PC Water Purifier Mod is OP, My Solution (V1.0 b316 EXP)

[A Wild Commie]

A post from about a year ago talked about this topic before, I just wanted to give my two cents on the matter.


|| Context ||
(apologies for any lack of exact detail, running off my bad memory)
Recently me and two of my friends came back to 7 Days to Die to play the experimental 1.0 of the game, whilst mostly positive one thing did partially nag me. The gripe being that we had found the mod in question. For context, we had only just survived the first horde night, hadn't even made it to the burnt forest, and at the time still had a noticeable struggle with thirst. And like the Vault Dweller, I found a source of water for my people. Though raises the problem at hand.


|| Problem ||
As the title suggests, I believe the mod to be overpowered and here's why: When all us three had found it, we quickly had began to use it to trivialize the thirst and hunger system of the game (why throw out a case of a million dollars that was given to you?). If we were thirsty, we could go to the water source block we had placed down in our base and next to it was a storage box with the said mod inside. (for an idea of how comedically overpowered this item is, one of my friends spam-drunk from the source block to the point of gaining over a 1,000 water on the left side bar, and didn't have to worry about water for a whole hour or so) Obviously this eliminated any worries to be had with thirst, and as such we could use our boiled water in other departments. As mentioned it also trivialized food as whenever we needed food and bacon & eggs weren't around, we could instead just make cornbread. It too allowed my friend to start producing glue a lot more often. As outlined, this trivialization of food and water led to a significant decrease in early survival challenge, and to me it's problematic. So what sort of solution could fix this problem?

|| Solution ||
There are many ways to approach this problem in my opinion, the obvious one is to remove the mod as a whole from the game. However, I think this would remove a unique item and cool idea from seeing its potential. Some in the aforementioned post suggested to add durability to the mod. A decent idea, though I don't like this as I imagine it would be a tad annoying for devs to implement due to it being a mod for headgear. Another solution would be to make it only spawn in later loot stages, though to make it work you would have to find a fine line between mid-game and late-game where it's not an irrelevant item, but also not the literal holy grail, to me I don't think there exists a goldilocks zone of loot stage for the Water Purifier in its current state.
Here's what I purpose: The item is to be converted from a headgear mod that allows unlimited consumption of murky water to a campfire tool that allows the crafting of a recipe that turns one bottle of murky water into two bottles of purified water. I suggest that this item be removed from loot pools, and instead for it to be crafted from a schematic obtained by a trader quest reward. that sends the player to the water works POI in search of industrial blueprints and from the blueprints you gave the trader, they in exchange give you the schematic to make the Water Purifier tool for your campfire. Presumably the special quest would be around tier 3 or so, finding what works well for balance is up to the devs after players give their input.


Quick Summary for those who don't have the time to read multiple paragraphs: I think the water purifier is overpowered and breaks balance, to fix this I think instead of a headpiece mod it should be turned into a tool for the campfire that allows the crafting of two purified water for one murky water, the schematic would be obtained after doing a unique quest that sends the player to the water works POI.

 

[zztong]

How about if it just lowered the chance of dysentery by 6%?

 

[ElCabong]

Take a good long look at all the armor crafting kits you're going to have to make later on and all the water you're going to need to make glue to make duct tape to make all those armor crafting kits. Not to mention cloth.

 

[Replicators]

In real life any form of water purification requires filters and/or pills which are limited in usage, maybe water purification mod can require an ammo counter in usages and you can find water purification tablets in certain places. This would be the most realistic approach i think.

 

[Riamus]

I never even use that mod.  There's no reason to.  A single dew collector gives me plenty of water in SP and 2 in a 2 player game does as well (all 3 mods installed).  I see no reason to swap mods just to drink and I won't use up a mod slot for it.  If people want to min/max, they are free to do so.  Of course, since I don't use the mod, any changes to it will have no effect on me. 

 

[binf_shinana]

With the default settings, the box will overflow with just the dirty water that can be looted, so I rarely use the water purifier mod or the dew collector, but the idea of drinking 1000 water is very interesting. Hats off to my friend's idea.
Yes, it's certainly not OP when you know to some extent what you need, but it may be OP during the play stage, including testing, where you make everything once and check the performance.
However, there are a surprising number of such OPs in this game, so I think it's better for your mental health to accept this as it is.

