PC Traders are boring now... super, super boring.

[Thunder]

I've never posted here before.  I have loved the game for a long time.  Favorite survival game hands down.  Got my money's worth 1000 times over.  When I eventually got bored with vanilla I found Undead Legacy began a torrid affair that lasted up to Update 21.  Subquake's Undead Legacy is fantastic, best mod I've ever seen in any game.  So when I say Update 21 is almost as good as a mod for the game that's been around for a long time, that might sound like an insult but it's really high praise.  The 7D2D developers have made something almost as good as a really great thing someone else already did by themselves a long time ago, that's saying a lot.

There are quite a few areas U21 falls short.  Primary amongst them to me is traders are boring now... super, super boring.  I used to be like a kid drooling over the Christmas section of the Sears Catalog pining away for this and that, oh, and I've gotta get THAT!  Trader restock in 2 days!?  I need to make some money... FAST!  Now I'm like an old mad flipping through the Walgreens sale flyer.  There's nothing here I really want, except, well, I guess I could use some of this boring consumable here, and I guess that's not a bad price for that boring consumable there.  I used to be perpetually broke, now on day 16 I've got like 50 grand.

Oh, get this, I just unlocked Tier 4 quests.  I grabbed all my Dukes, everything from my sellables box, a Sugarbutts and headed out to the new vendor.  Surely they were going to have something awesome when I got there and I wasn't about to show up empty handed.  ON DAY 16 the big item they had was a bicycle frame!  I didn't even bother selling off my loot, I just turned in the quest and rode home on my minibike with my head hanging low.  What a colossal dissappointment.

There are so very many things that are a lot better about the game, but overall it just feels slower and ultimately quite boring.  I am excited to see what Subquake does with it though.

For as long as I've been playing the game, every time I open a safe and it has stupid boring stuff inside it has made me like .1% more angry.  Now, with all the boring loot in the world and nothing fun or exciting at the vendors, each boring safe (which is like 99.9999%) of them, makes me like 10% more angry.  An immediate fix that would add a lot of fun and excitement would be to make it so that safes can only be opened with a special explosive shape charge that would call in a mini horde night wave.  Put something really good in the safe, like ONLY tier 6 items, in fact, that could even be they only way to get tier 6 items.  Then finding a safe would be super exciting.  You'd have to build a little horde base around it.  You'd have to use some strategy, use your noodle a bit.

You really need to add something fun back to the game because as it stands it's:  do work, get 1% better stuff, zombies get 1% more difficult, do more work, get 1% better stuff, zombies get 1% more difficult, do more work, get 1% better stuff...

 

[Lokeus]

Thinking about it... you are absolutely right. Trader was much fun before, but also pushed you a much forwards. So i guess they should add the option "Spawn Traders: ON/OFF" and turning back to old traders with exciting and expensive stuff which really hypes you. Also there a enough out there who don`t like the trader at all. TFP could just remove the trader and let the trader spot be an abandonded place to scavenge. And maybe use as a base

 

[Gideon]

Traders stock is tied closely to gamestage, which is tied closely to the day cycle. Day 16 is very early in the gamestage. Dunno what to tell you. Often developers, when they get this kind of feedback, will increase the number of things you need to do in order to advance the tier so that it syncs more closely to the expected gamestage for that tier. Things like, more quests required, or some special tasks that take multiple steps to accomplish. The objective being have your play time sync up more closely with expected time to progress.

I have no idea what TFP will do, if anything, about the situation you are experiencing.

 

[Thunder]

Traders stock is tied closely to gamestage, which is tied closely to the day cycle. Day 16 is very early in the gamestage. Dunno what to tell you. Often developers, when they get this kind of feedback, will increase the number of things you need to do in order to advance the tier so that it syncs more closely to the expected gamestage for that tier. Things like, more quests required, or some special tasks that take multiple steps to accomplish. The objective being have your play time sync up more closely with expected time to progress.

I have no idea what TFP will do, if anything, about the situation you are experiencing.

 It's not that I don't understand how it works, it's that you don't seem to understand that isn't how it worked before the update.  Before the update, there could be motorcycles, machine guns, silencers, baseball bats, or all sorts of other fun stuff on day 1 at the trader.  Obviously you could not afford any of it on day 1, but it gave you something to get excited about.  To put it another way, there was always something I wanted to buy at the trader.

Now there is literally nothing I want to buy at the trader.  This is new.  This is a change.  This is a result of their tying trader stock closely to gamestage.  That's the problem.

