PC Traders and quests need to be nerfed

[pApA^LeGBa]

@meganoth You said it yourself that he said that several times. I am 100% sure that they exactly knew what this change means in terms of playstyles when they made it. If this isn´t one of your goals why would you willingly force people to a certain playstyle when there is surely other ways to achieve what you want?

 

[Khalagar]

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.

The game still has to be balanced at a fundamental level. Trader rewards are not balanced. The trader handed me a level 6 steel club when I had like 10 club magazines at most read. That means the entire club magazine line is pointless now

Currently the trader will give you gear that's FAR superior to what you can craft, in a fraction of the time. Even with me having 10 int and every related Junk Turret perk, the trader still handed me a level 6 drone long before I could craft one. You can start getting ridiculously good trader rewards within the first week or two, well before you could ever find them in the wild or craft them.

It isn't about making trader rewards useless, it's about making them useful but not game breaking. Instead of offering you a level 6 steel club, he should just offer you 150 forged iron or a mod bundle or something

 

[theFlu]

is it takes about 4 weeks (2 hour days) to max out all the magazine lines.

Ye, my guess on d14 (60 min x 14) was about getting the basics, while still doing some work on the "establishment". Recipes for seeds & stews, some decent tools etc. Reaching tolerable, but not in any way maximized.

 

[retrogamingdev]

The other road to take this down for balance would be to go BOTW and break gear with no option to repair. I really don't support this idea, but it would help balance out the fact that you can get 'end'-ish game gear from trader in the first week or two in game. Sure, you may get lucky and got a steel pickaxe on day 6... but when it breaks, you are back to whatever you can craft (or hope to get lucky again from trader).

Again, I don't support this specific plan, but it might help frame it from another perspective for those not seeing the problem at the moment. (this is also hypothetical, based on others responses. My first couple games, I have two ongoing, I have yet to get anything tier 6 from trader and I am in to day 8 and day 10. I am getting better gear than I can craft, though - so I can see the issue.)

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

Currently the only things crafted are armor and vehicles for us and here and there a tool. Only in MP though. I didn´t craft any weapon, tool or armor in SP so far.

And it´s not only the trader and quest rewards. It´s also the loot.  If you have snow or wasteland nearby, it´s easy to grab some quick way overpowered loot even though you aren´t really suited for those biomes. Even the desert can already make a difference early on. A quick car looting in the wasteland neighbourhood gives you high tier tools almost guaranteed if you have some cars nearby.

The game is so loot heavy right now and has a pretty limited loot pool for a game that focuses so heavily on looting, that this is the logical result with the current loot bonuses for POI´s and biomes.

@retrogamingdev Maybe not completly unrepairable but downgrading when repairing so that you can at least repair it twice or so. But with the current degradation this would be tedious af. Would need an overhaul of durability aswell.

 

[retrogamingdev]

@retrogamingdev Maybe not completly unrepairable but downgrading when repairing so that you can at least repair it twice or so. But with the current degradation this would be tedious af. Would need an overhaul of durability aswell.

True. It would need some nuance to not be completely annoying. Funny thing is I am pretty sure an older version of the game did this, lost quality levels on repair (or something like that). 

Ultimately, I don't think this is the path at all - better to balance the loot availability (both from trader, quest and loot boxes) to severely limit how much high end gear you can get. Or better yet, block the high end stuff behind crafting. For example, You can only get a 4+ tier piece of gear if it was crafted by a player.  Or maybe the player crafted gear gets extra bonuses. Basically, they need to entice people to craft stuff to make the whole system of magazines and learning to be worth while. 

 

[Khalagar]

Gear breaking is an interesting idea. I was thinking just give gear more random stats, so you have the late game goal of finding better gear like an ARPG, but RNG can be really annoying and finding better gear so you can find better gear gets old fast.

If gear broke every so often or if repairing it downgraded it a tier, it would actually give you a lot more reasons to grind late game

 

[RipClaw]

The game still has to be balanced at a fundamental level. Trader rewards are not balanced. The trader handed me a level 6 steel club when I had like 10 club magazines at most read. That means the entire club magazine line is pointless now

The rewards are in no way linked to your crafting skills. The game does not know what you can craft and in what quality.
 

I also don't see how they could balance that. After all, you can be unlucky or lucky with the magazines, so your progress can vary a lot. There is no "The player is level X and therefore has the following crafting skills". The developers can at most balance it based on assumptions and statistics but that's it. It won't work for every player, every playthrough, and every playstyle.

True. It would need some nuance to not be completely annoying. Funny thing is I am pretty sure an older version of the game did this, lost quality levels on repair (or something like that). 