 

[OneManStanding]

I do believe the water filter hat mod is actually pretty redundant now. You can get dew collectors up and going easily enough. Looted water is generally enough to survive on if you don't plan on making a lot of glue. And if you need to drink from dirty sources in an emergency then vitamins are your answer. Definitely think this mod is a little pointless now and could safely be removed.

 

[warmer]

If it had durability and went down with each use as has been mentioned, this seem like a good solution. Maybe make it 10-20 durability and takes a repair kit to fix. This makes it more of a really nice convenience than an OP mod at that point. 

 

[A Wild Commie]

How about if it just lowered the chance of dysentery by 6%?

I think that would be a better solution than having it axed entirely. As if TFP wanted to keep it closer its original self, and remove its ability to trivialize early game this could be a way to go for them.

 

Take a good long look at all the armor crafting kits you're going to have to make later on and all the water you're going to need to make glue to make duct tape to make all those armor crafting kits. Not to mention cloth.

Getting cloth is rather easy, Savage Country POIs aren't that hard to find early game, and in houses you can get cloth easily from curtains. And as I said before, boiled water from scavenging or dew collectors could be used in cases like this where it would otherwise be used for drinking, as such trivializing early game challenge for me.

 

In real life any form of water purification requires filters and/or pills which are limited in usage, maybe water purification mod can require an ammo counter in usages and you can find water purification tablets in certain places. This would be the most realistic approach i think.

I actually like this idea a good bit, though I think in implementation that details would need to be ironed out. Perhaps making the Water Purifier a workstation or something.

 

I never even use that mod.  There's no reason to.  A single dew collector gives me plenty of water in SP and 2 in a 2 player game does as well (all 3 mods installed).  I see no reason to swap mods just to drink and I won't use up a mod slot for it.  If people want to min/max, they are free to do so.  Of course, since I don't use the mod, any changes to it will have no effect on me. 

That's fair. People's experiences may differ from mine and that of my friend's. Some may agree, and some may disagree.

 

With the default settings, the box will overflow with just the dirty water that can be looted, so I rarely use the water purifier mod or the dew collector, but the idea of drinking 1000 water is very interesting. Hats off to my friend's idea.
Yes, it's certainly not OP when you know to some extent what you need, but it may be OP during the play stage, including testing, where you make everything once and check the performance.
However, there are a surprising number of such OPs in this game, so I think it's better for your mental health to accept this as it is.

I personally find it annoying to have to either do a gentlemen's agreement to not abuse the mod, and instead throw it away or something. Or to use it and have it break the early-game challenge of food and water, in a survival game food and water should be a challenge, but a fun one.

 

I do believe the water filter hat mod is actually pretty redundant now. You can get dew collectors up and going easily enough. Looted water is generally enough to survive on if you don't plan on making a lot of glue. And if you need to drink from dirty sources in an emergency then vitamins are your answer. Definitely think this mod is a little pointless now and could safely be removed.

In a single player game I could agree, by the first horde night I usually have obtained a vault of food and water. Though in my experience I was playing with two others, and food and water wasn't always too easy to come by. At times I had to drop what I was doing to go scavenge for more food and water (this was with two dew collectors and frequent scavenging) I'd prefer a re-work rather than outright removal, but that's my preference.

 

If it had durability and went down with each use as has been mentioned, this seem like a good solution. Maybe make it 10-20 durability and takes a repair kit to fix. This makes it more of a really nice convenience than an OP mod at that point. 

I believe this should be the go-to for a re-worked Water Purifier if they just wanted to change its place in the game. Though I wonder if they were to, what TFP would do to change it.

 

 

[Kosmic Kerman]

If you are willing to swap the mod in and out of your helmet just to drink, the problem is not the water purifier mod. It’s your desire to min/max the game to death. Water is not an issue after you find a cooking pot. You loot plenty and dew collectors are easy to build.

