Trader and economy balance thread

[Jugginator]

I was thinking, what if we removed the need for bartering perks to get better items in the secret stash, and instead tied them to the game stage/player level?

[Jackelmyer]

I like the vending suggestions. Fresh food wouldn't be in there anyway. On the ammo, are you killing 100% of your enemies with bullets? I kill all I can with my fire axe, and reserve bullets for hordes and oh ♥♥♥♥ situations. I've added way more ammo but it could still be a ways off from what you would need late game.

 

Don't Trader's and Loot both scale with game stages? Just curious. Haven't been looking at 7D2D nuts and bolts for a while.

[Greymantle]

I find traders break the game it makes me feel like we have a local Walmart the way they are set up. I would like an option to turn them off I don't want them in my game. With that said who is stocking these traders? Why do they have such a huge supply of goods when I can't find them out in the world without a lot of effort? Why is their base immune to zombies? Let them have a chance to be destroyed and can be rebuilt with the help of the community. Another issue I have is quests this lets players get around my loot respawn setting. sigh

 

With that said I feel they should only have stuff in stock that we sell to them plus a random few items. Use these items in a random pool to be on sale each day, week, month, based on the loot respawn setting. Vending machines IMHO should be removed. Quests should be removed or at least find a way so it's not a way to get around my loot respawn options.

[zackss]

Trading Perks

I love the traders and usually buy into the trading perks and handle the trading for our group, but in some ways I think it would be better if the ability to sell for more money was removed, as that tends to block off the fun use of the trader by others in co-op groups who want to optimize their returns. We frequently will return from a quest and my allies will drop their rewards in the trader's building so I can sell it. It would also make it a lot easier to price items and give appropriate rewards.

 

I like the idea of tying the secret stash perks (and the buying/selling) perks to questing. Ideally each trader would keep their own independent friendliness value for each player, but a general value would be ok. I think you could probably implement this right now by making a Barter level (unending perk bonus) into a quest reward and removing it from the purchasable advancements.

 

Value of Items

The standout overvalued item is high quality iron reinforced clubs. Since trading perks are already tied to intelligence you get a double boost as you progress on that attribute because quality impacts price so much, and even if you don't really care about crafting you naturally get good at making valuable items. Pretty much anything that you can craft from easily harvestable materials should be looked at carefully if it has a quality level.

 

Guns on the other hand got their prices cut so much it just feels weird. They're generally a highly desired item (particularly early on) and can't be crafted until very late, so mostly a loot item, but when you bring them to the traders they're basically worthless.

 

Missing Items

More cosmetic items! Being able to add uncraftable old-world items to your base is a lot of fun. However it would be really nice if these items could then be moved like workstation in a land claim. Nothing sucks as much as misplacing a block that can't be replaced.

 

Other than that, making raw materials more common would be nice. I enjoy having steel or forged iron in limited quantities before I can make it myself, and would like to be able to more reliably buy them. Same with ammunition. I haven't experienced a hard shortage like others, but it's one of those things that's both basic and essential, so if RNG has screwed you it would be good to have an easy replacement.

 

Vending Machines

I don't mind the vending machines, but I think their stock should be greatly pared down to specialty drinks. I would also absolutely love if they would require Old Cash instead of casino tokens. They could carry both some basic canned food and drinks for emergency survival and all of the special high-medicine/high-cooking perk boosting drinks/pills. Those are essentially potions, and as is they're too rare to find on your own, and too high up to regularly see play. Making the machines Old Cash only would naturally limit how many of them you could buy and give it a value for people who aren't saving it up to sell.

[Doctor3D]

-Remove Vending Machines from inside of POIs - it makes no sense to have a POI locked up like fort knox with traps and sleeping zombies everywhere - yet it is powered up and routinely restocks with food. Are we supposed to just assume that some vendor is breaking in the building, avoiding all the zombies, all the traps, refilling the vending machine and collecting the dukes, and then resetting traps and boarding the place all back up again to sell the items in it?

 

-Elastic Microeconomy - Put in a supply and demand system that allows a fluctuation of prices based on various conditions (weather, day of the week, how much time the game has progressed, the biome the trader is in, etc). You could even tie the economy into the unique seed for the game and each game has a different starting supply and demand for different items. An example of its utility would be something like every 5-7 days the price of ammo goes up. You'd then have situations like the choice to sell your ammo at a high price or keep it for the horde. You could attempt to buy low when demand is low say on the 3rd or 4th day of the week and try to sell back, but you'd still be with less ammo for the horde. Medical demand could go up on day 8-9 and it would either cost lots at that time to buy medical items, or you could make a killing selling them.

