Royal Deluxe
Refugee
Well the current situation made me building a melee defense base.
Means i still wish much more ammo, but its playable without
PC Trader and economy balance thread
- Thread starter madmole
- Start date
Means i still wish much more ammo, but its playable without
chaosterone
Refugee
A lot of good suggestions in here. I think the trader you find through the first quest should be a general trader. From there, that trader might give hints or send you on errand/quests to find specialized traders. Noah suggests they are part of a network and should play that way.
[AQUOTE=Jackelmyer;931342]Guppy just has toilet dreams of Trader Jen selling him all his magazines. And nothing... else...
No shame... Totally get it... :thumb:
He only needs one, but he should beg and grovel to Trader Jen before she spanks him with it.
[AQUOTE=Jackelmyer;931342]Guppy just has toilet dreams of Trader Jen selling him all his magazines. And nothing... else...
No shame... Totally get it... :thumb:
He only needs one, but he should beg and grovel to Trader Jen before she spanks him with it.
madmole
Refugee
I'll ask around, if its still possible I'll definitely put it in.It's doable now and works, except all traders can buy all things. That, and something weird about the trader id going over 5 or something... But it all worked.
Seems that since you're already looking into balancing traders, that revisiting your wish list is a good idea.
I would say that the traders need more beakers, bottles of acid, and hey why not throw tires in there too.
I also think the game needs more traders I would think 10 on the medium sized map, and when the large map drops I would say maybe 15 traders. This is of course not a big deal but it would make a difference in the game world. Also how about being able to buy a mixer, workbench, forge, or chemistry station.
And thanks Joel for asking and listening even if you don't use all of the suggestions.
I also think the game needs more traders I would think 10 on the medium sized map, and when the large map drops I would say maybe 15 traders. This is of course not a big deal but it would make a difference in the game world. Also how about being able to buy a mixer, workbench, forge, or chemistry station.
And thanks Joel for asking and listening even if you don't use all of the suggestions.
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crackpot texas
Refugee
Madmole
I don't think the "trader perks" are OP. If you want to sacrifice a few precious skill points on it, then you should be rewarded.
I think you need to add more brass to the trader inventory.
Vending machines should only carry canned foods, drinks and maybe sham sandwiches or moldy bread. No raw meat, cooked meat, meals or corn and potatoes. I no longer have a need to hunt or farm because of all the food in the vending machines. I don't need to put points into "cooking perks" because I can buy home cook meals at the vending machines.
It would also be great if you could rent stuff from the trader, like vehicles or power tools. Just an idea.
I don't think the "trader perks" are OP. If you want to sacrifice a few precious skill points on it, then you should be rewarded.
I think you need to add more brass to the trader inventory.
Vending machines should only carry canned foods, drinks and maybe sham sandwiches or moldy bread. No raw meat, cooked meat, meals or corn and potatoes. I no longer have a need to hunt or farm because of all the food in the vending machines. I don't need to put points into "cooking perks" because I can buy home cook meals at the vending machines.
It would also be great if you could rent stuff from the trader, like vehicles or power tools. Just an idea.
The Pipe-Wrench
Refugee
I usually don't post much but here goes:
1.) Support all play styles, so non crafters can get what they need.
For this let me know if there are any items or resources sorely missing from trader inventory.
For this I agree with the others and i'd say acid is a tad too rare, Another thing i'd like to see more in stock with traders are seeds.
I think it was mentioned acid is going into lab loot boxes and beakers in medical supplies too? That would fix a lot of bad luck situations as i've only found one beaker so far in 27 days.
Also love the idea mentioned about vehicle parts or whole ones from traders, secret stash or maybe harder than average tier quests or ones with a "boss" type to kill could yield them?
2.) Make it possible to make a living role playing.
Whether it be a lumberjack, a rock miner, a blacksmith, hunter, crafter selling his goods, scavenger selling things, I think you should be able to make a modest living. I'd want to know what trades are under powered and which ones are overpowered or not even supported.
I like this idea of having a set role and, if we go this route, if you're going to make a living doing something you should be able to get at least a little more bang for your buck selling what you get each and every day. So why not get rid of the better barter and bake in a significantly smaller version with the gathering perks? Perhaps in 5% increments?
3.) Perk balance. Are the trading perks too good? I typically get by without them so maybe they are OP?