 

[myrkana]

mmm I never actually used it because it was inconvenient. Swapping it everytime I need to drink and having it in my inventory is annoying. We have one in our mod box in case we want to use it. I have far better uses for those slots.

 

[binf_shinana]

I personally find it annoying to have to either do a gentlemen's agreement to not abuse the mod, and instead throw it away or something. Or to use it and have it break the early-game challenge of food and water, in a survival game food and water should be a challenge, but a fun one.

Unfortunately, the food and water challenges become less relevant the more you get used to the game. The more you get used to the game, the more op the sources become.

The biggest problem is that the game doesn't have a very good item drop rate option, because there are loot targets where the item drop rate never drops below 100%. I guess this is to prevent magazine progress from slowing down too much depending on the mode.

Crates containing Shumway therefore always provide the same amount of food, and the resources you get from butchering animals are always the same. There is also infinite water to drink from the river (so you have plenty of ways to prevent dysentery and deal with low health).

There is also a food bundle that gives out a bunch of pasta. This gives you a whopping 20 days worth of food.

I hope your "adjustment" stays at the level TFP expects players to be, and you don't feel any more op.

 

[OneManStanding]

In a single player game I could agree, by the first horde night I usually have obtained a vault of food and water. Though in my experience I was playing with two others, and food and water wasn't always too easy to come by. At times I had to drop what I was doing to go scavenge for more food and water (this was with two dew collectors and frequent scavenging) I'd prefer a re-work rather than outright removal, but that's my preference.

In the previous version of 7 Days to Die we had twenty dew collectors in a two-player game (we had to move them to two fields a safe distance from the base once the heat factor was added in -- screamer city), but we found we had to make industrial quantities of glue at times to make upgraded equipment for both of us at once. We passed on stews for steak and chips because we couldn't waste the water to drink and eat, and you needed to buy a water filter to build any more dew collectors -- which was a major expendature of dukes for us as the price went up as you can imagine.

...sometimes I wish this game had haggling in it, like in Monty Python And The Life of Brian, lol...

This time around, however - with the gatherer and tarp mod in two of them - we have just three dew collectors. Combined with the knock-on changes in crafting across the board, they have so far done us and we're making red tea and stews as well as glue. No longer needing the filter component to make a dew collector means you can quite easily throw another one up if you need it. There's no reason why water should be a problem in this current new iteration of the game, which is why I think the water purifier hat mod seems like a bit of an appendix to me now.

 

[Mister Forgash]

Honestly, I'm surprised to hear the purifier mod to be considered OP, but there's some decent argument .. I wouldn't mind if it had a durability- but durability on mods is a slippery slope and I don't want to end up repairing my scope, rad removers, grip, etc mods before every horde night.

.. Getting up to 1000 water ticking sounds really cool, but in my own playthroughs water is pretty much solved by day 3 once I have an extra dew collector and a dedicated campfire for boiling. Personally, putting the mod in and out every time I got thirsty sounds like it would be a chore, probably wouldn't do it.. if It does need rebalancing, I'd rather dysentery chance remains 0, and maybe the hp penalty goes from 0 to -2 which is pretty trivial, but will cost meds if you're going to spam it.

 

[Riamus]

An alternative is a cooldown timer on the water purifier mod.  It only prevents dysentery once every minute or two.  You can't really spam a water source with it that way, making it really just useful for murky water jars rather than the small water you get from a single handful.  ** I actually don't know if a handful and a jar are the same amount for murky.  If they are, then it works the same for both.

Since I don't use the mod, I don't know if this is a good option or not for people who want it but don't want the option to spam it.  But it's an option.

 

[A Wild Commie]

If you are willing to swap the mod in and out of your helmet just to drink, the problem is not the water purifier mod. It’s your desire to min/max the game to death. Water is not an issue after you find a cooking pot. You loot plenty and dew collectors are easy to build.

It's not 'min/max to death', it's a step or two more than you would take to normally drink water, for infinite water. The devs encourage it, it's not the player's fault.

 

mmm I never actually used it because it was inconvenient. Swapping it everytime I need to drink and having it in my inventory is annoying. We have one in our mod box in case we want to use it. I have far better uses for those slots.

