MiTHMoN

The reason I am suggesting these things, is because I am the type of player that wants to loot-hoard everything (sometimes). I chop up static corpses, break noisy trash, collect chairs, collect potplants, wrench lights, all of that. Not always, but I do do it. The thing is, if I'm playing with friends who each play differently (one friend might only loot, one friend might only wrench, one might chop corpses and break couches), it ends up that items that "belong in the harvester's inventory" (like bone or raw meat or rotting flesh or nitrate) are in the looter's inventory, because loot tables. If your gripe with my suggestion is that you won't "get as many resources", the simple answer would be: Remove some of the items from loot tables, and slightly increase the harvesting amount to compensate. What's more, if you actually gut a POI like I do, you can't carry everything you obtain. It takes multiple inventory loads. So if your first run through is "just looting", it might take 1.5 inventory loads to just take the loot from searching containers, another 1.5 for wrenchables, 0.5 for harvesting corpses and chopping blocks like couches. That's just an estimate of a 1-skull POI of a house. (And yes, my numbers might be off, but it takes multiple inventory loads, I know from experience.) I have friends who, while looting, run out of inventory space and just drop the Rotting Flesh, Bone, Seeds, all of that "farming" type stuff. And it's fine if we're near each other so I can pick it up, but in 5-skull POIs it isn't always the case. My "loot only" friend shouldn't have to deal with Rotting Flesh and Nitrate Powder in their inventory, that's for my "harvesting" friend to deal with. None of this matters if all you ever do is play solo. But not everyone plays like you. My suggestions are specifically Quality-Of-Life changes for co-op play. That's why I mention it in my foreword.

I don't like this idea. Farming shouldn't be locked behind looting at all. You get Nitrate Powder from mining, Wood from chopping trees, Clay from digging, Rotting Flesh from harvesting corpses, and crops from punching/stabbing plants. Then you get the perk Living Off The Land for better crop gathering and lower crafting cost. For farming, looting should only provide the occasional seed. That's all. Back then, I'd put all broken glass and sand into the forge, and craft it into glass jars. Glass Jars didn't cost Clay, as far as I remember. So you'd have stacks of 125 glass jars, right click on water sources, and suddenly you'd have so much water that you could make into whatever you wanted. As much Glue as you wanted, or Red Tea, or whatever.

Here are my thoughts: There are multiple items/blocks in the game that use the "hold R to change shape" system. Most relevant being Pictures and Paintings. You choose which painting you want, which are primarily an aesthetics item for decoration, and the item stacks to 500. Further, one of the first "mods" players encounter in the game is stackable: The Cooking Pot. (and Cooking Grill (stacks to 3), Beaker (stacks to 10). I think it would be really cool if the dyes stacked, like any other variable item (example; Building Block). This could also open up the possibility for multiple dyes slotted into an item = higher colour intensity (to a threshhold). For example, 1 blue, 2 blue, 3+ blue for 3 shades/intensities of blue on an item. I think dyes stacking to 50 would be most appropriate, putting them in line with "parts", candles, and torches. As an addition, yes, I'd also like dyes to be craftable.

I'm aware that paper likely represents wadding, but 7DTD is a video game. It's not the peak of realism. I think it would make sense for shells and slugs to cost scrap polymer, but that's a hard nerf to shotgun ammo crafting. And as far as I'm aware, shotgun ammo already isn't the most popular ammo to craft. And yes, I like that they chose to separate recipes from perks. It was a good change. But farming is an exception to the rule. Honestly, who is out there spending their time collecting Clay, Wood, Rotting Flesh, Nitrate Powder, and then spending it to make farm plots, all without putting points into Living Off The Land? "Farm plots cost 50% less to craft". Farming and seed crafting are entirely thematically and gameplay-wise connected. On my current playthrough, I maxed out Southern Farming, so I can craft seeds, and my partner put points into Living Off The Land, and so one of us (me) crafts seeds and plants the crops, and the other (them) harvests the crops. It's only cute in very specific circumstances. I don't think anyone is out here honestly crafting seeds from crops without also using Living Off The Land. There is no reason to have these things separated.