This was the case until Alpha 16, but the game had 600 quality levels back then and you could upgrade items by combining them in the workbench.
 

 

[Khissi]

The rewards are in no way linked to your crafting skills. The game does not know what you can craft and in what quality.
 

I also don't see how they could balance that. After all, you can be unlucky or lucky with the magazines, so your progress can vary a lot. There is no "The player is level X and therefore has the following crafting skills". The developers can at most balance it based on assumptions and statistics but that's it. It won't work for every player, every playthrough, and every playstyle.

This was the case until Alpha 16, but the game had 600 quality levels back then and you could upgrade items by combining them in the workbench.
 

THIS!!  You have to remember that the developers must keep the base game playable for NEW players.  It's a balancing act I'd certainly not wish to try to do, but it's something that they must do.  As long as they're able to create a stable, well crafted base game, all this other can come later on either through mods, or in future settings or DLC once we go gold.  Let them watch and see how it goes and I hope to the gods that they're NEVER going to go off the stuff that gets ranted on here in the forums since the people who are out there enjoying what they've created, don't usually spend all their time here.  They'll come and check when there's an issue or try to find an answer to a problem, but, honestly, they're too busy having fun the rest of the time.

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

The rewards are in no way linked to your crafting skills. The game does not know what you can craft and in what quality.
 

I also don't see how they could balance that. After all, you can be unlucky or lucky with the magazines, so your progress can vary a lot. There is no "The player is level X and therefore has the following crafting skills". The developers can at most balance it based on assumptions and statistics but that's it. It won't work for every player, every playthrough, and every playstyle.

This was the case until Alpha 16, but the game had 600 quality levels back then and you could upgrade items by combining them in the workbench.
 

Wait. You are telling us it´s impossible for the game to know what my crafting skill is? How? It might be a challenge to code it right, but as the game does very well know what my crafting skills are (i mean how else would the game know what i am able to craft and what is still locked?), i am sure it is possible to make a link with the trader rewards/inventory and loot pool. Maybe too much work, but possible for sure.

I also don´t see how this would make the game more complicated. The crafting skills beeing in relation with the rewards/loot/inventory wouldn´t change the gameplay at all. It would still work the same.

And a good balance is something the game needs when going gold. Not months or years after that.

 

[Riamus]

Wait. You are telling us it´s impossible for the game to know what my crafting skill is? How? It might be a challenge to code it right, but as the game does very well know what my crafting skills are (i mean how else would the game know what i am able to craft and what is still locked?), i am sure it is possible to make a link with the trader rewards/inventory and loot pool. Maybe too much work, but possible for sure.

I noticed the wording on that as well but I'm sure they just mean the game doesn't look at your crafting skill and only looks at the various factors that are used to determine quest rewards and trader inventory.  And it really shouldn't look at your crafting skill.  If someone has no interest in crafting and just sells all the magazines they find, they shouldn't be penalized from quest rewards or trader inventory just because they have no crafting skills.  This would break a play style, which is one of the things people are always upset about.

Regarding the other posts here, I think balancing can be done fairly well in terms of slowing down progression through loot, quest rewards and trader inventory even if it's not really possible to balance magazines so they progress at the same rate regardless of number of players.  It just needs more work to get to a good place.  I will say that loot is already reduced a lot from A20 even if you can get a lucky drop, which isn't a bad thing.  Yes, you can still get much better gear in the snow or wasteland biomes but that's intended and isn't likely to change.  If you want to loot there and progress faster, that's up to the player and the game shouldn't have to prevent that.  Again, it breaks a play style.

The big issue is that almost anything they do will break a play style.  People play this in so many different ways that there just isn't any easy way to make changes that won't impact someone's play style either positively or negatively.  They need to look at what will work for the most players (based on Game Sparks info not forum posts) and will still fall in line with the direction they want for the game.  Unfortunately, anything they do will cause issues for certain people.  One of the downsides of playing early access and developing a play style before the game is completed.

Also, bear in mind that in A20, crafting wasn't used by people too often except for specific things like vehicles so saying you progress faster in looting, quest rewards and trader inventory isn't anything new in A21; it is just more obvious because the magazines are making it so people want to craft when they didn't before.  Clothing, weapons, tools, armor were not usually crafted by people because it was so easy to loot it, buy it, or get it from quest rewards.  The magazines got people interested in crafting where many were not in A20.  However, it suffers from the same situation of balance.  I'd say it is better balanced as I actually will craft things sometimes that I had never crafted in A20, mostly because loot levels were decreased.  But it still has more balancing needed because it is still too slow a progression compared to the other options in most cases.  The other problem is the costs in duct tape for crafting stuff in A21 is way too high and so there's less incentive to bother crafting those things.  It's almost worse than crafting in A20 because of that.