It's FUN to get something more powerful than you would otherwise have at a given point in the game.  The overall affect of Update 21, an excellent update in most regards, is that there is no way to have fun, at least for players like me.  You can't buy anything fun and you can't craft anything fun.  All the fun is gated behind endless hours of slow small step progression.  I don't want to dig for a couple days with a tier 1 stone shovel and then updated to a tier 2, 3, 4, 5, and then iron 1, 2, 3...  I want to raid a bunch of houses, do a bunch of quests, buy a motorcycle and a good gun to take on something more challenging and rewarding.

They have changed the direction of the game.  It is their prerogative to do so.  I'm just giving them feedback about their change in direction.  To me, and players like me, which I would imagine is the solid majority of players, the game is all about looting.  You want to loot something big, something cool, something that makes you excited.  Getting a mid tier iron shovel when you're rockin' a tier 1 stone shovel is kind of exciting, getting a tier 3 stone shovel is boring.

So far, and granted I'm only on day 16, but also, I'm already on day 16, my playthrough has been extremely mundane and boring.  I've looted nothing exciting, the vendors don't have anything exciting, it's just a slow trudge up the tier list one small step at a time and there is no end in sight.  If you call yourself The Fun Pimps, then fun should be a primary focus in your game.  Oh!  Look!  I just looted a tier 2 iron shovel!  It's 2 points better than my tier 5 stone shovel, but alas, since it can't hold as many mods it's actually not as good.  Fun.

 

[Gideon]

I appreciate your frustration, but don't assume that I don't understand how it worked before. Also, do not assume that I don't understand your frustration.

I'm trying to lay out the details of the issue for the general public, and how I've seen developers address these kinds of issues.

Perhaps using that context, we can provide some constructive feedback on how your issue can be addressed. Do you have some suggestions along those lines?

 

[Crater Creator]

...To me, and players like me, which I would imagine is the solid majority of players, the game is all about looting.  You want to loot something big, something cool, something that makes you excited.  Getting a mid tier iron shovel when you're rockin' a tier 1 stone shovel is kind of exciting, getting a tier 3 stone shovel is boring.

So far, and granted I'm only on day 16, but also, I'm already on day 16, my playthrough has been extremely mundane and boring.  I've looted nothing exciting, the vendors don't have anything exciting, it's just a slow trudge up the tier list one small step at a time and there is no end in sight.  If you call yourself The Fun Pimps, then fun should be a primary focus in your game.  Oh!  Look!  I just looted a tier 2 iron shovel!  It's 2 points better than my tier 5 stone shovel, but alas, since it can't hold as many mods it's actually not as good.  Fun.

I don’t think the game has gotten away from being “all about looting.” In fact with the move to magazines, I think the game is even more about looting than before. It sounds like what you don’t like is the granularity. I’ve felt that about some aspects of the game at different times. For instance, a lot of skills have five levels when three would make each point spent feel more meaningful.

Traders have been overly important for a long time.

There are several ways they might’ve addressed that: higher prices, worse inventory, or less inventory. Higher prices could’ve worked, but only if the whole economy was already balanced well. One loophole/imbalance to get easy money is all it would take for higher prices to not matter. So they focused on trader stage, to produce worse inventory (more proportional to what you can find/craft elsewhere). That seems okay, in that traders still have stuff I want to buy (notably the water filter). I would’ve liked for them to also focus on less inventory, though. I feel like traders still have a lot of inventory to browse through. I would’ve expected a trader to only have a page or two of items that aren’t their specialty. Because like you point out, this isn’t a Walgreen’s. It’s what a few survivors have bartered for in a post-apocalyptic economy. My impression may change as I get into the later game though.

 

[Survior]

I appreciate your frustration, but don't assume that I don't understand how it worked before. Also, do not assume that I don't understand your frustration.

You're trying to tell OP that they don't understand how it works, don't be offended that you were reminded how it actually worked, motorcycles and gyro copters on day1 for example, etc etc. The OP is describing a real situation (virtually real) and you are trying to say it's games stage, when it's not.

 

[Zerginfestor]

I don’t think the game has gotten away from being “all about looting.” In fact with the move to magazines, I think the game is even more about looting than before. It sounds like what you don’t like is the granularity. I’ve felt that about some aspects of the game at different times. For instance, at lot of skills have five levels when three would make each point spent feel more meaningful.

Traders have been overly important for a long time.

Until now, that is. I rarely found anything useful for them during my play session, vs A20, if you knew what to do, you gain access to a plethora of fun stuff to look at/grab, which was a benefit of intense looting/exploration as well as base building. Now however, I don't feel the urge to base build early game, I was just using a shoddy shack PoI that has 2 stories as a temporary base, and due to the very slow nature of the progression, which I have to say is even slower than doing things normally in A20, I would've probably lived in that PoI till probably day 30 if it weren't for the trader bug that caused me to abandon the run. 

