PC Traders are OP

M

Maxx_98

New member
Everyone has their own play style and enjoy different aspects of the game. For me, I enjoy a slower power progression and to me the traders almost make the game to easy.

You potentially get early access to a WS, Forge, Chem station and/or Mixer. Running quests gives nice items and dukes to buy almost whatever you need.

Ive stopped using them and along with 75% loot drops I'm having a lot slower progression and enjoying it.

I did see a mod for a wandering trader that I might try. Hoping it's something you find rarely and has very limited and expensive loot.

Personally, I'd like to the traders have stupid expensive

limited items that you really have to earn. They shouldn't buy just about everything either. As of now, short of buying solar panels everything else is trivial. Even those become a non issue in fairly short order with the sell prices. Repair an item and toss in a few mods and you are getting 20k+ per POI clear.

 
From a survival game aspect, I can see how they detract from it. It would be nice to see an option at some point that either limits the stock of what traders have to buy/sell (e.g. tied to loot abundance) or the number of traders max per map...

 
Pretty much everything in this game is mod-able through xml files. That is what makes this game amazing.

Take a look at the files. If you break something, you can always put it back.

 
Up until A18 I never used traders. They were kind of unimportant background noise to me.

Now the game pushes me to use them. This has taken a lot away from the survival part of the game. Right from day one, I’m no longer alone in the world, forming a mutually beneficial relationship as I accept that first quest.

I’ve accepted that the game has changed and I can appreciate that I now use a large portion of the game that I previously ignored for what seems like forever.

However, I think now that TFP have proven the traders’ worth, there needs to be some buildup before you have access to them. This could be done several ways. Perhaps you find the trader somewhere else because the outpost was overrun with zombies and you have to clear it and help him/her rebuild its defenses before it is operational. Of course since you are just starting out, you’ll have to gather some weapons and armor first.

 
Up until A18 I never used traders. They were kind of unimportant background noise to me. Now the game pushes me to use them. This has taken a lot away from the survival part of the game. Right from day one, I’m no longer alone in the world, forming a mutually beneficial relationship as I accept that first quest.

I’ve accepted that the game has changed and I can appreciate that I now use a large portion of the game that I previously ignored for what seems like forever.

However, I think now that TFP have proven the traders’ worth, there needs to be some buildup before you have access to them. This could be done several ways. Perhaps you find the trader somewhere else because the outpost was overrun with zombies and you have to clear it and help him/her rebuild its defenses before it is operational. Of course since you are just starting out, you’ll have to gather some weapons and armor first.
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I think that would be a fabulous idea and hope the devs consider something like that. As much as I do appreciate and enjoy what the current implementation of the trader system. It does make surving the apocalypse so much easier. There will probably be many opinions on how much is too litte/too much when it comes to the trader system which is why I think there should be a tie in to one of the existing settings (or new one) so players can tweak the survival experience to match their tastes.

On the flip side, if the devs run out of time to develop it further, at least there is enough accessible to the modding community to create some mods for it...

 
Up until A18 I never used traders. They were kind of unimportant background noise to me. Now the game pushes me to use them. This has taken a lot away from the survival part of the game. Right from day one, I’m no longer alone in the world, forming a mutually beneficial relationship as I accept that first quest.

I’ve accepted that the game has changed and I can appreciate that I now use a large portion of the game that I previously ignored for what seems like forever.

However, I think now that TFP have proven the traders’ worth, there needs to be some buildup before you have access to them. This could be done several ways. Perhaps you find the trader somewhere else because the outpost was overrun with zombies and you have to clear it and help him/her rebuild its defenses before it is operational. Of course since you are just starting out, you’ll have to gather some weapons and armor first.
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It’s easy. Cancel the tutorial quest chain. The trader quest will never start and you may have a full week or more before finding one. That will give you time on your own surviving and experiencing that part of the game. I’ve done it and it is a tougher start—especially without the skillpoint booster shot you get from it.

 
Vendors are definitely OP in their current form. My latest map I could have had a fully functional Gyrocopter in the first few days if I felt like grinding out dukes enough. It would be nice to see their inventory be dependent on gamestage as well. That way you won't see certain things until you have progressed so far in the game.

I'm hoping they will change the way traders work when they add in factions. Would be nice to see all the traders at one base, higher faction rep gives you access to the different traders and the higher your rep the better loot they will sell you. When you first join maybe you only have access to a food vendor that will sell you just the basic food ingredients. Then you can unlock a vendor for better weapons and armor but they only will sell you basic stuff until you show you are trustworthy enough to get access to the "good stuff".

 
Vendors are definitely OP in their current form. My latest map I could have had a fully functional Gyrocopter in the first few days if I felt like grinding out dukes enough.
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If you find the schematics or the parts of the Gyrocopter you can get it without a trader. For example, I had the minibike on day 3 because I found one part of the minibike and could make the other part based on a found schematic.

 
It’s easy. Cancel the tutorial quest chain. The trader quest will never start and you may have a full week or more before finding one. That will give you time on your own surviving and experiencing that part of the game. I’ve done it and it is a tougher start—especially without the skillpoint booster shot you get from it.
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That is true. It would be nice to have to explore and find the trader on my own. Of corse a lot is going to depend on randomness, like where you happen to spawn and where the trader happened to be placed, but still.

 
Honestly, lore-wise the traders make no sense.

