PC Traders and quests need to be nerfed

[myrkana]

With our 4 man group we do about 2-3 quests per day. While 2 of us kill the zombies the other 2 loot and pillage (wrenching, shoveling, etc).

I play with 1 person, so me and another player. We can do 1-6 depending on the tier and how thorough we are with looting, if another trader is near we can ru nto them, Sometimes we focus on the loot room and run through.  By day 14 we're on tier 5 quests, thats with doing most pois once before we start the quest. We would loot most containers and then start the quest, wed do around 4 a day. Thats 8 if you account for the fact that it counts for each of us, so we each get loot from those 4 quests.

 

[meganoth]

As you said, he said it multiple time over the years and now we get two changes that make exactly that happen that do not benefit anything else to the game. And no removing glass jars only for the purpose of not having them in the game is no logic step on it´s own. Who tf cares if this serves the uniformity with acid and gas? Players don´t and critics won´t either.

Same for the magazines, they don´t really chnage the game other than the way you get  your crafting skills and that stay at home players are punished.

As I said, just a conjecture of you. I disagree, I find removing the ubiquitous glass jars that nobody ever wanted to see in loot was in line with the removal of other almost useless or too frequent items, for example the turds or the zombie loot bags.

I don't even know if TFP themselves had uniformity as a reason or ever mentioned why they exactly wanted glass jars removed. The gas cans and acid cans were usually brought as examples from Roland or myself in discussions among us forum users. And it was to argue that it isn't something exceptional and people will just get used to it, as they have been doing that with gas cans all the time without asking why their motorcycle swallows plastic cans.

Crafting was broken in A20 and before (and many players were complaining by the way), and I was posting the reasons why they probably did it even before they mentioned them "officially". If even I can spot the reasons immediately then there really must be something wrong.

Now if the reasons don't seem important to you and the new solution steps on your shoes that doesn't mean they aren't valid reasons, and the stepping on your shoes could be anything from hidden agenda, one of many reasons, or just a coincidence. What you as stay-at-home player never seem to take into consideration is that your use case might be ignored by TFP and any changes are not about you. They are about getting the balance right for the "normal" players (as defined by TFP) who build, but also loot and do everything the game offers.

And while crafting is momentarily not "there" yet, anyone could experience that with the first experimental it was OP and with the second experimental too weak again. Which means somewhere inbetween could easily be a spot where it would be well balanced with looting. And even now you can see how the progression in crafting is finally smooth, something impossible with the old system. If you can't acknowledge that there is progress in that change then my only conclusion is that your feelings have taken over your reasoning.

 

[theFlu]

As I said, just a conjecture of you.

Looking from the sidelines... both the crafting change and the water change do encourage looting and thus the trader loop. This was Papa's original point in this trader-thread. Whatever the reason for either of the changes, or whether anyone likes them or not, they do push players to the loot loop.. get dukes for dew or books for crafting.

And while crafting is momentarily not "there" yet,

But where _should_ it be? I agree with the "it felt too fast early, now it's too slow", but I have no idea where it's supposed to land compared to loot/traders. Should the traders be giving away the best you can craft, worse, or better?

It would be satisfying to craft better, but eventually, as legendaries won't be craftable, the trader/looting will inevitably be the source for the best-in-slot. Should it just be that way the whole game then, mostly using crafting as a means to help keeping up if the loot-gods aren't in your favor? For most playthroughs, it might just not be there then, making it mostly a wasted system.

 

[meganoth]

That, or we could have something, anything, else that's also somehow required to be done. Mining for coal for the water filters, hunting for animals for their meat. Those would not fix the current mess, but.. something.

At the moment it's just backwards; even if you Want to do something else (build a massive base (tools), explore (vehicles)), well, you'll get better at those mostly via the traders as well. So, what else is there to do ..?

Building as alternative activities is fine IMHO. Looting and looting with quests have the same goals of basically getting stuff and money and are directly comparable. Building is about using whatever you got from those activities and mining. And the normal player will not start building a massive base at lvl 1. He usually builds a small base or bases to survive the first horde night and with better tools and better materials extend that into what may become a massive base eventually. And since you get XP for upgrading you also progress while building.

Just now our group is two days before a horde night and we decided to use those two days to prepare a new horde base (and abandon our first). Now I think 2 days is not really enough for that and consequently our new base will suffer from some hasty design decisions. But I think it shows that at least with out group building is not replaced by quests. Though we did only the absolute minimum preparation with our 7day horde base.

