PC You cant balance Sp and Mp in the same game

Kage848

Kage848

Stream Team
So there's no way to balance the game for the sp game and the mp game without a key game option. Skill point options.

I love the idea of specialization in mp. I really do, it's a fantastic idea. Not so much for sp though.

In mp you can get a group of 3 friends, work together, and do it all. In sp, your screwed. Now that's not the state of the game today but im worried its heading that way.

The reverse is true too. If you give the sp all the stuff he wants, not even nessesarly all the perks but the good ones, then the mp game get screwed because there little to no need to specialize.

So, 1 game option, just 1. Hey if you can add 4 different run speed options you can add this lol. Just an option to adjust how many points we get per level. I dont even want that many more tbh, many like 1 extra point every 2 or 3 levels. You could then let the players balance the skills in there mp game by changing the skill points in the opposite way, like 3 or 4 points per level, for maximum specialization.

You wont get any kind of real balance giving the same amount of perk points to both sp and mp, just wont work.

 
Got to say, I agree with your concerns. Possible two different systems though? Offline progression versus online progression?

Overall I'm just surprised they've taken the level gates out. I mean, sure, few liked them - most tolerated them - but it was such a big change why release it for just a few builds then nix it? If they had confidence in the direction they are moving then they really shouldn't be doing a u-turn. Now if we could just address the weapons levels vs damage/quality that would be great.

 
So there's no way to balance the game for the sp game and the mp game without a key game option. Skill point options.
I love the idea of specialization in mp. I really do, it's a fantastic idea. Not so much for sp though.

In mp you can get a group of 3 friends, work together, and do it all. In sp, your screwed. Now that's not the state of the game today but im worried its heading that way.

The reverse is true too. If you give the sp all the stuff he wants, not even nessesarly all the perks but the good ones, then the mp game get screwed because there little to no need to specialize.

So, 1 game option, just 1. Hey if you can add 4 different run speed options you can add this lol. Just an option to adjust how many points we get per level. I dont even want that many more tbh, many like 1 extra point every 2 or 3 levels. You could then let the players balance the skills in there mp game by changing the skill points in the opposite way, like 3 or 4 points per level, for maximum specialization.

You wont get any kind of real balance giving the same amount of perk points to both sp and mp, just wont work.
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This is a really good point and shouldn't be very hard to implement. The game already knows whether it's a SP or MP game because pause either does or does not work. So setting single player game to scale XP up, give additional points per level or flatten the point cost curve for higher level perks (whichever fits the design philosophy best) would help the SP progression.

 
What about on a server with groups and solo players? How do you balance that?
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In my opinion, you'd have to treat all players on an MP server as MP players, even if they choose to play solo all the time. It would be impossible to balance changes in skill point gains for players who are sometimes part of a group and sometimes not.

I suppose you could have a mechanism for players to declare themselves solo players on the server, at which point they would be made unable to join any groups but I'm not sure that would be a fun solution for players.

 
What if... you are not supposed to play the exact same way in SP and MP?

What if... using traders and actually finding loot instead of having it all crafted matters now?

What if... you are supposed to be more limited solo, because that's how people work?

If the game is too hard for you, play with creative mode on or mod files yourself.

The direction they are taking right now was always supposed to be a thing.

Maybe instead of trying to max every single stat and perk you should not plan your progression and make sacrifices? You know, like in ALL RPG GAMES.

 
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If the game is too hard for you, play with creative mode on or mod files yourself.The direction they are taking right now was always supposed to be a thing.

Maybe instead of trying to max every single stat and perk you should not plan your progression and make sacrifices? You know, like in ALL RPG GAMES.
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Nobody here is complaining its too hard.

 
What if... you are not supposed to play the exact same way in SP and MP?
What if... using traders and actually finding loot instead of having it all crafted matters now?

What if... you are supposed to be more limited solo, because that's how people work?

If the game is too hard for you, play with creative mode on or mod files yourself.

The direction they are taking right now was always supposed to be a thing.

Maybe instead of trying to max every single stat and perk you should not plan your progression and make sacrifices? You know, like in ALL RPG GAMES.
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So your answer is screw solo players. Noted.

 
What if... you are not supposed to play the exact same way in SP and MP?
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I could be wrong here, but I don't think that's the point Kage is raising. If you allow people to specialise then MP will always benefit from it because there are simply more people to take up those specialities. Roll that into SP and you could end up with character progression that leaves players unable to achieve certain skills. That's obviously conjecture just now, we'll need some time to see where the balancing goes.

 
What about on a server with groups and solo players? How do you balance that?
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Good point.

But I think encouraging people playing on mp servers to work with other players is a good thing. Otherwise why play mp?

 
What if... you are not supposed to play the exact same way in SP and MP?
What if... using traders and actually finding loot instead of having it all crafted matters now?