The trader's won't let you stay in their location for the night. The main "threat" of the game is the blood moons. If the trader and the trading post are invincible to zombies, then there's no LORE reason to keep out the player. Assuming that the trader would NOT be invincible, then whether the player is geared up and proven or not, it would be in the trader's best interest to have ANOTHER living, breathing, zombie-fighting body with them as much as possible. If the trader is going to trust another human to approach them with a drawn pistol, then there's no reason to kick another surviving human outside at night. Clearly the trader is meant to be a part of a larger NPC-driven game, because otherwise who is the trader trading with? If there are eventually going to be non-hostile NPC settlements, the traders make sense, but then the main threat of the game (the nighttime hordes being the biggest danger) makes no sense, since the player SHOULD just stay with and defend the settlement during nights/blood moons.

In short. Traders and hordes are rather mutually exclusive. Either it makes sense to hole up with NPCs during a horde, or the threat has to include keeping the settlements alive by making the survivor leave and run quests vital to the settlements.

Making hordes in the game that, for no logical lore reason, you can't join forces with the NPCs to fight against makes no sense. Introducing permanent NPCs into a game where the player is dissuaded from, or forced into avoiding joining forces with against the main enemy makes no sense.

 
It’s easy. Cancel the tutorial quest chain. The trader quest will never start and you may have a full week or more before finding one. That will give you time on your own surviving and experiencing that part of the game. I’ve done it and it is a tougher start—especially without the skillpoint booster shot you get from it.
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That's not going to help. It will only delay the inevitable. Traders scale really, really well with your character's power via Barter, Daring Adventurer and quest tier progression. Eventually you will reach a point where most activities in the game pale in comparison to chaining high-level quests; they are just that good.

I really like the idea of actively building up your own trader's power. At the very minimum it will make trader power growth much smoother. Hm... now that's an interesting idea for a mod.

 
Traders are just a nudge away from creative mode I think.

I will need to mod them to only carry basic stuffs like some building materials and some other basic junk.

Not forges and great guns and nightvisions and whatnot.

The questing system is wonky too. Just how much resources does this man have? letting a player do a few quests a week maybe, not chainquesting.

This I certainly hope is a huge work-in-progress though.

 
It’s easy. Cancel the tutorial quest chain. The trader quest will never start and you may have a full week or more before finding one. That will give you time on your own surviving and experiencing that part of the game. I’ve done it and it is a tougher start—especially without the skillpoint booster shot you get from it.
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Roleplaying again?

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Up until A18 I never used traders. They were kind of unimportant background noise to me. Now the game pushes me to use them.
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Same.

I don't really mind though. If they were nerfed or removed the early part of the game would be an unplayable bore I think.

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The questing system is wonky too. Just how much resources does this man have? letting a player do a few quests a week maybe, not chainquesting.
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Bye bye end-game.

 
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Isn't that also a problem if it's the trader that provides the endgame content? :/
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Well any old NPC could be added to give out quests. Holo's point was that the quest-giver (regardless of who he is) was giving out too many quests and they should be limited to only a few per week.

 
Why should this be "bye bye endgame"? Endgame should be difficult too, not just a hello-kitty-wonderland.

Basically farming coins and rewards from nothing else then chaining quests is not just easy, it's boring.

I also don't know what you need from the trader for endgame? Basically only brass-stuff finally the tokens itself, but they should be limited anyway, so that you need to think what to spend your brass on, not just: "Oh, still not enough? No problem, do one more quest".

The traders give you so many coins for quests but they buy so less stuff. There should be other possibilities to get larger amounts of coins. Mass produce food and sell it, sell stuff you don't need that important. But that works only very limited because they don't buy things or if they do, they buy only a very little amount.

 
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Why minimize possibilities?

I do not quiet get the idea of the thread: Nobody forces anybody to go to the traders if he does not want. Everybody has the possibility to go to a trader if he wants. So, all people have the possibility to become happy. They only need to do what they have FUN with. And to restrain from doing what they have NO FUN with. All CAN very well become happy, NO ONE is forced to become unhappy.

So why all that discussion around how to restrict the game variability?!?

By shrinking the variability, you will anger some people who actually LIKE what you want to shrink.

I would suggest to be a little bit more considerate about that matter...

 
I wanted to see what the game would be like without traders so yesterday I wrote a modlet to remove the traders at world generation and to get rid of the challenge quests since there is no trader to turn them into.

So far, I love it. It feels like the game used to, where I am alone in the apocalypse and surviving is entirely on my shoulders. There are no quests to do to get dukes to buy food or items and I don't feel compelled to settle in a specific area because it's near the trader. I can just... go. Wherever I want. Everything I do is about finding resources, but there's no easy fallback at the trader and no checking back every few days for restock. It's liberating.

 
So far, I love it. It feels like the game used to, where I am alone in the apocalypse and surviving is entirely on my shoulders.
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I don't see where it is necessary to be the only one that survived whatever.

The story of the game is not necessary that you are the last person left on earth. If you want to play like that, ok, but it is not necessarily the lore of the game.

It is just zombie survival, not "last man on earth".

 
Roleplaying again?
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No. Roleplaying would be to do the tutorial quest but then choose to stay away from the trader because you are roleplaying that you don't know if he can be trusted and you want to establish yourself first so you can go in fully armed just in case.

What I said was to actually go into your user interface to the quest screen right after you wipe your brow and cancel the tutorial quest. You could roleplay off of that but really its more like you are toggling a setting-- like if there was a setting in the main menu to turn the tutorial quest on or off and you chose off to increase the challenge of the early game. But you do it from within the game instead of before it starts. Once you cancel the tutorial quest the trader finder quest never starts so until you actually come across him you will be surviving without the trader.

You literally don't know where he his instead of pretending you don't know where he is to satisfy a made up story.

Capiche?

 
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