 

[meganoth]

Looking from the sidelines... both the crafting change and the water change do encourage looting and thus the trader loop. This was Papa's original point in this trader-thread. Whatever the reason for either of the changes, or whether anyone likes them or not, they do push players to the loot loop.. get dukes for dew or books for crafting.

But where _should_ it be? I agree with the "it felt too fast early, now it's too slow", but I have no idea where it's supposed to land compared to loot/traders. Should the traders be giving away the best you can craft, worse, or better?

It would be satisfying to craft better, but eventually, as legendaries won't be craftable, the trader/looting will inevitably be the source for the best-in-slot. Should it just be that way the whole game then, mostly using crafting as a means to help keeping up if the loot-gods aren't in your favor? For most playthroughs, it might just not be there then, making it mostly a wasted system.

Well, all three sources give you the same stuff. If any one gives you everything the others become secondary, with the exception that with crafting the other sources could still function as material sources.

In A20 and before crafting was very planable as you just needed to invest into the perks and could almost reliably plan when to build everything up to iron q5. Because it was planable it had to be inferior/slower than looting. 

As crafting is now a smooth progression but still somewhat random it could very well be on par with looting or only slightly behind. So for example you might find better melee weapons than you can craft but since you found more armor magazines you might be ahead with crafting your armor (all IMHO)

And the trader could have better stuff if money is made scarce enough, otherwise he needs to be only a safety net and therefore worse than what can be found or crafted.

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

Primary purpose or not, they could have done those changes without shifting the gameplay from play however you want to looting all the time. They gladly took the opportunity to finally make it happen that you have to loot a lot, no matter what.

You can´t deny they badly wanted to force a playstyle. And if it wouldn´t have been crafting/water it would have been something else that made this happen.

And i still don´t understand it. I mean the majority did that anyways. Why does it bother them so much that some players enjoy the non looting part of the game? Look at all the content creators, you didn´t see one popular streamer/yt´er doing the base mom playstyle ever.

 

[Khalagar]

How many quests do you do per day, if I may ask? The way it looks to me, people push through the quest tiers and then wonder why the balancing fails.

As many as can be done during the day, usually even doing them at night too.

The game's setup is designed around quests, why would you loot any Poi that you don't have a quest for? You get the exact same loot as well as getting the extra quest rewards, so looting a building *without* a quest for it is flat out a worse use of time and ammo

 

[Vaeliorin]

The game's setup is designed around quests, why would you loot any Poi that you don't have a quest for? You get the exact same loot as well as getting the extra quest rewards, so looting a building *without* a quest for it is flat out a worse use of time and ammo

I used to loot houses in the first day or two looking for a cooking pot, but now that the trader has them (not that I've ever bought one) there's no need for that.

In my current game I did go out of my way to loot every medical-type POI I could find, but that's because I'm playing on a map that's 40% desert, 40% snow and 20% wasteland, and I got infected on Day 1 in the desert.  With no easy access to honey, it took me until Day 6 to get rid of my infection, which got as high as 65% (ironically because I finally found a trader selling antibiotics.)  But if it wasn't for that, I wouldn't have bothered looting non-quest POIs that aren't Crack A Books.

 

[Roland]

My fix would be that the trader only ever gives quality one gear as rewards. That way you can take it and use it if it is better than what you can craft but eventually you’d be taking it to scrap it to get parts because you can craft better. 
 

Either that or the trader only ever deals in parts. 

 

[AtomicUs5000]

If we assume extremes, and a player happens to focus mainly on one thing for whatever reason they may have, and assuming that we still want a player to at least experience other things some of the time, the best balanced setup in my eyes is:

- loot: I can wait until I find it for zero cost. I loot all day, everyday, so it shouldn't take me long.

 
- craft: I want it sooner and doing so is either at zero cost or inexpensive if I choose to buy materials. I've done everything to be able to craft everything I need, now I want the rewards.

 
- trader purchases: I want it ASAP and I am willing to pay inflated price for it. I work the economy and money is no object to me.

- trader quests: Probably shouldn't do anything to increase loot or cash because doing so throws off the balance of the previous three. Rewards should probably be limited to special items that cannot be found or crafted, nice chunks of XP, perhaps some unique magazine sets, or eventually story progression when that time comes. In other words, it should probably be a standalone fourth method.
 