Spam-crafting stone axes to improve the stone axe crafting skill was entirely goofy. I remember just joining a game, and constantly dropping stone axes because you can't salvage while crafting. Just queuing up hundreds of stone axes. I can't relate to people who thought that was a good system. It made me feel powerful to be so quickly and reliably gaining progress, but it completely ruins immersion. I like A21's system, but honestly I'd prefer it to be different than any of the previous iterations. You know what'd be cool? Combining all 3, and adding a little extra. I think what I'd like to see done, is: 1. Have crafting skill books, like we have in A21. 2. Have "learn by doing", but not have it apply to crafting. So you don't spam-craft things to get better at crafting. 3. Have two types of "perk points". One of them the way it currently is, and maybe a second resource like "specialization points" where you start with 1 and only get 1 every 25 levels or so. 4. Make "quality 7" weapons require you to be specced into the weapon perk before they're even added to the loot table. So with my suggestion, A21-style crafting skill books primarily dictate crafting. Combat / gathering would be primarily a combination of perk points and learn-as-you-do. And having hard specialization points allow you to carve out a niche within a co-op group. As well as the best loot not just being based on RNG, but actually requiring you to actually invest skill points to obtain the best loot of its type. I've always found it super unfair (since the change ages ago) that if "Player A" invests their perk points into, let's say Pistols, uses pistols primarily, crafts pistols, and basically does everything in their power to specialize in one thing, and with A21 they max out the skill book tree 100/100, they can still only craft Quality 5 pistols. Meanwhile "Player B" just has to loot things with zero investment or specialization, and they can get Quality 6 pistols. I think obtaining the highest quality (let's call it "quality 7") should require investing specifically into that weapon/tool/item to be able to find it in loot. Quality 5 for crafting, quality 6 for looting, quality 7 for investing points and then looting.

Foreword: I'm a long time on-and-off player. I generally play in co-op non-dedicated with a few friends when we pick it up. I love the effort being put into the updates. I don't agree with every change, but we're still in alpha so it's all good. Overall, I do like the A21 changes. But I'd like to just get to it and start listing my suggested changes to the game. 1. Delete paper. So, I love the choice to remove glass jars and empty cans. They really weren't enjoyable. It's kind of lowkey anxiety inducing to decide between keeping glass jars / empty cans, or dropping them to free up inventory space. So I appreciate that they were straight-up removed. I no longer put glass/sand into the forge to endlessly make glass jars. So my first suggestion, is to just remove paper. In-game there are only 3 recipes that use paper, and the primary one is shotgun shells. I've always seen shotgun shells as what you hypothetically craft if you somehow run out of brass... but I've never reached that stage. Honestly, if shotgun shells just cost buckshot and gunpowder with no third ingredient, I'd be totally fine with it. I'd even be fine with shells only costing lead + gunpowder. That's right, you might as well remove buckshot as well if you want. Robotic turret ammo uses lead now already. 2. Clean up the loot tables by removing stuff line bones and basic bandages. I don't know all of the bone recipes off the top of my head, but the only 2 I actually use bones for are: Making/repairing bone knife, and making glue. If I want bones, I get them from chopping up corpses. I don't want to find bones in kitchen cabinets and stuff. I already get way too many bones, and getting them as loot isn't necessary. A similar thing is basic bandages. If I need them, I will make them out of cloth. I don't want to find them in loot. (First Aid Bandages are fine.) 3. Delete the Southern Farming skill book tree. I don't want to collect 19 Southern Farming books to be able to craft potato seeds. It's the shortest skill book progression, and entirely the worst. Just let us craft all the seeds by default, or put it in the perk Living Off The Land. Maybe "Living Off The Land 4/4" could be "unlock all seed crafting". 4. Further clean up loot tables by removing nitrate, oil shale, coal, rotten flesh. These are things that have other main sources of gathering. You can get nitrate from shoveling bags of fertilizer or mining nitrate veins. Oil shale can be mined in the desert. Rotten flesh comes from static corpses or zombie animal corpses. Coal comes from burned trees or coal veins. I just don't see the benefit of having them in loot in small amounts. These are resources that players want in decent amounts if they use them, or they drop them and never want them. Looting in small amounts isn't enjoyable. 5. Make dye stackable. I think the dyes need a lot of changing. On some items the dye looks awful, and on others it looks passable, but either way they take lots of storage if you decide to keep them, and if you don't keep them there's no way to craft them? Ok, so let's further talk about this. 7 Days To Die is one of those inventory management games. When you're out looting, you either try to loot every container and salvage every appliance, or you just target specific things. Your inventory fills up really fast if you want to grab everything. With A21's new crafting skill book system, this is even more true, since I personally play with friends and we share the crafting books with each other and try to feed certain crafting books to one person or another. There are how many types of new books to fill up inventory slots? If The Fun Pimps were to "just increase inventory size", it'd kind of be a band-aid solution to the problem. The problem, as I see it, is that looting offers you too many item types. If I see a static corpse, or an animal (alive or undead), it is my choice to go and harvest it for resources (probably using a bone knife). I know that if I do this, I'll get certain guaranteed resources depending on the corpse (bone, meat, rotten flesh, animal fat, leather, nitrate, testosterone extract). I as a player can make an informed decision on trading inventory slots and harvesting time to get those specific resources. Same thing for using the salvaging tools, or breaking blocks. I know what I'm getting by breaking down cars or couches. But looting kind of has this feel of "we might give you loot-exclusive items, or we might give you corpse items, or we might give you salvage items, or we might give you mining items", etc. Yes, obviously you can just choose not to pick up certain items, or drop them on the ground right away, but is this fun? Does anyone actually enjoy opening up a loot container and finding paper, or rotten flesh, or bones when they're not using those resources? This isn't about realism or immersion to me, but about quality-of-life for the game. I think some items should be "only obtainable from looting", some should be "only obtainable from harvesting / mining / salvaging / gathering", and some should be "only obtainable from traders". Most canned food is only obtainable by looting. Raw meat and rotten flesh and bone should only be obtainable from gathering. In the game's current state, I'm pretty sure you could obtain basically everything by only looting and dealing with the trader. I want to see that change. Harvesting / Farming (Fortitude), Mining / Chopping (Strength), Salvaging (Perception), are each their own activities and they each give their own resources with only some overlap. Looting should stick to its lane, and not try to give access to so many resources.

I don't know how the coding would work, but I do like this idea. When trying to open any given storage chest, I assume the game checks how far the player is from the chest. If it "attempted" to open all player-placed storage chests, and had access to all of their inventories at once, whenever you opened a workbench... That'd get kind of laggy, and I'd imagine sketchy when it does or doesn't taken into account whether you have line-of-sight of the chests. Like, could you pull from chests in a different room? Secret chests you've placed under the floorboards? If I'm honest, a more simple solution would be allowing the workbench to "hold" larger stacks of specific items (as in, it only allowed you to place items that the workbench actually uses as crafting ingredients). This would allow "newer" players to have their characters kind of instinctually know what should be stored in the workbench. I do agree that it gets ridiculous with how much loot we can collect, especially if you're playing with a group of 5+ players. I would like to see a quality-of-life change in some form or another.

Still in A20 the top melee weapons (by a large margin) are Steel Sledge, Steel Knuckles, Steel Club (honorable mentions to Stun Baton, Stone Sledge, and Steel Axe). I want to see spear be more than just the weapon you pull out to get a little extra reach when stabbing defenseless zombies while you're in a bunker-type setup. But I want it to be buffed in a way that doesn't just make it better at being in that bunker-type setup scenario. I think the direction is still mobility (something you don't need when you're standing there behind your blocks, stabbing).

Personally, I think it's backwards that, players who invest their skill points into a certain weapon type can only craft up to quality 5 (and still require the parts from looting/scrapping to craft), while generalist builds can loot quality 6 gear with no specific point investment. I've got a couple possible solutions. 1) Only put quality 6 items on the loot table when the player looting has 5/5 in the specific weapon/item skill (for example 5/5 Gunslinger for SMG-5) as well as 5/5 in Lucky Looter. That way, generalist looters won't be getting the highest quality gear without specializing. Or alternatively: 2) Make quality 6 items scrap into a different item. For example, quality 1-5 pistols would scrap into "pistol parts", while quality 6 pistols would scrap into "quality pistol parts", and then give a new crafting recipe (that requires 5/5 in the appropriate skill) to craft a Quality 7 version. I personally hate random stat rolling, so I'd want Quality 7 items to have "perfect quality 6 stat rolls". So, if you got lucky and found a perfectly rolled Quality 6 item, it would be the same as a Quality 7 item. But if you wanted to make sure your item had perfect rolls, you'd go to the extra trouble to craft a quality 7. Thoughts?

I just made a post on a similar idea (I tried searching this forum before I posted, but I couldn't find anything relevant).

I've been a long-time player of this game (bought it in March 2015), and it's one of my favorite in the genre. I play it in bursts, and always come back to it. I've seen the game improve over the years. And now I guess it's time for me to make some simple suggestions/requests for future updates. Melee combat has always been one of the most fun aspects of 7DTD, and I love choosing a weapon type to commit to when doing a playthrough. The perk/skill/talent system is a lot of fun. I want each weapon type to have its own flavor and strengths, as well as weaknesses. (The sledgehammer is great for knockdowns and big hits. The stun baton is great for stunlocking a single target. The club is great for stunlocking a single target that's already on the ground. The knuckles are a hybrid of attack speed and knockdown (with beer as a specific buff). Knives perform as a tool, as well as slowing targets while they bleed, and having excellent damage-to-stamina ratios for their power attacks.) When it comes to spears, I think they deserve more. From my testing, and from what I can tell, the spear has a "throw" power attack (which requires accuracy, and requires you to collect your weapon after every throw, and they have a light attack that basically has more reach than the other weapons. The perk says that "range" is increased, but I think it means the thrown range. The spear just doesn't seem to have anything significant going for it. The only real use I can find for them is being able to stand further back while in a bunker style melee base for horde night. Honestly, what I think would be the coolest, is if "spears" were split into two categories, with two different names. There could be the "throwing spears" (maybe called javelins), and they would essentially be the current spears. (the advantage of these spears would be their ability to be thrown) Then the second category ("new spears") could be "thrusting spears" or "light spears" or "mobility spears" or "long spears". These would essentially be a type of spear that would be focused on mobility and reach, and would give players their melee power attack. (the advantage of these spears would be extra reach and more mobility from the perk/skill/talent investment) Currently in 7DTD (my opinion), the sledgehammers are just the best melee option, due to their extremely high knockdown power (including area-of-effect knockdown) with perks. What I'm proposing is that these "new spears" give players a very solid alternative in using long-reach high mobility melee spears for use in open fields, where we can backpedal very comfortably. You *could* put the knife's bleed/slow ability on these "new spears", but I think it would be more fun to get a movespeed boost (especially when backpedaling) while using the "new spears", so you can very effectively kite hordes and keep a safe distance. As for the outfits (that may be added in A21), I think the "padded armor" (you know, that light armor that has no stamina or movement penalties) could be the outfit that boosts the "new spears", solidifying the playstyle of mobility and reach. Alternatively, you could just add more melee reach to the spears, and add "+% movespeed while holding a spear when a zombie is within X distance from you" to the last spear perk/skill/talent. (This means spears don't become this "free movement speed" tool, but rather a good kiting/running away weapon.) This could also help to solve those moments when you're out in the middle of nowhere, and a zombie dog horde rolls up on you. You switch to your spear, and run.