A bit OP in my opinion yeah, with my suggestion above or as others mentioned a rep based better barter sounds pretty neat too. I do enjoy Daring adventurer's extra options for rewards, honestly I was getting so many dukes I saved the perk point to skip over rank 4 until I was able to buy rank 5 for the extra reward.
A few suggestions: Maybe a perk to influence quests available at the trader somehow would be great. More to choose from, be able to accept more than one quest per trader, closer quests, etc. I'd like to see more types of quests too, maybe to demo a zombie infested building, plant explosives and blow it sky high, build or fix something like a comms tower, loot an item from an air drop for a trader or since we have gyro-copters make an airdrop ourselves?
Just some ideas, thanks for reading!
1.) Support all play styles, so non crafters can get what they need.
For this let me know if there are any items or resources sorely missing from trader inventory.
For this I agree with the others and i'd say acid is a tad too rare, Another thing i'd like to see more in stock with traders are seeds.
I think it was mentioned acid is going into lab loot boxes and beakers in medical supplies too? That would fix a lot of bad luck situations as i've only found one beaker so far in 27 days.
Also love the idea mentioned about vehicle parts or whole ones from traders, secret stash or maybe harder than average tier quests or ones with a "boss" type to kill could yield them?
2.) Make it possible to make a living role playing.
Whether it be a lumberjack, a rock miner, a blacksmith, hunter, crafter selling his goods, scavenger selling things, I think you should be able to make a modest living. I'd want to know what trades are under powered and which ones are overpowered or not even supported.
I like this idea of having a set role and, if we go this route, if you're going to make a living doing something you should be able to get at least a little more bang for your buck selling what you get each and every day. So why not get rid of the better barter and bake in a significantly smaller version with the gathering perks? Perhaps in 5% increments?
3.) Perk balance. Are the trading perks too good? I typically get by without them so maybe they are OP?
A bit OP in my opinion yeah, with my suggestion above or as others mentioned a rep based better barter sounds pretty neat too. I do enjoy Daring adventurer's extra options for rewards, honestly I was getting so many dukes I saved the perk point to skip over rank 4 until I was able to buy rank 5 for the extra reward.
A few suggestions: Maybe a perk to influence quests available at the trader somehow would be great. More to choose from, be able to accept more than one quest per trader, closer quests, etc. I'd like to see more types of quests too, maybe to demo a zombie infested building, plant explosives and blow it sky high, build or fix something like a comms tower, loot an item from an air drop for a trader or since we have gyro-copters make an airdrop ourselves?
Just some ideas, thanks for reading!
rivle
Refugee
exactly.. its well balanced, no need to remove meat from vending machines or traders. It’s a good option if you cant find any animals for fresh meat.
Like someone already wrote trading perk is broken. Without any trader perk I can sell a magazine for 100 – 1 point in trading perk and sell price increase to 150. Its not 10%
FMK
Refugee
To be fair, one can pretty much 'get by' with absolutely no perks, depending on ones definition.
Rather than remove or nerf them, I'd like to see more highly expensive things that aren't really viable to get without them (aka, money sinks).
Q6 Solar Panels, if their base price stays the same, are pretty close to that already. Steel Polish (or w/e it was called) was honestly a good spending incentive back in A16 because it was a 'super end-game goal' to work towards -- traders just needed to sell a ton more and their base price needs a hefty increase.
Some other things that come to mind that would be good money-sink incentives without being required or too unbalanced (from a not-using-traders standpoint), and requiring minimal work to add:
* Military-Grade Electric Fence - Higher durability, lower power consumption, stops radiated zombie HP regen, full block repair (aka, like glass) : 10k Dukes
* Florescent Lights - Lower power consumption, better area lighting : 5k Dukes
* Military-Grade Medkit - Instant full heal, cures pretty much everything, 5 second invulnerability : 40k Dukes
* MRE - +150 Food, +150 Water : 2k Dukes
Jugginator
QA
I was thinking, what if we removed the need for bartering perks to get better items in the secret stash, and instead tied them to the game stage/player level?
Jackelmyer
Refugee
Don't Trader's and Loot both scale with game stages? Just curious. Haven't been looking at 7D2D nuts and bolts for a while.
