From what I have read many people seem dissatisfied with how tier 5 POIs are setup and how the quests with them are integrated. Apologies if this has been discussed more in depth elsewhere - I did a search and only found older topics of general dissatisfaction. Speaking for myself, I feel that the time and efficiency to loot ratio is off. The hardened chests in tier 5 POI's offer some valuable goodies in them to be sure, however, much of the POI inevitably gets left out due to constraints with your inventory management. Combine inventory constraints with the sheer size of tier 5 POIs and it's difficult to get back to your vehicle to drop items off to make the most of your trip like you may be able to do in a smaller tier 3 or tier 4 POI.
In order to make tier 5 POIs desirable one would have to feel like the time and effort invested is worth the output. To that end there are several things that could be done to help alleviate some of the issues. For starters we would have to look at inventory management. Without having to re-do tier 5 POI's I think there are a couple ways to help offer a player more bang for their buck - granted these are just rough ideas and I am sure others can come up with better ones. One could install a mailing system within the POI that (once a quest has started) will trigger a drop-off point within the POI that will send a set amount of inventory space to the trader to be collected in a drop off chest at your convenience. Another potential solution would be a temporary backpack given by the trader that would be noticeably separate from your inventory but would allow you to carry more than usual. At the end of the day one of the issues with tier 5 POI's is how large the POI is compared to what you can reasonably carry for any given mission and how difficult it can be to drop items off in your vehicle which, under normal circumstances, would act as a separate inventory for many POI's that do not suffer from convoluted vertical scaling.
As with most POI's the design is geared toward the loot caches at the end of the POI, which sadly encourages players who have played the game and know some of the easier loot caches to simply do a smash and grab. I won't turn this into a debate on whether loot should be more equitably distributed within the POI with less reliance on loot caches, but rather want to direct the conversation to the other problem with tier 5 POI's - limited loot cache. While the larger tier 5 loot caches offer larger and often better rewards it still pales in comparison to what can be had doing a few tier 3 runs within the same timeframe. In other words if two tier 3 loot caches equal a single tier 5 loot cache but take 1/3 the effort than you are losing efficiency spent doing tier 5 buildings when for the same time investment you can do two or even three tier 3 POI's. I am not sold on the idea of simply adding more loot to the POI, but rather there needs to be a specific reason for doing end-game POI's. Something you can't get doing tier 3 or tier 4 whether it be a loot tier above purple (6), special crafting recipes for some end-game items whether it be ammo type, weapon type, vehicle modification, etc. In this way it's not just simply adding more loot (as we have covered you can't carry all that much anyway), but rather a shift in quality - and a dramatic one at that. By offering better rewards for the POI you encourage players to engage them outside of getting something you could have gotten in a good tier 3 or 4 POI.
Lastly, lets talk about the quests associated with tier 5 POI's. With how massive the POI's are there should be better marking for quests directing you towards zombies you haven't cleared yet. Unless you get to a certain threshold of zombies remaining your map won't update with locations of where the last remaining ones are located. For a tier 5 POI that can be disastrous if the zombie you need to kill is further in the POI relative to your location. Tier 5 quests could also see an increase in quest types with such things as activating relay/radio stations (complete with markers signaling as such). The tried and true kill quests that work for many other tiers fail to deliver in tier 5 and in some tier 4 if I am being honest. For this I think that POI's offering more than "x" amount of zombies (let's say 30 as an example) post the remaining zombie count up with more zombies left than in POI's that generate fewer zombies. This means that if in a tier 1 POI it requires all but 1 or 2 to be killed before it shows where the remaining zombies are located then a tier 5 should be with perhaps 8-10. In conjunction with quest dynamics difficulty the quest rewards can be hit or miss after completing a tier 5 quest. Likewise with the specific loot suggestion quests within tier 5 POI's should offer something out of the ordinary that you can't get by doing a tier 4 quest. At the very least the pool of items gained should be trimmed to provide only the best of items and not items that you received 4 days ago while doing a tier 3 quest.