 

[meganoth]

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...

Two days for just surviving a horde is overkill, yes. But if you want to make groundwork for a horde base that should last to endgame hordes you want to plan ahead and leave space for the future enhancements at the right places.

Though we probably will drop that game long before because we all got endgame equipment.

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.

Practically it looks like they are just at the second round of balancing. I would call it a bit premature to make predictions from that where TFP wants the balance to ultimately be at. We had the situation where crafting was not doing anything 95% of the time (A20) and it seems to have been one of the reasons to redesign it.

 

[Khalagar]

THIS!!  You have to remember that the developers must keep the base game playable for NEW players. 

None of the suggested changes would affect new players, what are you guys talking about? New players aren't chain doing quests to hit max tier faster than the magazines level up, and even if they do reach high level, they would still be getting rewards that are great. A new player getting to pick between a level 3 autoshotgun or 500 cement or 1,000 gunpowder or something would still give them plenty of excitement and incentive to do quests

Nobody is saying entirely remove rewards, we are saying that being handed a quality 6 version of a weapon completely invalidates the magazine line and means any more you find in loot are straight up trash. There's nothing wrong with saying only players can craft quality 5 and 6 and saying the trader can't give over quality 3 or 4 at most (probably should still be lower though)

 

[meganoth]

@meganoth You said it yourself that he said that several times. I am 100% sure that they exactly knew what this change means in terms of playstyles when they made it. If this isn´t one of your goals why would you willingly force people to a certain playstyle when there is surely other ways to achieve what you want?

But he said it in different context and he didn't say whether that means they will force something or just give incentives or remove incentives to just stay home. I don't remember at all on which occassions or to what he replied this way, but what if he said it when they removed zombie loot bags after more and more players made zombie farms with dozens of forges to farm zombies for example? Or what if he said it after they increased quest loot?

From our position we can not prove anything either way. If you feel 100% sure, good for you. but I hope you'll never get selected as juror

 

[meganoth]

The rewards are in no way linked to your crafting skills. The game does not know what you can craft and in what quality.
 

I also don't see how they could balance that. After all, you can be unlucky or lucky with the magazines, so your progress can vary a lot. There is no "The player is level X and therefore has the following crafting skills". The developers can at most balance it based on assumptions and statistics but that's it. It won't work for every player, every playthrough, and every playstyle.

Sure they are not linked and progression is random. So a game designer would simple assume an average progression from time of play or level/gamestage and gives rewards accordingly. If you are lucky with magazines you would craft your guns and the rewards would be meh. If you are unlucky with magazines the rewards would save you from being underpowered.

As Papa said they could also just check the magazine level but I would not like rewards be linked with magazine levels.

Imagine you have really bad luck and just don't find any magazines for your main gun (and the gun also doesn't drop in loot). Also imagine for simplicity sakes the trader just gives you a gun one quality level above the gun you can craft.

So instead of being a safety net the trader would now give you a gun nearly as bad as the one you have and you would still be outgunned by the zombies. On the other hand if you are lucky with finding magazines and already have an OP gun the trader would give you an even better gun. The trader would not be a corrective. 

 

[theFlu]

I would call it a bit premature to make predictions from that where TFP wants the balance to ultimately be at.

For balance between trader stock / quest rewards / looting, for sure. For crafting, the fact that Q6 has been uncraftable by design for a few patches now is a pretty strong indicator for a vision of relative weakness. The trader may just as well be intentionally OP from alpha to alpha - to get people to play it for testing all the POIs etc - but the split between legendaries and craftables has been a stated design goal since ages. It ain't even wrong IMO, just the people who'd like to be the best manufacturer in the wasteland aren't happy.

And yeh, everything might change over and over again before gold; but it'd be awful quiet in here if we didn't talk about stuff that might still change ...

 

[Roland]

And it´s not only the trader and quest rewards. It´s also the loot.  If you have snow or wasteland nearby, it´s easy to grab some quick way overpowered loot even though you aren´t really suited for those biomes. Even the desert can already make a difference early on. A quick car looting in the wasteland neighbourhood gives you high tier tools almost guaranteed if you have some cars nearby.

Okay, but this isn't really a balance issue. Even once they balance everything perfectly a quick jaunt into a tougher biome is going to net you loot at a higher lootstage. That is the way the game is designed and that is player choice. If you are a player who WANTS to craft your own gear and ENJOYS a slow progression, then don't make those choices. Daring Adventurer, Lucky Looter, Snow, Wasteland, and Desert biomes are all things you can ignore if you don't want the stuff you find and buy to be way beyond what you can craft. For people who love to buy great stuff and gain great rewards and find amazing loot, those perks and going into biomes you aren't suited for are fun.