Greymantle
Refugee
I find traders break the game it makes me feel like we have a local Walmart the way they are set up. I would like an option to turn them off I don't want them in my game. With that said who is stocking these traders? Why do they have such a huge supply of goods when I can't find them out in the world without a lot of effort? Why is their base immune to zombies? Let them have a chance to be destroyed and can be rebuilt with the help of the community. Another issue I have is quests this lets players get around my loot respawn setting. sigh
With that said I feel they should only have stuff in stock that we sell to them plus a random few items. Use these items in a random pool to be on sale each day, week, month, based on the loot respawn setting. Vending machines IMHO should be removed. Quests should be removed or at least find a way so it's not a way to get around my loot respawn options.
With that said I feel they should only have stuff in stock that we sell to them plus a random few items. Use these items in a random pool to be on sale each day, week, month, based on the loot respawn setting. Vending machines IMHO should be removed. Quests should be removed or at least find a way so it's not a way to get around my loot respawn options.
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Trading Perks
I love the traders and usually buy into the trading perks and handle the trading for our group, but in some ways I think it would be better if the ability to sell for more money was removed, as that tends to block off the fun use of the trader by others in co-op groups who want to optimize their returns. We frequently will return from a quest and my allies will drop their rewards in the trader's building so I can sell it. It would also make it a lot easier to price items and give appropriate rewards.
I like the idea of tying the secret stash perks (and the buying/selling) perks to questing. Ideally each trader would keep their own independent friendliness value for each player, but a general value would be ok. I think you could probably implement this right now by making a Barter level (unending perk bonus) into a quest reward and removing it from the purchasable advancements.
Value of Items
The standout overvalued item is high quality iron reinforced clubs. Since trading perks are already tied to intelligence you get a double boost as you progress on that attribute because quality impacts price so much, and even if you don't really care about crafting you naturally get good at making valuable items. Pretty much anything that you can craft from easily harvestable materials should be looked at carefully if it has a quality level.
Guns on the other hand got their prices cut so much it just feels weird. They're generally a highly desired item (particularly early on) and can't be crafted until very late, so mostly a loot item, but when you bring them to the traders they're basically worthless.
Missing Items
More cosmetic items! Being able to add uncraftable old-world items to your base is a lot of fun. However it would be really nice if these items could then be moved like workstation in a land claim. Nothing sucks as much as misplacing a block that can't be replaced.
Other than that, making raw materials more common would be nice. I enjoy having steel or forged iron in limited quantities before I can make it myself, and would like to be able to more reliably buy them. Same with ammunition. I haven't experienced a hard shortage like others, but it's one of those things that's both basic and essential, so if RNG has screwed you it would be good to have an easy replacement.
Vending Machines
I don't mind the vending machines, but I think their stock should be greatly pared down to specialty drinks. I would also absolutely love if they would require Old Cash instead of casino tokens. They could carry both some basic canned food and drinks for emergency survival and all of the special high-medicine/high-cooking perk boosting drinks/pills. Those are essentially potions, and as is they're too rare to find on your own, and too high up to regularly see play. Making the machines Old Cash only would naturally limit how many of them you could buy and give it a value for people who aren't saving it up to sell.
I love the traders and usually buy into the trading perks and handle the trading for our group, but in some ways I think it would be better if the ability to sell for more money was removed, as that tends to block off the fun use of the trader by others in co-op groups who want to optimize their returns. We frequently will return from a quest and my allies will drop their rewards in the trader's building so I can sell it. It would also make it a lot easier to price items and give appropriate rewards.
I like the idea of tying the secret stash perks (and the buying/selling) perks to questing. Ideally each trader would keep their own independent friendliness value for each player, but a general value would be ok. I think you could probably implement this right now by making a Barter level (unending perk bonus) into a quest reward and removing it from the purchasable advancements.
Value of Items
The standout overvalued item is high quality iron reinforced clubs. Since trading perks are already tied to intelligence you get a double boost as you progress on that attribute because quality impacts price so much, and even if you don't really care about crafting you naturally get good at making valuable items. Pretty much anything that you can craft from easily harvestable materials should be looked at carefully if it has a quality level.
Guns on the other hand got their prices cut so much it just feels weird. They're generally a highly desired item (particularly early on) and can't be crafted until very late, so mostly a loot item, but when you bring them to the traders they're basically worthless.
Missing Items
More cosmetic items! Being able to add uncraftable old-world items to your base is a lot of fun. However it would be really nice if these items could then be moved like workstation in a land claim. Nothing sucks as much as misplacing a block that can't be replaced.
