Lyote

I still think all the harvesting and non weapon perks should go over into their own tree Always feels like a kick in the teeth to have to put a dozen points into Strength for the Heavy Armor perk knowing that those points to unlock level 7 Strength to enable all 4 levels of Heavy Armor will do absolutely nothing of value to my actual gameplay. All ive done is burn 10 levels worth of perk points to be allowed to spend the next 4 removing the handicap from my Armor 😕

Easy ways around that, given that it'd need to apply like a regular block a player would place. Would rather see Spiders able to treat all blocks as ladders, allowing them to climb bases and buildings at will.

It would help, even with a selfish donkey reading every magazine without sharing. Reason being, the OP described a situation with at least 3 players. If 2 of them are looting, the guy who holds mags for the OP is going to get the boosted chance, with which they'll be able to share relevant magazines to the OP who isnt looting. In my first coop save, I was looting primarily, and my skills let me craft T5 Steel Spear by day 5, while my friend managed to only get to T1 Double Barrel, despite me feeding him any Shotgun drops i happened to come across. In the second save, we did the split looting, but all that did was cause us both to still be in pipe weapons by the time the horde rolled in. By making it so the party as a whole gets boosted odds for magazines relevant to each party member, even having just 1 player sharing can make a difference. Back in A20, lootstage was a party deal. So it didnt matter who opened a crate. But it does now, because the probability boosts are player specific. I am more likely to get a medical magazine in a medical pile than my friend is, so anytime he opens one we have effectively lost a medical magazine. Thats not a good system.

An easy alternative that wont feel quite so .. .weird, would be to have skill magazine probabilities be shared in parties. Basically, If i have a point into Advanced Engineering and my friend in party has a point in Shotguns, We would both see an increase in the probabilities of getting Workbench and Shotgun magazines. The effect wouldn't stack, But rather take the highest probability boost and apply that to the party. Limit the range to the kill exp share range. Essentially, This means that if a party is looting a single POI, much like how Lootstage is shared, it doesn't matter which of us cracks the loot open. There will be a boosted chance of seeing relevant magazines to both of us. Not such that it makes additional magazines appear though. Right now it's incredibly awkward, We've taken to only the person whose quest we're clearing opens *anything*. It just feels bad to not be able to even open a trash pile for fear of costing the other person a skill magazine. As a wild thought, Learn by Doing as a kind of pity system might be even better though. Not crafting a million stone shovels to make a perfect Steel Shovel like the old way, But rather have it so that actively using/repairing the relevant tool or crafting bench grants a small amount of exp towards the governing skill. So if i use my Stone Axe to cut down a ton of trees, I can eventually figure out how to craft a better Stone Axe. However, I'd make it so that you could never progress to Iron by using Stone. Just maxing out the quality of Stone and then using a magazine to break the barrier to the next tier. Finding the magazine would be faster, But if the exp per is set appropriately, it could make for a decent pity system over time to smooth out bad luck. Especially for 'Builders' who enjoy the resource acquisition and base building role within a friend group.