Things like this will ALWAYS be in the game because it allows players to choose how they want to play. If you go into the wasteland and come back with great loot beyond what you can craft then that is what you want.

 

[meganoth]

For balance between trader stock / quest rewards / looting, for sure. For crafting, the fact that Q6 has been uncraftable by design for a few patches now is a pretty strong indicator for a vision of relative weakness. The trader may just as well be intentionally OP from alpha to alpha - to get people to play it for testing all the POIs etc - but the split between legendaries and craftables has been a stated design goal since ages. It ain't even wrong IMO, just the people who'd like to be the best manufacturer in the wasteland aren't happy.

And yeh, everything might change over and over again before gold; but it'd be awful quiet in here if we didn't talk about stuff that might still change ...

I looked for Madmoles comment on this: https://community.7daystodie.com/topic/28129-alpha-21-dev-diary/?do=findComment&comment=486407

If you allow me to interpret this then he seems to imply that the reasons for not wanting q6 to be craftable do not exist anymore. At the same time he doesn't sound like he would rush to his telephone immediately because he was just reminded of the most important balancing fix of A21.

It sounds more like an issue he hasn't made up his mind about, and that isn't very important to him either way now that the reasons are gone. It definitely does not sound like it has a date attached and I would not be much surprised if it happened a week before gold or never. It might be eventually discussed in a team meeting, or it might never surface again unless players call for its change.

And if they still plan to add legendary weapons into the game (and man, I really hope for that) I can understand that it isn't an important issue for them anyway because it would be temporary.

@pApA^LeGBa In the course of looking for the comment above I also stumbled over this: https://community.7daystodie.com/topic/32098-what-was-the-point-of-the-water-change/?do=findComment&comment=522917

Madmole listed 3 reasons for the water change. Interestingly uniformity is not mentioned as a reason (which supports my impression it was just Roland and me talking about gas and acid being similar). Neither is there a reason "because we want players to go out". Why wouldn't he mention it then? He hasn't been shy of saying it in other contexts.

Okay, but this isn't really a balance issue. Even once they balance everything perfectly a quick jaunt into a tougher biome is going to net you loot at a higher lootstage. That is the way the game is designed and that is player choice. If you are a player who WANTS to craft your own gear and ENJOYS a slow progression, then don't make those choices. Daring Adventurer, Lucky Looter, Snow, Wasteland, and Desert biomes are all things you can ignore if you don't want the stuff you find and buy to be way beyond what you can craft. For people who love to buy great stuff and gain great rewards and find amazing loot, those perks and going into biomes you aren't suited for are fun.

Things like this will ALWAYS be in the game because it allows players to choose how they want to play. If you go into the wasteland and come back with great loot beyond what you can craft then that is what you want.

But lucky looter seems actually quite balanced, especially compared to DA and trader. LL seems almost negligible in early game and only slowly increases its effect. And its best feature is that looting is faster!

 

[theFlu]

If you allow me to interpret this

I'll allow it. Thanks for the link!

I'm hoping that TFP is still looking to make the legendaries (why wouldn't they, funsies to be had).. soo, ye, temporary, at best

 

[RipClaw]

Wait. You are telling us it´s impossible for the game to know what my crafting skill is? How? It might be a challenge to code it right, but as the game does very well know what my crafting skills are (i mean how else would the game know what i am able to craft and what is still locked?), i am sure it is possible to make a link with the trader rewards/inventory and loot pool. Maybe too much work, but possible for sure.

Sure you can do that but currently it is not done and I don't think the Fun Pimps want to do it. I based my statement on the current state of the game and there is no connection between the quest rewards and the crafting skills.

The quest rewards are basically nothing more than a loot group per quest tier and the game picks 5 random items from that loot group.

I also don´t see how this would make the game more complicated. The crafting skills beeing in relation with the rewards/loot/inventory wouldn´t change the gameplay at all. It would still work the same.

It would change some things. Players would not be able to find high quality items or get quest rewards that do not match their skills. Bye bye auger for those who don't have points in Miner69er. Players who have their points in shotguns will never get a good weapon for the vast amounts of 7.68mm ammo etc.

And a good balance is something the game needs when going gold. Not months or years after that.

Balance is something subjective and there are many different aspects to balance between. Not only between what is currently important for you. For example, there must also be a balance between your gear and the gamestage.