Other than that, making raw materials more common would be nice. I enjoy having steel or forged iron in limited quantities before I can make it myself, and would like to be able to more reliably buy them. Same with ammunition. I haven't experienced a hard shortage like others, but it's one of those things that's both basic and essential, so if RNG has screwed you it would be good to have an easy replacement.
Vending Machines
I don't mind the vending machines, but I think their stock should be greatly pared down to specialty drinks. I would also absolutely love if they would require Old Cash instead of casino tokens. They could carry both some basic canned food and drinks for emergency survival and all of the special high-medicine/high-cooking perk boosting drinks/pills. Those are essentially potions, and as is they're too rare to find on your own, and too high up to regularly see play. Making the machines Old Cash only would naturally limit how many of them you could buy and give it a value for people who aren't saving it up to sell.
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Doctor3D
Refugee
-Remove Vending Machines from inside of POIs - it makes no sense to have a POI locked up like fort knox with traps and sleeping zombies everywhere - yet it is powered up and routinely restocks with food. Are we supposed to just assume that some vendor is breaking in the building, avoiding all the zombies, all the traps, refilling the vending machine and collecting the dukes, and then resetting traps and boarding the place all back up again to sell the items in it?
-Elastic Microeconomy - Put in a supply and demand system that allows a fluctuation of prices based on various conditions (weather, day of the week, how much time the game has progressed, the biome the trader is in, etc). You could even tie the economy into the unique seed for the game and each game has a different starting supply and demand for different items. An example of its utility would be something like every 5-7 days the price of ammo goes up. You'd then have situations like the choice to sell your ammo at a high price or keep it for the horde. You could attempt to buy low when demand is low say on the 3rd or 4th day of the week and try to sell back, but you'd still be with less ammo for the horde. Medical demand could go up on day 8-9 and it would either cost lots at that time to buy medical items, or you could make a killing selling them.
-We need truly rare and valuable commodities. Things that are almost always in high demand and are always valuable. Antibiotics in particular should be much more valuable, rare and hard to craft than it is. It is the cure to the zombie virus and it's currently not worth much more than a few bowls of soup. A chemist who makes antibiotics should be one of the richest people in Navezgane.
-Food - it's just silly right now. Having so much food available to purchase at such low cost just ruins the 'survival' part of this game. There is little need to hunt, farm or even cook your own food due to the vast amount of routinely stocked food in all the vending machines and at the traders. The food is so ridiculously cheap - I thought it was a bug when I first saw it. Price of food should be much higher. If it were me, I'd make food have an actual nutrition mechanic and give it all a quality system. Low quality food is what you'd mostly find in the vending machines - but the high quality, most nutritious things would be expensive, and harder to make. You could make a good living selling them as good quality food that keeps you healthy would always be in demand. Low quality food could be a bit more abundant, and you wont starve if you eat it, but you won't be very healthy either. Eat too much low quality food - and your overall health starts to become affected. Eating a lot of high quality, nutritious food and you start to gain long-term health benefits that aid in stamina, and faster healing.
-Ammo should obviously be much more expensive and\or rare than it is now. You can just use traders for all your ammo and it won't break the bank. It's not until you get to the turret stage that you might want to start crafting your own to supplement for the difference. The biggest reason ammo is just so abundant is because of all the stash boxes in all the POIs combined with the trader. It completely negates the value of ammo and just leads to not even caring about reserving it like I used to. Now after you've leveled and are just in mid-game and beyond you can just run through POIs on full auto blasting them..because..why not? I can get ammo really cheap and get more and more as you go through the POIs. The ammo quota keeps rising instead of falling even when you're being trigger-happy. A constant net-gain in resources due to the abundance in loot and low cost. Minimizing the amount of dungeon POIs in the game and thus having less stash rooms while increasing the cost and rarity on traders would go a long way. I can't emphasize enough how much overpowered you get by just looting the POIs over and over - especially doing it via the quests where you have a system going where you get sent to a POI you had just been to so know it like the back of your hand..you run through get all the valuables - get ammo out of the boxes - finish the quest - sell all the valuables and then buy all his ammo. You can do that over and over with 5 traders and in a very short amount of time you already have so much weapon mods, medical items, and ammo that you're basically just playing with creative mode on at that point.