That's fair, some people might find it that way. When we played it was just a source of infinite hydration lol.

 

Unfortunately, the food and water challenges become less relevant the more you get used to the game. The more you get used to the game, the more op the sources become.

The biggest problem is that the game doesn't have a very good item drop rate option, because there are loot targets where the item drop rate never drops below 100%. I guess this is to prevent magazine progress from slowing down too much depending on the mode.

Crates containing Shumway therefore always provide the same amount of food, and the resources you get from butchering animals are always the same. There is also infinite water to drink from the river (so you have plenty of ways to prevent dysentery and deal with low health).

There is also a food bundle that gives out a bunch of pasta. This gives you a whopping 20 days worth of food.

I hope your "adjustment" stays at the level TFP expects players to be, and you don't feel any more op.

That's all rather true, I hope once 1.0 is pushed out and updates become more prevalent that they tweak the looting in the game more. Looting is always really weird in the current state it's in.

 

In the previous version of 7 Days to Die we had twenty dew collectors in a two-player game (we had to move them to two fields a safe distance from the base once the heat factor was added in -- screamer city), but we found we had to make industrial quantities of glue at times to make upgraded equipment for both of us at once. We passed on stews for steak and chips because we couldn't waste the water to drink and eat, and you needed to buy a water filter to build any more dew collectors -- which was a major expendature of dukes for us as the price went up as you can imagine.

...sometimes I wish this game had haggling in it, like in Monty Python And The Life of Brian, lol...

This time around, however - with the gatherer and tarp mod in two of them - we have just three dew collectors. Combined with the knock-on changes in crafting across the board, they have so far done us and we're making red tea and stews as well as glue. No longer needing the filter component to make a dew collector means you can quite easily throw another one up if you need it. There's no reason why water should be a problem in this current new iteration of the game, which is why I think the water purifier hat mod seems like a bit of an appendix to me now.

Yeah the old necessity of the water filter when crafting was always a bit silly, glad it is how it is now. I feel that 7DTD is at a state now where they got the main mechanics down, and that they just need to add on to them and flesh them out more.

But yeah, once you get the mods for a couple of dew collectors (2-4) you're mostly set when it comes to water.

 

Honestly, I'm surprised to hear the purifier mod to be considered OP, but there's some decent argument .. I wouldn't mind if it had a durability- but durability on mods is a slippery slope and I don't want to end up repairing my scope, rad removers, grip, etc mods before every horde night.

.. Getting up to 1000 water ticking sounds really cool, but in my own playthroughs water is pretty much solved by day 3 once I have an extra dew collector and a dedicated campfire for boiling. Personally, putting the mod in and out every time I got thirsty sounds like it would be a chore, probably wouldn't do it.. if It does need rebalancing, I'd rather dysentery chance remains 0, and maybe the hp penalty goes from 0 to -2 which is pretty trivial, but will cost meds if you're going to spam it.

Yeah the potential re-balancing of it would be something of discussion amongst the devs, as you stated it, it could be a slippery slope if they did add durability to the purifier mod. I think adding a health penalty could be a decent way to counteract in comedic spam drinking you can do with it, though there's many ways to approach the issue.

 

An alternative is a cooldown timer on the water purifier mod.  It only prevents dysentery once every minute or two.  You can't really spam a water source with it that way, making it really just useful for murky water jars rather than the small water you get from a single handful.  ** I actually don't know if a handful and a jar are the same amount for murky.  If they are, then it works the same for both.

Since I don't use the mod, I don't know if this is a good option or not for people who want it but don't want the option to spam it.  But it's an option.

IIRC it's the exact same stats as if you drank bottled murky water, but my favorite minor change that's been suggested thus far is from Mister Forgash suggesting TFP to add a health penalty but keep the dysentery resistance. 

 

[MechanicalLens]

I honestly wouldn't mind it if the water purifier didn't protect you from the health damage by consuming murky water; it could just remove the dysentery chance. Either that, or keep it as is but always have it spawn at a higher loot stage. (Ex. 100+)