 

[Greymantle]

It's funny to see people complaining about the traders who have been WAY OP for far too long. I go back way before traders were put into the game, and they have been OP from the start. Try playing a multi-player server and have balance between those that use the trader and those that don't. It's not even close, the trader wins hands down. Balance between the traders and the rest of the game is an issue they will never fix.

If you want more balance with what ever systems you enjoy and want even more OP traders, you will have to move to mods like the rest of us.

 

[fragtzack]

I like that the traders have less. Delays the end game, makes you work more to progress. 

a21 is a win for me.

Lighting is a different story though. a21 really screwed the pooch on lighting.

 

[Archael]

Thinking about it... you are absolutely right. Trader was much fun before, but also pushed you a much forwards. So i guess they should add the option "Spawn Traders: ON/OFF" and turning back to old traders with exciting and expensive stuff which really hypes you. Also there a enough out there who don`t like the trader at all. TFP could just remove the trader and let the trader spot be an abandonded place to scavenge. And maybe use as a base

In later version, this should be NPCs: on/off
Or two settings, seperated for traders and bandits.

 

[AtomicUs5000]

Once upon a time, it was a matter of preference. You could go the route of using the trader to get what you needed,  or you could choose to fend for yourself and maybe use the trader to spend your hard-earned dukes to get something you need right away or extremely rare if you were lucky enough and the trader had it. If you relied solely on the trader from the start, you might end up making things difficult for yourself later when you don't have many dukes and need something rare. You could always get more out of the world than the trader if you were willing to put the work in.

 

[Vaeliorin]

I went from q5 Iron Knuckles to q5 Steel Knuckles thanks to the trader.  More significantly, I went from a q5 AK to a q5 M60 bought from the trader.  So you can find good things there, they're just more rare.

 

[Survior]

I went from q5 Iron Knuckles to q5 Steel Knuckles thanks to the trader.  More significantly, I went from a q5 AK to a q5 M60 bought from the trader.  So you can find good things there, they're just more rare.

Yet that didn't happen one day1 it happened when you had an advanced game stage. It also sold you the only thing that laughably destroys the reason for the new book progression.

 

[Vaeliorin]

Yet that didn't happen one day1 it happened when you had an advanced game stage. It also sold you the only thing that laughably destroys the reason for the new book progression.

It was Day 16 (though I play on 2 hours days.)

Regardless, I'd be absolutely fine with them nerfing what the trader can sell.  I honestly almost never buy that sort of stuff from the trader (my trader purchases are usually limited to books, beakers, maybe an important mod like the harvesting ones, possibly some meds if I don't have any antibiotics, and solar.)

 

[Lokeus]

It was Day 16 (though I play on 2 hours days.)

Regardless, I'd be absolutely fine with them nerfing what the trader can sell.  I honestly almost never buy that sort of stuff from the trader (my trader purchases are usually limited to books, beakers, maybe an important mod like the harvesting ones, possibly some meds if I don't have any antibiotics, and solar.)

My latest experiences also says that looking through traders inventory can be a neat thing to do, there may be some fewer usable items, prior to books of course. I like this feeling too. There is this skill i don`t know the name in english, which improve the rarity of traders items. This can bring back some excitement to me i noticed, you also have to skill intelligence for it, guess this won`t be the thing i will do in every new run. What i also like is the quantity of different items is really wide, what i disliked is, many of them just stay even on traders day new selection. Also noticed: The one city i am playing at right now got 3 different traders in it!!! It is fun to give it a try for checking all of them on one day from time to time, just as before, but you don`t even have to travel to a completely another city. Have you experienced that too? This way you can link some interesting logistic tasks to your day. I like these minor changes which affects in a big change of your gameplay - when you are flexible and are willing to divorce from your old way of playing Also staying one or two days in the wilderness now can be fun and enjoyable.

 

[ElCabong]

I just got a ql 5 desert vulture reward from a trader mission. It was in a box that said desert vulture parts I think.

Most of the time I haven't been to impressed with the stuff but now that I look at it, I got every weapon I wanted from a trader. I got a compound crossbow, baseball bat, and the desert vulture. I bought the parts I needed to make my pistols and could have made bows except I got the compound crossbow very early so I haven't made any.

I'm not so sure the traders have a problem anymore. It's a perception problem for sure.

This is also the sort of thing that the very next game I play might leave me very disappointed with the traders.