The more items you give the traders to sell by default, the more and more you could potentially nullify a lot of the mechanics in your game. So you have to keep that in mind. If you make it to where traders have all the wood, concrete, steel, you need to build a base - you instantly nullify that gathering and crafting part of the game. In one of the last experimentals before stable - I did a playthrough without any INT except for the bicycle. I was already able to build a concrete base just by the trader and looting alone. I did the quests over and over -and looted hundreds and hundreds of respawning stash boxes over and over doing that- found my iron tools, lots of rebar, concrete from the bags in the POI, etc that way -sold all the loot - and just bought the remaining concrete buckets from the traders and built a base. It was admittedly rewarding to do it that way, (in retrospect, I think it was more because it was just different than I've ever done a base before) but it was a bit too easy to do and it definitely nullified a huge chunk of the game. I think traders should lend more towards supplementary for mats than something where you can just buy everything important with all the trash you looted and cars you took apart.
Lastly, When thinking about the economy in the game - keep the future bandits in your mind. I'd look into adding a container value mechanic. Every item in our containers and backpack is already worth a set amount of base dukes. Use that system already in place and add on to it for the bandits to asses your container worth. The higher your container worth - (the more valuables you have at your base or on your person) - the greater the chance you might have bandits showing up. I know this is outside of the current scope- But, I'd love a scout bandit that comes to your base and can assess your overall container worth - the higher your container worth - the more heat - and if the heat is high enough the scout will call a raiding party. You could make certain containers like vaults and safes where the scout cannot determine all of the value. But, to counter that - vaults and safes might need to be harder to make, more expensive to buy and slower to open.
-Elastic Microeconomy - Put in a supply and demand system that allows a fluctuation of prices based on various conditions (weather, day of the week, how much time the game has progressed, the biome the trader is in, etc). You could even tie the economy into the unique seed for the game and each game has a different starting supply and demand for different items. An example of its utility would be something like every 5-7 days the price of ammo goes up. You'd then have situations like the choice to sell your ammo at a high price or keep it for the horde. You could attempt to buy low when demand is low say on the 3rd or 4th day of the week and try to sell back, but you'd still be with less ammo for the horde. Medical demand could go up on day 8-9 and it would either cost lots at that time to buy medical items, or you could make a killing selling them.
-We need truly rare and valuable commodities. Things that are almost always in high demand and are always valuable. Antibiotics in particular should be much more valuable, rare and hard to craft than it is. It is the cure to the zombie virus and it's currently not worth much more than a few bowls of soup. A chemist who makes antibiotics should be one of the richest people in Navezgane.
-Food - it's just silly right now. Having so much food available to purchase at such low cost just ruins the 'survival' part of this game. There is little need to hunt, farm or even cook your own food due to the vast amount of routinely stocked food in all the vending machines and at the traders. The food is so ridiculously cheap - I thought it was a bug when I first saw it. Price of food should be much higher. If it were me, I'd make food have an actual nutrition mechanic and give it all a quality system. Low quality food is what you'd mostly find in the vending machines - but the high quality, most nutritious things would be expensive, and harder to make. You could make a good living selling them as good quality food that keeps you healthy would always be in demand. Low quality food could be a bit more abundant, and you wont starve if you eat it, but you won't be very healthy either. Eat too much low quality food - and your overall health starts to become affected. Eating a lot of high quality, nutritious food and you start to gain long-term health benefits that aid in stamina, and faster healing.
-Ammo should obviously be much more expensive and\or rare than it is now. You can just use traders for all your ammo and it won't break the bank. It's not until you get to the turret stage that you might want to start crafting your own to supplement for the difference. The biggest reason ammo is just so abundant is because of all the stash boxes in all the POIs combined with the trader. It completely negates the value of ammo and just leads to not even caring about reserving it like I used to. Now after you've leveled and are just in mid-game and beyond you can just run through POIs on full auto blasting them..because..why not? I can get ammo really cheap and get more and more as you go through the POIs. The ammo quota keeps rising instead of falling even when you're being trigger-happy. A constant net-gain in resources due to the abundance in loot and low cost. Minimizing the amount of dungeon POIs in the game and thus having less stash rooms while increasing the cost and rarity on traders would go a long way. I can't emphasize enough how much overpowered you get by just looting the POIs over and over - especially doing it via the quests where you have a system going where you get sent to a POI you had just been to so know it like the back of your hand..you run through get all the valuables - get ammo out of the boxes - finish the quest - sell all the valuables and then buy all his ammo. You can do that over and over with 5 traders and in a very short amount of time you already have so much weapon mods, medical items, and ammo that you're basically just playing with creative mode on at that point.
