PC Thoughts On Crafting Magazines?

SoBasically said:
Hey there fellow survivors! I was recently thinking about the discourse that erupted in this community when crafting skill magazines were first introduced to the game. Personally, I've always thought it was a great idea and super healthy for the game.

If you were someone who hated the magazines on release, how do you feel about it now? Do you still dislike the mechanic or have you come to like it?
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I disliked the magazines when they were introduced. I'm used to them now, but I still can't say I like the mechanic. 

 
Reth said:
I disliked the magazines when they were introduced. I'm used to them now, but I still can't say I like the mechanic. 
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I concur. I've adapted and moved on, but I wouldn't be sad if they replaced them with some other mechanic. They just feel so gamey.

 
Finally got into reading on the morning of D14, started looking like I would be able to make a proper nerd outfit with some care. Here's the full stash (I had read 4 forge books for the forge). With the looted gear to compare to:

Screenshot from 2024-08-18 01-37-13.png

Got myself a Q4 Machete out of the deal; got the books for a 5er, but not 6, so I saved some steel. Other than that, one book short of an SMG, one book short of a crossbow (with some explosive bolts in a box waiting). And not nearly enough steel for a magnum (got a crucible for a few days now, haven't bothered farming for iron or clay), nor enough sewing kits / armor parts for any more armors.

Seems the D14 horde will be an electric fence and a purple pistol.

I think "send help" still applies.

 
theNobody14161 said:
I have several thoughts on this, I will preface them with that I've played 7 dtd sinc a14, with about 1,400 hrs in the game, and I haven't played A22 much, but I have played a fair amount in a21-

I do like the crafting mags for things like 6 quality tools and weapons, because it prevents wasting skill points just to craft a group of items.  It also prevents there being like one item that only one possible magazine can teach the player how to build being annoyingly elusive.  I'd rather need alot of a common lootable item to learn how to craft, say herbal antibiotics than rely on a chance of the quite rare schematic popping up.  For the case of herbal antibiotics it also kind of makes sense- read alot of magazines about what plants have what chemicals and what chemicals help fight infections and you can kind of figure out what plants can fight infections.  That being said, for certain things it is game breaking and forces a narrow scope of gameplay, particularly-

crafting seeds and cooking low tier food items- when players can't feed themselves and levelling up does NOTHING to change this, death is just completely irrelevant.  Oh, I lose experience? experience and levelling up is worth nothing if it doesn't get me closer to being able to survive sustainably.  Irrelevant deaths just means instead of players setting up bases strategically, building or learning to fight, gameplay is just running around with a bedroll, looting, dying (sometimes intentionally) to progress faster until food and water is produced sustainably.  This is a bit less the case in single player, where looting food can be sustainable with respawnable loot, but 4 or 8 players each eating a bear's worth of food every day will deplete lootable food sources fast enough that planned death expedites advancement, since all players must loot.  Forcing all players to be looters can also be incredibly monotonous; base builders or miners may not like looting any more than looters would mining or base building.  This is inferior to the old system, death started out being minorly relevant and became more and more relevant as players levelled up. 

workstations- bad luck should not bottleneck in a survival game; Running around with a tier 6 machine gun for ranged attack and a wooden club for melee because that is what you find (if you don't find an army of forge ahead's to build your own stuff) is fine for a bit, but the whole point of a crafting game is to have choice in what you build and do.   Feels more like being a clown than a survivalist.

Some things are also immersion-breaking; crafting potato seeds from potatoes is literally learning to put potatoes in the ground- teenagers who leave a potato in the fridge too long literally discover this before a 7 days to die character would.  Something humanity discovered thousands of years before written language shouldn't be on par with trucks or gyrocopters.

In a nutshell- Reading a bunch of mags to craft advanced level things like M60s or foods with special buffs is fine, but basic stuff that fundamentally shifts play (workstations, the general ability to produce drinkable water and foods that you only need one stack for 2 to 4 days of food like bacon and eggs or vegetable stew) is best not left to RNG.  I've played blood moons where my best weapon was a stone spear (on this particular run, RNG made it so I did not have a forge to make any metal bullets and looted bullets run out very quickly in blood moons.  never found metal weapons.  Found metal tools galore though) defending a cement POI that I had fortified with brick.  On day 80.  The first blood moon doing that on day 40 was a trip.  Doing that same exact thing for the next five blood moons because forges were left to RNG was absurd.

Quests do lessen the randomness of mags quite a bit, but that is only if you find a trader who sells the mags you want.  Doing quests can be a fun aspect of the game, but doing quest after quest just to buy mags can be a bit monotonous even if the trader does offer the mags you want.

And then there are things like cement mixers- we don't necessarily want players building cement castles on day 3, at least not without significant sacrifice in all other facets of gameplay.  Maybe best to make tying building the cement mixers themselves to levelling (that way high-level players who just haven't had the luck can still produce cement) but perhaps the ability to accrue lots of rock to advanced tools that require lots of magazines is probably the best route to go there.  Farming used to be kind of like this (before mags were needed for seeds); if a low-level player wants to build a farm off the bat, they can but it takes all their time to gather the resources so their progress in other areas is significantly delayed, wheras in later game when you can gun down zombie dogs for rotten flesh and mine soil and nitrite with power tools/ metal tools it is much faster to set the farm up then, and levelling lowers the resource cost.
  