With all that being said I do very much enjoy the large POI's. I think the scale and grandeur they provide elate myself and many people going through them for their first few times. So I think more tier 5 buildings would be great to see so long as some of the issues with them get worked out to make them worth the investment of time and energy when against the clock. Whether any one of these ideas sparks a fancy or whether none of them do I hope others will input their feedback on tier 5 quests as it's always possible perhaps I am just missing something and it's just me. Cheers.
UPDATE:
To make replies more streamlined I figured I would edit in some of my thoughts after reading some awesome replies by the community.
I agree that the red blips showing zombies can be immersion breaking, and if there was a better way to go about it I am all for it. If they could make the zombies rage mode instead and try and seek the player that would be fine by me as well because then you can at least hear them. As a side note I have always wanted some zombie pathing within POIs rather than static sleepers. Having zombies path in a radius and move about a small bit would be more challenging and realistic than sleepers and pop-up zombies, but I would be fine with a combination of one or more.
Also, I want to elaborate that I do enjoy the inventory management part of the game, however, my point isn't directed specifically towards that, but to the imbalance presented inherently within T5 POIs. From a balance perspective I do not think T5 POI's are worth the time investment and when you have others echo the sentiment such as Kage848 and others in posts and threads it gets me thinking that perhaps there is some way to entice people, again from a balance perspective, to partake in the T5 fun. So it's not about making inventory management easier in general but bringing T5 POIs more in-line with other tier POIs from a balance perspective.
It's not that T5 POIs are not "fun", but that they are not balanced when compared to other tier POIs. If you could combine both the current fun elements and balance then I believe the "fun" value would increase as well as it wouldn't just be subjective "fun" that people derive from setting their own goals, but one that fits within the scheme of the game which balances itself.
The goal isn't to minimize fun, but to maintain the fun of T5 POIs while also making them worthwhile from a gameplay mechanic standpoint.
I guess what I am trying to express is that if we agree, generally, that T5 POIs do not offer the same value to time investment as other POIs then from a development standpoint then would it hurt to bring T5 POI's more in-line with other POIs or should they be only for experience farming and general enjoyment? Unless you register experience as a calculable byproduct of a T5 POI in which you may justify the longer duration when compared to other POI's I don't think "fun" values decrease by bringing T5 POIs more in-line with other POIs for time investment versus gains.
In order to make tier 5 POIs desirable one would have to feel like the time and effort invested is worth the output. To that end there are several things that could be done to help alleviate some of the issues. For starters we would have to look at inventory management. Without having to re-do tier 5 POI's I think there are a couple ways to help offer a player more bang for their buck - granted these are just rough ideas and I am sure others can come up with better ones. One could install a mailing system within the POI that (once a quest has started) will trigger a drop-off point within the POI that will send a set amount of inventory space to the trader to be collected in a drop off chest at your convenience. Another potential solution would be a temporary backpack given by the trader that would be noticeably separate from your inventory but would allow you to carry more than usual. At the end of the day one of the issues with tier 5 POI's is how large the POI is compared to what you can reasonably carry for any given mission and how difficult it can be to drop items off in your vehicle which, under normal circumstances, would act as a separate inventory for many POI's that do not suffer from convoluted vertical scaling.
As with most POI's the design is geared toward the loot caches at the end of the POI, which sadly encourages players who have played the game and know some of the easier loot caches to simply do a smash and grab. I won't turn this into a debate on whether loot should be more equitably distributed within the POI with less reliance on loot caches, but rather want to direct the conversation to the other problem with tier 5 POI's - limited loot cache. While the larger tier 5 loot caches offer larger and often better rewards it still pales in comparison to what can be had doing a few tier 3 runs within the same timeframe. In other words if two tier 3 loot caches equal a single tier 5 loot cache but take 1/3 the effort than you are losing efficiency spent doing tier 5 buildings when for the same time investment you can do two or even three tier 3 POI's. I am not sold on the idea of simply adding more loot to the POI, but rather there needs to be a specific reason for doing end-game POI's. Something you can't get doing tier 3 or tier 4 whether it be a loot tier above purple (6), special crafting recipes for some end-game items whether it be ammo type, weapon type, vehicle modification, etc. In this way it's not just simply adding more loot (as we have covered you can't carry all that much anyway), but rather a shift in quality - and a dramatic one at that. By offering better rewards for the POI you encourage players to engage them outside of getting something you could have gotten in a good tier 3 or 4 POI.
