Kalen

While this is true... to me it's a false equivalency. You don't find open pools of gas, stews, or acid to collect. You do find open water. I find it a little immersion breaking to be thirsty early game and walk past a pool of water that I can do nothing with. Actually, back in the day, there was a lot of discussion about why when you ate your stew you didn't get a jar back. It was explained that it was a technical limitation. Generally people can accept technical limitations.

Yes, but I freely admit you have far more self discipline than I do. And I agree with that too.... definitely not asking for all loot to be scattered.

So I've done a lot of thinking about this.... and you're right. I've said before that I kind of miss when finding (or not finding) Forge Ahead was a right of passage and had a significant impact on your early game play. That said, I still don't like the magazine system and I think this stems from two points. 1. I don't like how your perk choices so strongly impact what magazines you find. Having it increase the chance for some is fine.... having it effectively decrease your chance of finding others kind of sucks. Particularly for players like me, who play solo. 2. I don't like that magazines are found in certain types of loot, encouraging you to target things like mailboxes and book shelves. I think it would far better if magazines could drop from any kind of loot with equal frequency so that you'd just acquire then through normal game play without even really having to think about it.

Wait.... there are people that dont?

I would imagine in a no trader play through, you'd also have to perk into trap making otherwise later game hordes are going to be problematic.

Which is why, IMO, removing item degradation was a huge mistake. I'll never step down off that soap box. Item degradation made crafting far more relevant.

Schematics aren't the problem.... at least to me. Its the QL at which you can craft. This used to be dictated by perks, which is deterministic (or further back by skill which could be increased by using it. Again, deterministic). Now, its determined by which magazines you can find which is RNG. For me, RNG is not a fun way to build a character. To equip a character RNG is excellent but not to determine skills.

Well sure, I didn't say you have no control.... but you certainly have less than you used to. Not to mention, as you have said, that control comes with a cost.

The whole magazine system feels a lot like LBD. Except instead of spam crafting to raise skill you have to spam loot (and hope for RNG to go your way). You have a lot less control over your characters development. For me, I've found that being one magazine away from being able to craft something I want to be the most frustrating thing I've experienced in this game to date.

Great point.... as someone that mainly plays single player, I've encountered this issue often enough to be thoroughly frustrated by it. I think a better solution would be to have perks grant a chance of a bonus magazine in the appropriate category rather than alter the probability of what magazines you find. So if there are 10 possible magazines in a bookshelf, you have a 10% chance of any of them appearing. But if you're perked into pistols, for example, you have a 20% or whatever, chance of finding a pistol magazine on top of whatever was there.

Crafting tools and weapons mostly became obsolete when item degradation was removed, IMO.

That would actually be pretty cool.... a LBD approach where you are capped at a certain skill level. Each magazine you read increases that cap.

Eh, I get it.... but some of my most memorable playthroughs were when I couldn't find Forge Ahead in a reasonable amount of time.... really changed up your game.

I do agree that questing has come to dominate game play. But for me the problem isn't really the quests, its POI itemization. It used to be that if you were looking for certain types of loot, you targeted specific POIs (Working Stiffs for tools, Crack a Book for books.... etc). Now, however, loot has become homogenized; you can find just about anything anywhere. With the incentive to loot particular POIs so greatly diminished, I feel like the best course of action is to not bother looting a POI unless you're doing it for a quest.... since it doesn't matter what POI they send you too. If itemization went back to like it was in previous alphas it becomes a choice between doing a quest that sends you to a house, where you're not likely to find high quality tools or weapons... or foregoing the quest to loot a Shotgun Messiah where you are likely to find decent weapons. Then, I think, questing will no longer be the dominant way to progress.

I remember not wanting to keep food on your tool belt because the zombies could smell it.

Huh, how did you force it to a specific quality? I could never figure out how to do that? Yeah, thats the part I'm not sure of.... I'd be interested to try it and see how it plays. Definitely a valid concern.

Holy smokes..... yeah, that is super expensive. More than 10x what I would pay here in the US.

I wish crafting recipes could specify the quality level as output. So you can create a recipe that specifically builds a QL4 pick, for example. Then you could specify what QL you wanted by picking the correct crafting recipe. It would add a LOT of recipes, to be sure, but would nicely solve the problem, IMO. It would also open up some neat modding options.

Not the way I shoot

Debatable.... if you're living in a snow or desert biome the insulator or cooling mods certainly have some value. I agree that most perks are more valuable than a mod slot.... again, I'll I'm saying is that pack mule is not useless. It's value to most maybe very low but there is value. I would love to see many more and varied mods so that the choice of mods becomes a little more difficult to make and a perk like pack mule becomes a little more appealing.

Thats cool.... I have. Different people value different things. Nothing wrong with that.

The cost is the cost of losing a mod slot There are lots of mods some are really useful, some marginally so.... but all have some level of value.

Not sure why people think pack mule is useless.... sure you can get the same effect using pocket mods. But that comes at a cost. You are using valuable mod slots that you could otherwise use for something else. I'm not saying that makes pack mule awesome.... just saying that it absolutely has some value.

It's no mystery.... Kuosimodo must be Malthis

Yup, really want an XOR so I can have a light or door that can be controlled by multiple switches