The more items you give the traders to sell by default, the more and more you could potentially nullify a lot of the mechanics in your game. So you have to keep that in mind. If you make it to where traders have all the wood, concrete, steel, you need to build a base - you instantly nullify that gathering and crafting part of the game. In one of the last experimentals before stable - I did a playthrough without any INT except for the bicycle. I was already able to build a concrete base just by the trader and looting alone. I did the quests over and over -and looted hundreds and hundreds of respawning stash boxes over and over doing that- found my iron tools, lots of rebar, concrete from the bags in the POI, etc that way -sold all the loot - and just bought the remaining concrete buckets from the traders and built a base. It was admittedly rewarding to do it that way, (in retrospect, I think it was more because it was just different than I've ever done a base before) but it was a bit too easy to do and it definitely nullified a huge chunk of the game. I think traders should lend more towards supplementary for mats than something where you can just buy everything important with all the trash you looted and cars you took apart.
Lastly, When thinking about the economy in the game - keep the future bandits in your mind. I'd look into adding a container value mechanic. Every item in our containers and backpack is already worth a set amount of base dukes. Use that system already in place and add on to it for the bandits to asses your container worth. The higher your container worth - (the more valuables you have at your base or on your person) - the greater the chance you might have bandits showing up. I know this is outside of the current scope- But, I'd love a scout bandit that comes to your base and can assess your overall container worth - the higher your container worth - the more heat - and if the heat is high enough the scout will call a raiding party. You could make certain containers like vaults and safes where the scout cannot determine all of the value. But, to counter that - vaults and safes might need to be harder to make, more expensive to buy and slower to open.
Royal Deluxe
Refugee
I N E V E R had more ammo after i cleaned a poi than before (on 100% lootabundance)
(except i nerdpole direct to the stash)
icehot
Refugee
In my modlet I've made it so the trader has a chance for the tool and die set in the secret stash in better barter 4 and 5 - reason is, I'm on day 114, and haven't found one yet, nor in the traders normal inventory, and I got to a point where I really needed it as I was using more ammo taking on POI's than I was getting from them.
Also a quest to take an item or something to another trader to make it so there's an in game way to discover other traders would be really cool.
Also I don't think better barter is OP at all, if anything I didn't notice it was doing much other than unlocking items in the secret stash.
Also a quest to take an item or something to another trader to make it so there's an in game way to discover other traders would be really cool.
Also I don't think better barter is OP at all, if anything I didn't notice it was doing much other than unlocking items in the secret stash.
Doctor3D
Refugee
I was talking about in combination with the traders. You do continue to get more as you progress through the POI, but to really maintain the gains you have 5 traders to utilize. Ammo is continually gained using both the traders AND the POIs together. It also depends on what ammo you're using - the most common drop is 9mm - the second most common is shotgun. (But you're also accumulating brasss, paper, nitrate powder and gun powder as you run through them) Those should be the two weapons you use and you alternate. Leave the 7.62 for horde night. Go through a POI with a MP5 or Pistol and you'll accumulate some shotgun and some 9mm mostly as you progress through it and as you get to the stash. You'll have more shotgun ammo than when you started - and maybe less 9mm than when you started. No biggie - go to the next POI and this time just use the shotgun - repeat - repeat - go to the 1st trader and sell all the valuable loot you got - then buy all of his ammo, his casings, his nitrate powder, his coal, his paper repeat again with trader #2, and so on and so forth- and tell me you don't have MORE ammo...if you don't...I don't know man..you gotta aim better I guess
Sooo... I'm curious. What are all the playstyles of 7DtD? Because this is a rather nebulous statement. It's almost like saying 7DtD isn't just a survival/horde/crafting/sandbox game, but rather... it's every game: all of them.
This is important because really 7DtD should define what role Traders serve. Are the RP Quest Givers? Are they one-stop Walmarts that have everything a players needs? Are they old fantasy styled Inns, offering a safe place for a price. Are they meant to bypass mechanics that players find annoying/challenging/unfun?