Lastly, lets talk about the quests associated with tier 5 POI's. With how massive the POI's are there should be better marking for quests directing you towards zombies you haven't cleared yet. Unless you get to a certain threshold of zombies remaining your map won't update with locations of where the last remaining ones are located. For a tier 5 POI that can be disastrous if the zombie you need to kill is further in the POI relative to your location. Tier 5 quests could also see an increase in quest types with such things as activating relay/radio stations (complete with markers signaling as such). The tried and true kill quests that work for many other tiers fail to deliver in tier 5 and in some tier 4 if I am being honest. For this I think that POI's offering more than "x" amount of zombies (let's say 30 as an example) post the remaining zombie count up with more zombies left than in POI's that generate fewer zombies. This means that if in a tier 1 POI it requires all but 1 or 2 to be killed before it shows where the remaining zombies are located then a tier 5 should be with perhaps 8-10. In conjunction with quest dynamics difficulty the quest rewards can be hit or miss after completing a tier 5 quest. Likewise with the specific loot suggestion quests within tier 5 POI's should offer something out of the ordinary that you can't get by doing a tier 4 quest. At the very least the pool of items gained should be trimmed to provide only the best of items and not items that you received 4 days ago while doing a tier 3 quest.
With all that being said I do very much enjoy the large POI's. I think the scale and grandeur they provide elate myself and many people going through them for their first few times. So I think more tier 5 buildings would be great to see so long as some of the issues with them get worked out to make them worth the investment of time and energy when against the clock. Whether any one of these ideas sparks a fancy or whether none of them do I hope others will input their feedback on tier 5 quests as it's always possible perhaps I am just missing something and it's just me. Cheers.
UPDATE:
To make replies more streamlined I figured I would edit in some of my thoughts after reading some awesome replies by the community.
I agree that the red blips showing zombies can be immersion breaking, and if there was a better way to go about it I am all for it. If they could make the zombies rage mode instead and try and seek the player that would be fine by me as well because then you can at least hear them. As a side note I have always wanted some zombie pathing within POIs rather than static sleepers. Having zombies path in a radius and move about a small bit would be more challenging and realistic than sleepers and pop-up zombies, but I would be fine with a combination of one or more.
Also, I want to elaborate that I do enjoy the inventory management part of the game, however, my point isn't directed specifically towards that, but to the imbalance presented inherently within T5 POIs. From a balance perspective I do not think T5 POI's are worth the time investment and when you have others echo the sentiment such as Kage848 and others in posts and threads it gets me thinking that perhaps there is some way to entice people, again from a balance perspective, to partake in the T5 fun. So it's not about making inventory management easier in general but bringing T5 POIs more in-line with other tier POIs from a balance perspective.
It's not that T5 POIs are not "fun", but that they are not balanced when compared to other tier POIs. If you could combine both the current fun elements and balance then I believe the "fun" value would increase as well as it wouldn't just be subjective "fun" that people derive from setting their own goals, but one that fits within the scheme of the game which balances itself.
The goal isn't to minimize fun, but to maintain the fun of T5 POIs while also making them worthwhile from a gameplay mechanic standpoint.
I guess what I am trying to express is that if we agree, generally, that T5 POIs do not offer the same value to time investment as other POIs then from a development standpoint then would it hurt to bring T5 POI's more in-line with other POIs or should they be only for experience farming and general enjoyment? Unless you register experience as a calculable byproduct of a T5 POI in which you may justify the longer duration when compared to other POI's I don't think "fun" values decrease by bringing T5 POIs more in-line with other POIs for time investment versus gains.
Last edited by a moderator:
