OgreSlayeR

IMO the best weapons should be expensive and sold only by Hugh (he is the weapons guy after all..)and they should be tied to a much later game stage (also Daring Adventurer needs a complete rework) . You should never be able to get Q6 gear from any traders be it quest reward or from their inventory. They also should only offer weapon/tool parts as a reward. I might even go as far to say Hugh should be the only trader you can buy weapons with (it is his specialty), but the main problem with that is it might add too much world RNG and could be annoying being stuck with someone like Rekt as your starting trader. This could be too imbalanced, but something to consider and at the very least my other ideas at the top could work well IMO. At the end of the day I believe crafting and looting is definitely getting there and getting close to being balanced but the problem is the traders crap all over it and screw up the whole progression. If you aren't constantly questing and abusing the trader you aren't playing the game efficiently. The game still feels like 7 Days to Trade like in A20. Hopefully it gets some more balance passes in this Alpha.

I agree they are OP and need a big nerf. I don't think traders should offer weapons or tools as a reward at all, maybe just parts. You should mainly be crafting and looting stuff and should only be able to buy weapons and tools slightly better than what you would craft and they could be fairly expensive. Otherwise, I think you should use the traders a lot for resources and stuff like duct tape.

I'm hoping by A22 they do this, right now it has been bad for a long time now.

Definitely a good change, one I have been hoping they would implement since the start of A21 exp. Feels like a good linear progression now,

I'm ambivalent on the "heat" change with the dew collectors, but what I'm curious is if they really fixed the progression with the tiers of weapons and tools now. I wonder if a tier 1 iron spear will be better than a tier 5 stone.

I do think traders need a nerf, but I wouldn't say you shouldn't be able to buy good weapons from them. I would think a better change for them is to limit trader rewards to weapon and tool parts and being able to buy Q5 Steel stuff at a much later game stage. I definitely think you shouldn't have Steel stuff in week 2 for example. Maybe around week 3-4 imo.

Very true, spawning near a city will give you a big head start cause you will find mags everywhere just it won't be quite as insane as it was before.

How is everyone's experience now with the latest patch that nerfed finding mags a bit? So far I feel it feels a lot better and balanced (although a bit early to say, perhaps), but it's hard to compare it cause I had godly RNG with my first world being spawned near a big city with a big Crack- A-Book store, tons of mail boxes, a trader etc. My current world is decent with a small town near the trader and I looted 1 small Crack -A-Book store and several mail boxes and other misc boxes. I'm currently sitting with a Q2 Wood Club compared to a Q5 Stone Spear (which was achieved right before Day 2) on the morning of Day 2.

I hope bows get fixed a some point especially the primitive bow. I mean I don't expect it to be a laser beam, but it feels bad and I don't know how many times I've had arrows go right through the zombies head and do nothing. I also hope (prob in A22 or so) they fix the misaligned sights when aiming down sights and get rid of the crosshair when ADS.

Don't know about the rest of you, but I was tired of tossing out empty jars and empty food cans after eating and drinking to save inventory space and I'm glad I don't have to now. Definitely a good byproduct of the water change. I think it's just human nature that most people hate change. It would be interesting to see if this change had always existed in the game if people would be really care as much. I do think they should go further with the changes though. It would be nice to see rain affecting the Dew Collectors (maybe a mod to increase the storage capacity?) Also what if we could carry a craftable/buyable water flask that we could fill instead of just using the jars (could maybe be different ones of various sizes to hold different amounts)? Maybe drag and drop whatever liquid we want in them water, red tea etc.

I'm playing everything on default settings besides on a higher difficulty. I do realize now a lot of it comes down to the RNG of your world which is probably another issue (played another world since then and got terrible RNG like almost 2 KM from a trader that wasn't near a city at all). I got lucky being spawned near a city with a trader on that previous play through. I think it should be balanced for questing and looting, but I think the Crack-A-Book stores give way too many magazines at the moment. I think having each book pile giving 3 different kinds of books is a lot, maybe it could be a rare chance a book pile could give that many but most would give 1? I do like the idea of those stores being valuable, but maybe not THAT strong. I also think the trader giving a total of 9 books as a reward is a bit much. I think a total of 3 books would be better personally. I'm not sure how the devs feel about it (I would like if they comment about their intended progression speed), but if it was up to me as I stated before I would ideally have you during the first whole week in just primitive stuff. Ideally you would end the week with mostly Q6 primitive stuff or at least 5. Around the second week you would start to craft/find/buy higher tech iron stuff and so on. By week 3 it could be maybe the same for steel stuff. Also as stated before they need to fix the disparity between going from a Q5 to a Q1 of the next tier of weapons. Iron should never be weaker than stone. It needs to be a smooth linear progression where you look forward to the next quality and then tier of weapons.

My thinking is the first week up to Day 7 you should just have primitive gear generally then somewhere in the second week you could get up to the iron tier of stuff and then so on up to steel stuff on the third week or later. I had a feeling it would work like that , but I am currently on Day 5 now and able to craft a Q1 Steel Spear (which is of course worse than the Q5 Iron one I have) ...

Yeah, I mean with how I play I am always looting and questing. It isn't till around the day 7 horde that I stop and start to make a horde base and stop looting, so by then I will have a ton of water (especially if I start pumping out a bunch of dew collectors). It just felt like I had a bit too much by Day 2 , but I suppose if one couldn't find a cooking pot and had bad RNG it might make it a bit harder. In any case I like the change in general especially the byproduct of not having glass jars take up inventory space when drinking and also food cans. It was just busy work of throwing them out my inventory before.

I'm enjoying this alpha a ton minus some balancing stuff (which I make a separate topic about) and performance could be better (feels like a bit of a wash between the optimizations and new art stuff), but really it feels more polished than its ever been and the new art and everything is great. Combat feels a bit more weighty too, seems like zombies get hit on their ass faster.

On Day 2 I had over 30 water by just finding Murky Water in loot and finding a Cooking Pot Day 1. I feel like amount of Murky Water I'm finding in loot is more of a problem cause I haven't need Vending Machines or the new Dew Collector. Definitely feels like the opposite of what they were intending.

Yeah, I mean I believe this whole overhaul is just something that is going to need a lot of feedback and it will be tricky to balance (especially crafting vs looting as you pointed out) because it is a bit subjective. I personally want it to be more grindy with a slower progression of teching up through the tiers (longer time being in primitive tech then iron tech etc). I want it to be in a linear way (no nonsense like now with a Q5 Spear being better than a Q1 Iron). I can see how some other people wouldn't want it to be as grindy though, but there is a option to play on 300% loot for example though.

I mean that's not a big of difference, have you found a Crack-A-Book store and hit every mail box etc? That is what really seemed to get me a ton of mags fast and also taking the mag reward from the trader which gives a lot. I also did put 3 into Spears, but I didn't think it would be weighted that much based off what they said otherwise I have just godlike RNG. Right now I'm on Day 4 and managed to craft a tier 4 Iron Spear and personally I thought the primitive tech would last a bit longer, but I also played the Undead Legacy mod some, so...

I mean yeah there's definitely a problem with the weapon progression as well, just this was just my Day 1 impression of the LBR system. Obviously in no case should a Q1 Iron Spear or whatever be worse than Q5 Stone one except maybe mod slots. As far as the rest of your post it was pretty dumb and maybe you should take your own advice and be chill and quit the passive aggressive crap. Obviously I am well aware it is experimental and things won't be perfect and I just shared my Day 1 impression in a calm way. I'm having a blast in A21 in any case and hopefully yes they will look at fixing this, but sharing feedback like this is exactly what they should want during this period.

Day 1 on my first world I was able to make T5 Stone Spears by 20:00 and now just shy of 22:00 I can make a tier 1 Iron Spear...on day ONE. I was able to achieve this just by going to every mail box I saw and raiding 1 Crack A Book in town. Definitely I feel like magazines should be a bit less common across the board. I do like the idea of Crack A Book being more valuable and a good place to find them, but I don't think every book container there should give 3 mags like it does now... I think 1 is plenty. This clearly is not progression I think they want cause as it is faster than A20. Things definitely need slowing down a lot imo. Also Daring Adventurer is a pretty broken perk. I saw a streamer get an Autoshotgun around day 12 by just running quests with that maxed perk. I think it should be changed to NOT affect the trader stage like now.

Not a bad idea, as it stands now they don't seem to be much harder at all or not very noticeable at least on the lower tiers (I haven't seen an infested T5 yet). Could even add some feral radiated zombies (maybe not more than a handful on lower tiers) for extra challenge.

My suggestion would be for the change Daring Adventurer to not affect the trader stage, but rather the rewards you receive. For example, maybe it could be a bonus if you get 100 9mm ammo listed as a reward maybe you could receive 200 instead at max rank or something like that. It shouldn't be the meta choice every time like it is currently, but could offer a nice bonus. Also maybe traders could offer gun/weapon parts as a reward rather than just straight weapons? Just a thought.

Nice to hear, I hope the balance changes are directed at the trader cause they seem a bit out of wack with the intended slowing of progression. I saw one streamer take Daring Adventurer for example and he managed a tier 3 Auto Shotgun by around day 12. That seems pretty soon.. and I also saw another get a tier 3 Steel Spear around day 10. I think the traders definitely need a nerf or at least the Daring Adventurer perk cause getting items like that early and skipping progression is a bit silly.. Otherwise this alpha is looking really great.

I haven't played Rust in a while and it never had a crosshair back when I played so that's news to me, but point still stands or it can be at least a toggle option. Obviously improving animations and combat should be part of finishing the game and it would seem weird if it's the last thing they do before going "gold". It's much more important than the water changes for example.

I posted this in the dev diary, but I thought it deserves more attention, anyway. I hope in A22 they polish the combat and gun play (it doesn't appear much has been done on this front in A21, correct me if I am wrong..). The biggest issue I have is with the combat is how it feels with aiming with the crosshair and aiming down sights especially with misaligned sights. I also think the melee animations could be much better and it would be nice it had some different animations like 3 a hit combination for holding left click and a more visceral right click power attack. I would like if it feels like a game like Rust (at least with the guns) eventually and they remove the crosshair to make it more immersive.

There's plenty of reasons to build for scratch so that is incorrect. For one thing, you get a lot of XP by starting from scratch and fully upgrading blocks and a lot of people find it fun. If someone wants to just use a POI and never build from scratch, then that's their prerogative and it's a valid play style as well.