Because frankly, if there is no reason to search for specific resources then players won't risk going anywhere else. Additionally if everything can be bought/sold at a market, then you might as well hire an economist to balance your system because at level of complexity... well it's going to be broken. This just returns to my early fear, that Fun Pimps doesn't actually know what they want 7 Days to Die to be, because they don't want to offend anyone as well want to cater to the largest audience. Minecraft is popular because it's simple. I don't think 7 Days to Die wants to be that simple, but it's going to have place restrictions on what it's trying to be.
My immediate suggestion concerning Traders: They only offer basic and secondary crafting ingredients for sale, but not purchase. And only purchase craftable or lootable items. This then reduces the scope of item 'worth' to a smaller selection which can then be based on production time. So for example it could be 1000 wood = 500 stone = 100 metal if mining stone takes twice as long as chopping trees, and metal is 5 times more rare then stone. Find the average time it takes to acquire 1000 wood and then put a $/min on that. This idea won't please everyone, but it should please enough while drawing few complaints. Mostly this allows builders not spend the majority of their time resource gathering, but rather crafting excess wares using what they need and selling the rest to acquire more supplies. It also favours those that scavenge and kill by offering a high price for rarer stuff. Basically, builders/crafters gain money by selling in bulk, where as wanderers/scavengers gain money by selling high value items which are limited in amount. Consumables like basic food & medicine, magazines, gas and ammo should be available as well, but unlike the above be offered for purchase/sale with the restriction that purchase price be less than the sale price (to prevent positive feedback loop).
Doing the above (at least answering the focus questions) will probably make the game better overall. At least long enough that you can work on other features.
This is important because really 7DtD should define what role Traders serve. Are the RP Quest Givers? Are they one-stop Walmarts that have everything a players needs? Are they old fantasy styled Inns, offering a safe place for a price. Are they meant to bypass mechanics that players find annoying/challenging/unfun?
Because frankly, if there is no reason to search for specific resources then players won't risk going anywhere else. Additionally if everything can be bought/sold at a market, then you might as well hire an economist to balance your system because at level of complexity... well it's going to be broken. This just returns to my early fear, that Fun Pimps doesn't actually know what they want 7 Days to Die to be, because they don't want to offend anyone as well want to cater to the largest audience. Minecraft is popular because it's simple. I don't think 7 Days to Die wants to be that simple, but it's going to have place restrictions on what it's trying to be.
My immediate suggestion concerning Traders: They only offer basic and secondary crafting ingredients for sale, but not purchase. And only purchase craftable or lootable items. This then reduces the scope of item 'worth' to a smaller selection which can then be based on production time. So for example it could be 1000 wood = 500 stone = 100 metal if mining stone takes twice as long as chopping trees, and metal is 5 times more rare then stone. Find the average time it takes to acquire 1000 wood and then put a $/min on that. This idea won't please everyone, but it should please enough while drawing few complaints. Mostly this allows builders not spend the majority of their time resource gathering, but rather crafting excess wares using what they need and selling the rest to acquire more supplies. It also favours those that scavenge and kill by offering a high price for rarer stuff. Basically, builders/crafters gain money by selling in bulk, where as wanderers/scavengers gain money by selling high value items which are limited in amount. Consumables like basic food & medicine, magazines, gas and ammo should be available as well, but unlike the above be offered for purchase/sale with the restriction that purchase price be less than the sale price (to prevent positive feedback loop).
Doing the above (at least answering the focus questions) will probably make the game better overall. At least long enough that you can work on other features.
EpicSince81
Refugee
The biggest issue with traders at this point is, that after selling Steel stuff, Augers, Chainsaws for 20 days you can buy nearly all items that exist in the game. There is absolutely NO reason to go looting except if it makes fun for you. Also why bother with quests. And you get XP fastest by mining atm.
I'd rather have player trading economy and completely remove Traders from the Game. Turn them into Quest Npcs...
Then you need to meet people, do quests for stuff and loot buildings instead of mining 25000 iron and craft 12 Steel axes, pickaxes, shovels, machetes every other day and buy the world.
I'd rather have player trading economy and completely remove Traders from the Game. Turn them into Quest Npcs...
Then you need to meet people, do quests for stuff and loot buildings instead of mining 25000 iron and craft 12 Steel axes, pickaxes, shovels, machetes every other day and buy the world.