What if... you are supposed to be more limited solo, because that's how people work?

If the game is too hard for you, play with creative mode on or mod files yourself.

The direction they are taking right now was always supposed to be a thing.

Maybe instead of trying to max every single stat and perk you should not plan your progression and make sacrifices? You know, like in ALL RPG GAMES.
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What if...in order to move quickly around the map, you need a motorcycle, since the quests can be several hours of walking or biking away - or any other non-trader-offered reward?

what if...you want to shoot, but that means you can't carry crap or have to move at a snail's pace in SP because you can't get those strength perks?

what if...the spreading of basic gameplay concepts to different attributes (crafting, looting, inventory management, heal-over-time, resource gathering, running and jumping) significantly hampers your actions in game, much more so than simple combat-style or play-style?

 
Not so on Pvp server u cant trust anyone :D
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Well pvp is not my thing. But that's why I suggested a server setting. If it's a lone wolf pvp server you can adjust the points per lvl accordingly.

 
No thanks, too many survival games already doing that.
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Even though it makes SP a little more "awkward" I too like specialisation. I don't think that it's explicitly a bad thing that other games do similar.

That said, perhaps us gamers are too tied to the classic tropes; warrior, hunter, builder, etc. I will admit that my support for them is based purely on what "seems right", a gut feeling as it were, rather than some extensive investigation into the subject.

 
Even though it makes SP a little more "awkward" I too like specialisation. I don't think that it's explicitly a bad thing that other games do similar.
That said, perhaps us gamers are too tied to the classic tropes; warrior, hunter, builder, etc. I will admit that my support for them is based purely on what "seems right", a gut feeling as it were, rather than some extensive investigation into the subject.
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If well balanced Im not against specialization. It was more of a general comment against every frikin survival game beeing focused on MP. Except some pearls like subnautica, the forest, Empyrion and ofc 7d2d. This last 2 at least for now.

 
To throw in my 2c:

I see what kage is driving at and when it comes to more options im tottaly on board. Id like more than a single setting around this though.

-XP multiplier

-Skill points per level

-level cap?

These 2 (3?) Options are all fairly easy to get programmed in and add a lot to the replayability of the game for a solo player (faster or slower exp this playthrough? more or less skill points this play through? low or high level cap this time?)

This way we get options to tweak and can set defaults for SP/MP games respectively to eliminate trying to balance both in one ruleset.

 
I wouldn't mind specialization in combat style. I'd love to pick between several comparable playstyles to boost my preferred one with benefits.

melee builds getting faster swings and damage resistance, further specialization into a type of melee weapon

ranged builds getting more accuracy and reload, further specialization into types of ranged weapon

just like the current perception and strength tree now...at least the combat portions.

Heck you could even make an explosives expert, with bigger blast radius and reduced crafting materials for explosives, and eventually explosion resistance (hitting yourself is inevitable).

The problem is that everyone runs, everyone carries stuff, everyone loots, everyone buys from the trader, everyone (HAS TO) craft (certain) stuff. And those are tied into the specializations.

Having to deal with the encumbrance penalties because i chose to play a ranged character is incredibly frustrating. I don't mind spending the points to reduce encumbrance, but now I have to invest a LOT of points to do it. Oh, to add to the ranged conundrum, I also end up with sub-par resource harvesting, so gunpowder will be super tight.

If i go melee, I miss out on the ranged benefits...thats fine with me, thats the choice i made, but my looting also suffers. Additionally, assuming SP playthroughs are likely to be melee (strength, endurance, intelligence) or ranged (perception, agility, intelligence), the melee build will suffer from reduced stamina, and if they do put points into agility, the combat benefits of it are significantly worse for melee than ranged (sneak bonuses).

picking a combat style for SP is fine, locking players out of core gameplay elements is much much less fine. It's looking like MP players will get to specialize, but SP will be...not FORCED, but strongly strongly encouraged to avoid the top levels of most attributes, which means those nifty top level perks will be locked to those players until absolute extreme levels.

I'm a big fan of level 100+ characters not being godlike at everything anymore, but not being godlike at the core gameplay elements (looting, crafting, carrying, running & jumping, self-heal-over-time, resource gathering) just feels frustrating. I'm hoping the attribute system gets refined later to perhaps disassociate THAT kind of perk from the attribute and be able to be boosted independently.

 
What about on a server with groups and solo players? How do you balance that?
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My thoughts exactly. I play with my wife in MP, but I also play solo on MP servers. I haven't had any problems with balance but I also have to play differently.

Disagree with Kage on this one. I think it's fine.

 
The game difficulty is determined by gamestage.

The solo player gets fewer skill points for specialisation but also lower tier enemies.

 
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