I think others on this thread have mentioned that is does not pace with levelling- Not that it is really possible for RNG to line up with steady progress but that seems very much the case in my experience (my levelling is ALWAYS miles ahead of my crafting, chests full of things that are useless because nothing can be crafted from them, points to help weapons utterly pointless because the weapon itself has not been found and cannot be crafted yet), even on games where I intentionally die which delays levelling up.
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Well written my friend. I wouldn`t be able to put this better myself. I only hope that You might find some time to comment on the forum more often.

 
SoBasically said:
Hey there fellow survivors! I was recently thinking about the discourse that erupted in this community when crafting skill magazines were first introduced to the game. Personally, I've always thought it was a great idea and super healthy for the game.

If you were someone who hated the magazines on release, how do you feel about it now? Do you still dislike the mechanic or have you come to like it?
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If you don't mind using mods, I have a modlet that lets you craft all the books and magazines.

https://community.7daystodie.com/topic/26048-a21-modlets-craft-water-from-snow-or-buckets-fast-plant-growth-less-wasteland-rubble-and-more-updated-for-10/

 
When 7 days to die first reworked magazines into skills, it was cool. Now, I feel like anytime I want to make any progress at all, I have to search 100 buildings to find the magazines I need to upgrade my crafting skills. I'm currently playing in a session with 4 of my friends and we have divided tasks amongst ourselves. Questing/Looting, Workstations/Electronics, Building/Cooking, and one guy who just likes to shoot stuff. Those of us who aren't out looting 24/7 are doomed to wait until someone finds the magazines we need to upgrade our tools. I don't see why the game has been reduced to force the player to interact with the questing system for the best rewards. I like to work around the base but I have to use terrible stone tools that aren't even leveled up because of the magazines needed to increase your crafting skills. It would feel much better if I could actually make decent tools for the job I'm trying to do by gaining the skills from performing the task.

 
That would be learning by doing but it doesn't come back. It used to be part of the game and was replaced by the skill tree and later in parts by the magazines.

I was never a fan of the magazines. I've gotten used to them and know how to collect the magazines I need in a reasonable amount of time. I could min/max the whole thing but I don't want to go that far.

Back before A21 when the system was announced, there were concerns about multiplayer and balancing. In 1.0 the balancing was changed so that you can find more magazines even without having invested points in the skills, but that brings along other problems. You can speed things up a bit by shelving magazines and wait until you have a Q6 nerd outfit.

 
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I just started a test run of a "dwarven miner" -playthrough, so I'm highly biased.. thirsty, and biased. But yes please, gief progression without paper boy runs .. :) Doesn't have to be the only option, keep dropping mags as well, it's probably "better" for some of the skills anyway.

 
Certainly not perfect but IMHO, the best thing about "magazines" was the disassociation from perk levels that gated crafting abilities.    

Realistically, people learn in various ways, means and stages.  Some leaning techniques can be more effective for specific skills/disciplines but a mix is often the best approach.

The underlying assumption in the OP that learning is a simple single path; and that learning from a "magazine" is inferior to "repetition" is demonstrably false.

Certainly, a blended system would be more "realistic" and intuitive with a series of repetition only getting a players so far, then magazines are required (or vice versa).  Rinse, repeat...

 
I remember Joel saying how much fun he was having looting for magazines in the streams before 21. I find it tedious and boring. Before there was the excitement of "will I find a rare gyro schematic?". Now it's, "Oh, great, a vehicle magazine. ONLY 99 more to go." They really are turning this into a looter/shooter on rails.

 
I love the magazine system.   It feels like I get a good progression.  Also in a21 when I was playing with a group we all progressed faster in our chosen skills because we would bring back everyone else's mags to them.

 
Much as I am not a fan of the magazines, I hated learn by spamming. This game had probably one of the worst implementations of LBD I've ever had to suffer through.

They used to like to throw the baby out with the bathwater around here. I think they've finally gotten over it so what you see is what you get.

It will at least get some more polish probably.

I wouldn't mind them so much, but they have taken over the game. Traders and mailboxes. That's what they should call this game 😛

 
Ideally you should all be looting - not just one person. It's certainly meant to be a fun part of the game -- although I realise some people simply don't enjoy that aspect. I especially like the bigger, Tier 5/6 infestations and it's just guns blazing. Whoever we need to get certain magazines the most, we let them open all the relevant book loots. We did play with one guy who auto-opened all the book loots, despite everything we agreed, and we eventually kicked him from the game.

If your friends get magazine reward bundle, considering they're out questing all the books in the POI, they could give them - unopened - to the guys staying in the base and when opened the magazines inside should reflect their particular skills.

Not 100% sure if it still works, as I don't like to do it, but if you have a mission for one of the buildings that you know has a lot of book cases in it ... you can save and quit before you finish the mission, and then when you come back in you can restart the mission - resetting the poi - and go to the library again. Books, books, books.

 
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