niche situations like getting iron for junk turrets, which even as the resident Junk Turret Enthusiast™, I'll say is pretty pointless because Junk Sledge is just better than Junk Turrets most of the time. They drain iron too fast for their damage output  to really bother with besides for gigantic hordes

As someone who spent the last like 10 alphas being a hardcore mining / crafting focused character, both are kind of bad compared to run and gun looting in A19 and even I barely bother. Mining is high effort extremely low reward for the most part, the stamina drain is just too absurd to justify the effort compared to just buying / finding / getting rewarded bullets. You need rock candy + a stack of miners coffee which is extremely rare for some reason + an entire night spent on the endeavor to really get much out of mining. Anymore, I just do quests at night too instead of mining or crafting, as basically everything runs all the time anyway on high game stages so it doesn't matter if you clear at night instead of during the day

I think mining needs a pretty hard bit of elbow grease and tender love and care to make it more worthwhile, but the resource node system is a great change imo.

Yeah, I think you started a few alphas before me then,  I think I jumped on at 14 or so.  I haven't really tried just focusing on missions, I think I will try it - thanks for the input!
 

 

[Roland]

I think that the perk system is what mainly ruined the experience of survival by making do with what’ve got. Before the perk system, everything was dependent upon random books. 
 

These days, the critical things are governed by perks that are always the same and can always be purchased simply by playing the game and earning points. Books are still random but they govern only extra nice-to-have abilities and items. 
 

Forge Ahead is the great example given by both those who loved survival by adapting and making do and those who hated it. 
 

You can still do without but it is by your choice of perks you decide to forego rather than by random factors out of player control. And I get why that is less interesting— and less frustrating. 

 

[Blake_]

I think that the perk system is what mainly ruined the experience of survival by making do with what’ve got. Before the perk system, everything was dependent upon random books. 
 

These days, the critical things are governed by perks that are always the same and can always be purchased simply by playing the game and earning points. Books are still random but they govern only extra nice-to-have abilities and items. 
 

Forge Ahead is the great example given by both those who loved survival by adapting and making do and those who hated it. 
 

You can still do without but it is by your choice of perks you decide to forego rather than by random factors out of player control. And I get why that is less interesting— and less frustrating. 

That's why we shouldn't have books that unlock weapons, like steel club and m60 one. Choices are nice, but make them schematics like everything else. I thought schematics where the intended "choice", not the "nice bonus " books. What a waste of cool little bonuses. That's what she said.

 

[MechanicalLens]

I think that the perk system is what mainly ruined the experience of survival by making do with what’ve got. Before the perk system, everything was dependent upon random books. 
 

These days, the critical things are governed by perks that are always the same and can always be purchased simply by playing the game and earning points. Books are still random but they govern only extra nice-to-have abilities and items. 
 

Forge Ahead is the great example given by both those who loved survival by adapting and making do and those who hated it. 
 

You can still do without but it is by your choice of perks you decide to forego rather than by random factors out of player control. And I get why that is less interesting— and less frustrating. 

@Roland Indeed, loot-based progression has always been a questionable feature. The Forge Ahead Book of old, the Minibike book as well. The experience of finally coming across that coveted book or schematic that has held you down for so long (by not finding it) cannot be replicated, but at the same time, imagine going 80 days without a forge.

The survival element has waned, yes. Arcade-like features are now at the core of the experience, but at the end of the day, perhaps we are all just viewing the game through rose tinted glasses. This is TFP's vision and this is their game afterall.

My advice to anyone trapped in any kind of linear experience would be to try something different; set stipulations for yourself. Examples include: No visiting trader compounds. Restricting yourself from curing infection by banning yourself from consuming honey. Not specing into T2 of Advanced Engineering until you've found both the cement mixer and workbench recipes out in the wild. (<-------It took me 20 days to find a working workbench, and a following 10 days further to loot the schematic to craft one. It was difficult, but it felt liberating. Instead of acquiring the bicycle, for instance, within the first few in-game days like normal, I had to wait up until the 3rd horde to finally craft one.) Even small roleplay based decisions can help shake things up in a minor way, such as always looting cars from the trunk and wrenching them from the front end, looting containers when pressed up against them instead of three meters away, slowing your bike to a standstill before hopping off, etc.) At the very least, throw a spanner into your usual building experience (assuming you build bases from scratch) and choose a POI to take over. Not a box-shaped building, but one of an interesting shape; it would require a lot of work, but that certain level of creativity can only come from fortifying a pre-existing structure and altering it to your needs.