If you happen to be the type of player who does not focus on one thing and you like to do everything, you shouldn't feel that doing one thing one day wasn't any better or worse than choosing something else another day, in the long run.

 

[theFlu]

Building is about using whatever you got from those activities and mining. And the normal player will not start building a massive base at lvl 1.

But it used to be possible. I myself play mostly looter-shooter nowadays, so I'm not about to ragequit over the changes, but I have enjoyed the couple dwarf-mode playthroughs I've done over the years. I will probably give one a go soonish, but I'm guessing it'll end up requiring an outright two weeks of questloop to get going. And that's kinda against the idea of the whole self-sustaining thing; IMO artificially so.

Just now our group <snip>

Hmm. Not playing MP, I can't really say much, the scaling is weird. Watched an ~8 player group take the week one horde in a cobblestone cube, size of which would be easily done by one player during the first day (at tops two). With no issues, other than the random spawns of 25 cops or demos by the host ... I'd say two days for a d14 horde is overkill, especially if it's a group effort - but then the group might be, you know, Not building for the most of the time...

Well, all three sources

I don't disagree in principle, but took me a while to figure out what's the third source. There's no looting without questing in my world, and there's no questing without getting dukes to buy stuff. It is a legit difference, looting vs trader stock, but in SP, I'm spending my dukes just to spend them.. The best stuff comes from quest rewards, low tier lootboxes are nice but usually won't offer significant improvements. The trader inventory occasionally has a game-changing upgrade, but mostly it's electric stuff and books for me; and then a progress skipping chem station.

All of it is basically aiming for T5/T6 quest rewards, preferably ASAP. The cement mixers and crucibles just show up "for free" along the way.

But yeah, practically it looks like the skill magazines are going to end up being the "minimum rate of progression", with trader RNG likely pushing better stuff when lucky. Which makes the magazine system rather meh, they're there, but they're not doing anything 95% of the time.

One upside though, I haven't had to think about spending points in cooking in any of my games yet, the kitchen cook books have given me grilled meat recipe early enough without the point... For the couple of the sideshow things they seem fine, cooking, seeds. Then again, I wouldn't mind a trader buff where the trader can actually teach you the basics, either from just outright buying it, or specific quests (Jen tells you to get 100 aloe for her supplies and teaches you to make bandoes..).

 

[Khalagar]

Either that or the trader only ever deals in parts. 

Only a trader deals in absolutes

Joke aside though, I think parts / resources are the best reward, with the trade being able to offer up to level 3 items.

A level 3 Auger was a nice reward when augers weren't awful (please buff augers) or a level 3 auto shotgun is huge when you don't have one yet. But it also doesn't invalidate the magazine line and you will still want to craft one later.

IMO traders should just offer resources like 5000 wood, 50 duct tape etc, and the crafting costs should be ramped up for end game items. Currently, I have like 60+ robotic turret parts, but it only takes like 5 to craft one. The duct tape cost is insane already, so the trader offering duct tape rewards would be good for this too. Scrapping a high tier item should also give more than 1 part

The issue atm is that Tier 1 trader quests actually offers some of the best stuff in the game. It will give you molotovs and pipe bombs and resources etc, where as higher ones just spam useless things you may not need like double barrel shotguns and leather armor etc. Sure that's great the first time, but when I am needing a trillion duct tape, I really don't need a 12th doubel barrel shotgun right now

 

[meganoth]

Primary purpose or not, they could have done those changes without shifting the gameplay from play however you want to looting all the time. They gladly took the opportunity to finally make it happen that you have to loot a lot, no matter what.

You can´t deny they badly wanted to force a playstyle. And if it wouldn´t have been crafting/water it would have been something else that made this happen.

And i still don´t understand it. I mean the majority did that anyways. Why does it bother them so much that some players enjoy the non looting part of the game? Look at all the content creators, you didn´t see one popular streamer/yt´er doing the base mom playstyle ever.

Or they simply were assuming that players do quests and loot, and do other stuff. In that case the changes were not changing anything (for the use case they were looking at). For me it doesn't, for my co-players it doesn't, except that it improves some things. You simply can't know if your are a target or just accidentally happened to be in the line of fire.

Maybe that there is no sensible reasons for base-moms being the target means that they were not a target. For me it makes a lot of sense that TFP just does not have them on the radar when thinking about ways to make water relevant and fix crafting. But I don't see it making sense to target them specifically, especially because the result would just be them leaving or using mods and continuing with their playstyle. 