That's why we shouldn't have books that unlock weapons, like steel club and m60 one. Choices are nice, but make them schematics like everything else. I thought schematics where the intended "choice", not the "nice bonus " books. What a waste of cool little bonuses. That's what she said.

I've brought this up numerous times before. Why lock the M60 schematic behind a high gamestage when you can loot a trash on day 1 and find the book to craft the exact same weapon? *Shrug*

 

[Blake_]

I've brought this up numerous times before. Why lock the M60 schematic behind a high gamestage when you can loot a trash on day 1 and find the book to craft the exact same weapon? *Shrug*

Honestly, having schematics that do That thing exactly minus the perk bonuses was the original intention of the choice. If you don't want the player to make a high end weapon too soon then reduce the chance for that particular schematic. Yet wasting a possible cool bonus/thing in a couple of books is not only weird (and the exact same gameplay-wise than said schematic) , but counterintuitive to the very same dev statement when the change was made:

Devs: Yo, you can unlock any recipe by reading a schematic by pure chance OR you might want to invest in the perk. We wanted to give the choicez and possibilities and chancez and gameplayz and cool lootingz to players like that.

Also Devs: Yo dawg it is we again, sorry about that, you can unlock steel clubs and M60 but NO SCHEMATICS FOR YOU. Instead we filled a couple of books that teach the recipe for those in order to add weird uneeded complexity and we wasted 2 possible book bonuses in the meantime . Sorry for the inconvenience. In retrospect that was excellent waffle thinking. Squishy, bland and sweet.

Players: 

Spoiler

 

[MechanicalLens]

Honestly, having schematics that do That thing exactly minus the perk bonuses was the original intention of the choice. If you don't want the player to make a high end weapon too soon then reduce the chance for that particular schematic. Yet wasting a possible cool bonus/thing in a couple of books is not only weird (and the exact same gameplay-wise than said schematic) , but counterintuitive to the very same dev statement when the change was made:

Devs: Yo, you can unlock any recipe by reading a schematic by pure chance OR you might want to invest in the perk. We wanted to give the choicez and possibilities and chancez and gameplayz and cool lootingz to players like that.

Also Devs: Yo dawg it is we again, sorry about that, you can unlock steel clubs and M60 but NO SCHEMATICS FOR YOU. Instead we filled a couple of books that teach the recipe for those in order to add weird uneeded complexity and we wasted 2 possible book bonuses in the meantime . Sorry for the inconvenience. In retrospect that was excellent waffle thinking. Squishy, bland and sweet.

Players: 

Spoiler

View attachment 19249

Not to mention:

Also Devs: No T4 weapons can be unlocked until later in the game. Sorry, no exceptions. Oh, except for the M60. You can craft that anytime because you can find the book within the first 10 seconds of starting in your world.  Oh but the schematic for that firearm is still locked behind a high gamestage because no exceptions remember?

That's an oversight if I ever saw one.

 

[Archael]

About mining - reducing loot can rise mining importance.
For the game stages - perhaps % chance of getting loot from higher gamestage would be a nice thing, but % cant be too high, forcing all for constant scavenging.

 

[Diragor]

I think that the perk system is what mainly ruined the experience of survival by making do with what’ve got. Before the perk system, everything was dependent upon random books. 
 

These days, the critical things are governed by perks that are always the same and can always be purchased simply by playing the game and earning points. Books are still random but they govern only extra nice-to-have abilities and items. 
 

Forge Ahead is the great example given by both those who loved survival by adapting and making do and those who hated it. 
 

You can still do without but it is by your choice of perks you decide to forego rather than by random factors out of player control. And I get why that is less interesting— and less frustrating. 

Well I think there is a way to get a mix of the "old" and the "new" perk system. Instead of just Level up and getting skillpoint which you can use however you want you first need to earn exp in a certain perk you wish to have. So when you want to upgrade miner 69'er or motherload you need to do some mining

The perks should need a specific amount of exp and you get exp up when you do it. You should get the same amount of exp you get from mining anyway. The same works for weapon perks. Kill enemies with a specific weapon and it gets exp. The main perks (strenght, agility, etc.) should be free to upgrade.

I think it's not too much work programming that and it would make both sides happy

Edit: This would also add more "realism" cause you first need to do some cooking before being able to upgrade the next cooking perk. So it feels more like you learned how to cook from actually cooing instead of just a skillpoint and you magically know how to do it.

 

[Roland]

Well I think there is a way to get a mix of the "old" and the "new" perk system. Instead of just Level up and getting skillpoint which you can use however you want you first need to earn exp in a certain perk you wish to have. So when you want to upgrade miner 69'er or motherload you need to do some mining

The perks should need a specific amount of exp and you get exp up when you do it. You should get the same amount of exp you get from mining anyway. The same works for weapon perks. Kill enemies with a specific weapon and it gets exp. The main perks (strenght, agility, etc.) should be free to upgrade.

I think it's not too much work programming that and it would make both sides happy

Edit: This would also add more "realism" cause you first need to do some cooking before being able to upgrade the next cooking perk. So it feels more like you learned how to cook from actually cooing instead of just a skillpoint and you magically know how to do it.

Sorry but I’m all burned out on LBD convos.

I’ll just say that the design you mention would not solve the problem of wanting more unpredictability. It would simply change how the perks were achieved. It would still be deterministic.

 

[Archael]

Well I think there is a way to get a mix of the "old" and the "new" perk system. Instead of just Level up and getting skillpoint which you can use however you want you first need to earn exp in a certain perk you wish to have. So when you want to upgrade miner 69'er or motherload you need to do some mining

The perks should need a specific amount of exp and you get exp up when you do it. You should get the same amount of exp you get from mining anyway. The same works for weapon perks. Kill enemies with a specific weapon and it gets exp. The main perks (strenght, agility, etc.) should be free to upgrade.

I think it's not too much work programming that and it would make both sides happy

Edit: This would also add more "realism" cause you first need to do some cooking before being able to upgrade the next cooking perk. So it feels more like you learned how to cook from actually cooing instead of just a skillpoint and you magically know how to do it.

I think that there should be two types of XP - skill XP and character XP.
While doing any activity, player gets character XP AND XP for skill that was used.
specific XP rises that skill effectivity, and unlock skill perks.
Character XP rises character level, and provides skillpoint that can be spend to rise attributes, or specific skillperks (remember that perks can be unlocked via skill XP).

 

[Diragor]

I think that there should be two types of XP - skill XP and character XP.
While doing any activity, player gets character XP AND XP for skill that was used.
specific XP rises that skill effectivity, and unlock skill perks.
Character XP rises character level, and provides skillpoint that can be spend to rise attributes, or specific skillperks (remember that perks can be unlocked via skill XP).

The old system was a problem cause we could abuse it aka get stones and wood and craft hundreds of stone axes So this problem would still appear...I think that our ideas wouldn't be implemented thanks to this abuse.

Sorry but I’m all burned out on LBD convos.

I’ll just say that the design you mention would not solve the problem of wanting more unpredictability. It would simply change how the perks were achieved. It would still be deterministic.

What If you get rid of the "Perks allowes you to craft better things" system and instead everything can only be achieved with recepies. This WOULD add unpredictability and I would love it. The only thing I'm not sure about is if you still need the perks to be high enough to read the recepies you just found or does the crafting perks only give advantages for the said weapon/workbench/chemstation/forge/etc.

And the loved problem with the gamestage loot system. instead of Ban items at a lower gamestade you only need it to be lower to be found. This wouldn't push you out of early game too fast and no one could say it feels to generic to always find the same stuff cause your level is too low (not that I would say it I think the gs locked loot is fine but still wanted to try give you a similar idea).

 

[Roland]

Sounds like it could be an interesting mod. Switching from perks to recipes would be a nostalgic change back pre-A14. 

 

[Archael]

The old system was a problem cause we could abuse it aka get stones and wood and craft hundreds of stone axes So this problem would still appear...I think that our ideas wouldn't be implemented thanks to this abuse.

Not really... mostly because You have no crafting skill anymore. To craft better tools You have to use them, not craft lot of them.

 

[Diragor]

Not really... mostly because You have no crafting skill anymore. To craft better tools You have to use them, not craft lot of them.

Well I remembered it wrong thanks for that but I do remember it was abuseable in some way cause I remember on Ps4 I always did it

 

[meganoth]

I don't see the problem, Roland: Just don't perk into cooking and the few INT perks that give you the majority of your recipes and you have 80% of what you want. Only tier2 weapons and tier2 tools would still be confered by perk because you usually need the perk bonuses as well to progress in combat or mining efficiency. And you could also restrict yourself to only buy the first point of Living of the Land after you have found both the seed recipes for chrysanthemum and goldenrod.