 

[RipClaw]

My fix would be that the trader only ever gives quality one gear as rewards. That way you can take it and use it if it is better than what you can craft but eventually you’d be taking it to scrap it to get parts because you can craft better.

You can bet that some players will then complain that the quest rewards are just not worth doing higher tier quests.

That is the dilemma. Some players want a slow steady progress, others would prefer running around with endgame gear as soon as possible.

 

[Roland]

You can bet that some players will then complain that the quest rewards are just not worth doing higher tier quests.

That is the dilemma. Some players want a slow steady progress, others would prefer running around with endgame gear as soon as possible.

The other problem is non perked weapons. If I’m not perked into Machine guns but the trader gives me a blue M60 that would still be a really nice secondary weapon to my perked weapon that I’d likely not be able to craft on my own. 

 

[retrogamingdev]

I am still getting my feel for A21, so please take this with that in mind. But, I do like Roland's idea of only level 1 stuff. Or a modification on that being maybe max level is half of the tier of quest you are on. So, if you are on a tier 1 or 2, the best you will see is level 1. Tier 3/4, level 2 is the best possible, Tier 5/6, level 3 is best. 

It still gives some benefit to players getting going, but also sort of caps out driving you to want to craft tier 4 and up.

I don't fully understand the logic on what they sell, so I can't comment super strongly on what to do there. But, I think there should be a cap on quality of what you can buy too. Basically, tier 4+ needs to be crafted. Possibly make 4+ very rare random drops too in high level POIs - but really very very low chance. Like, you would be lucky to see one 4+ item out of maybe 100 loot rooms that were eligible. 

 

[seagas]

Why does everyone want to make the base game tougher for everyone, nothing is stopping you from making it tougher for yourself! The trader rewards, IMO, have been toned down plenty from A20. Some people find the base game tough enough, I tweak the game game to be tougher on me, but that's my choice. At 69, my ability to play at the level of those youtubers or you super gamers do, my best gaming days are long past me. I love 7D2D and have been playing since A16 when I was turned on to it by a friend.

 

[retrogamingdev]

Why does everyone want to make the base game tougher for everyone, nothing is stopping you from making it tougher for yourself! The trader rewards, IMO, have been toned down plenty from A20. Some people find the base game tough enough, I tweak the game game to be tougher on me, but that's my choice. At 69, my ability to play at the level of those youtubers or you super gamers do, my best gaming days are long past me. I love 7D2D and have been playing since A16 when I was turned on to it by a friend.

I totally hear you, but I think people like variable levels of challenge. Perhaps these options need to be game settings to account for everyone. Like "Max Item Level from Traders" or something.

 

[Vaeliorin]

But it used to be possible. I myself play mostly looter-shooter nowadays, so I'm not about to ragequit over the changes, but I have enjoyed the couple dwarf-mode playthroughs I've done over the years. I will probably give one a go soonish, but I'm guessing it'll end up requiring an outright two weeks of questloop to get going. And that's kinda against the idea of the whole self-sustaining thing; IMO artificially so.

My experience so far, as someone who usually didn't loot much after Day 14 previously, is it takes about 4 weeks (2 hour days) to max out all the magazine lines.

I haven't tested that extensively, but that's the feeling I get.  Obviously later magazine lines progress faster, as the completed lines get dropped from the loot table.  POI availability also effects this, of course, and how willing the trader is to offer book-rich POIs as quests.

 

[Roland]

Why does everyone want to make the base game tougher for everyone, nothing is stopping you from making it tougher for yourself! The trader rewards, IMO, have been toned down plenty from A20. Some people find the base game tough enough, I tweak the game game to be tougher on me, but that's my choice. At 69, my ability to play at the level of those youtubers or you super gamers do, my best gaming days are long past me. I love 7D2D and have been playing since A16 when I was turned on to it by a friend.

I don’t see it as wanting to make it tougher so much as wanting gear to be something we mostly craft instead of mostly buy or find.  Right now finding or buying or being rewarded with something beyond what you can craft kind of takes the wind out of your sails if you like crafting your own stuff.  
 

When you just need a few more magazines to be able to craft a higher tier than you have it makes finding those magazines exciting. When you need 16 more magazines just to match what the trader gave you then it makes it much less exciting.