 

-We need truly rare and valuable commodities. Things that are almost always in high demand and are always valuable. Antibiotics in particular should be much more valuable, rare and hard to craft than it is. It is the cure to the zombie virus and it's currently not worth much more than a few bowls of soup. A chemist who makes antibiotics should be one of the richest people in Navezgane.

 

-Food - it's just silly right now. Having so much food available to purchase at such low cost just ruins the 'survival' part of this game. There is little need to hunt, farm or even cook your own food due to the vast amount of routinely stocked food in all the vending machines and at the traders. The food is so ridiculously cheap - I thought it was a bug when I first saw it. Price of food should be much higher. If it were me, I'd make food have an actual nutrition mechanic and give it all a quality system. Low quality food is what you'd mostly find in the vending machines - but the high quality, most nutritious things would be expensive, and harder to make. You could make a good living selling them as good quality food that keeps you healthy would always be in demand. Low quality food could be a bit more abundant, and you wont starve if you eat it, but you won't be very healthy either. Eat too much low quality food - and your overall health starts to become affected. Eating a lot of high quality, nutritious food and you start to gain long-term health benefits that aid in stamina, and faster healing.

 

-Ammo should obviously be much more expensive and\or rare than it is now. You can just use traders for all your ammo and it won't break the bank. It's not until you get to the turret stage that you might want to start crafting your own to supplement for the difference. The biggest reason ammo is just so abundant is because of all the stash boxes in all the POIs combined with the trader. It completely negates the value of ammo and just leads to not even caring about reserving it like I used to. Now after you've leveled and are just in mid-game and beyond you can just run through POIs on full auto blasting them..because..why not? I can get ammo really cheap and get more and more as you go through the POIs. The ammo quota keeps rising instead of falling even when you're being trigger-happy. A constant net-gain in resources due to the abundance in loot and low cost. Minimizing the amount of dungeon POIs in the game and thus having less stash rooms while increasing the cost and rarity on traders would go a long way. I can't emphasize enough how much overpowered you get by just looting the POIs over and over - especially doing it via the quests where you have a system going where you get sent to a POI you had just been to so know it like the back of your hand..you run through get all the valuables - get ammo out of the boxes - finish the quest - sell all the valuables and then buy all his ammo. You can do that over and over with 5 traders and in a very short amount of time you already have so much weapon mods, medical items, and ammo that you're basically just playing with creative mode on at that point.

 

 

The more items you give the traders to sell by default, the more and more you could potentially nullify a lot of the mechanics in your game. So you have to keep that in mind. If you make it to where traders have all the wood, concrete, steel, you need to build a base - you instantly nullify that gathering and crafting part of the game. In one of the last experimentals before stable - I did a playthrough without any INT except for the bicycle. I was already able to build a concrete base just by the trader and looting alone. I did the quests over and over -and looted hundreds and hundreds of respawning stash boxes over and over doing that- found my iron tools, lots of rebar, concrete from the bags in the POI, etc that way -sold all the loot - and just bought the remaining concrete buckets from the traders and built a base. It was admittedly rewarding to do it that way, (in retrospect, I think it was more because it was just different than I've ever done a base before) but it was a bit too easy to do and it definitely nullified a huge chunk of the game. I think traders should lend more towards supplementary for mats than something where you can just buy everything important with all the trash you looted and cars you took apart.

 

 

Lastly, When thinking about the economy in the game - keep the future bandits in your mind. I'd look into adding a container value mechanic. Every item in our containers and backpack is already worth a set amount of base dukes. Use that system already in place and add on to it for the bandits to asses your container worth. The higher your container worth - (the more valuables you have at your base or on your person) - the greater the chance you might have bandits showing up. I know this is outside of the current scope- But, I'd love a scout bandit that comes to your base and can assess your overall container worth - the higher your container worth - the more heat - and if the heat is high enough the scout will call a raiding party. You could make certain containers like vaults and safes where the scout cannot determine all of the value. But, to counter that - vaults and safes might need to be harder to make, more expensive to buy and slower to open.

[Royal Deluxe]

I can get ammo really cheap and get more and more as you go through the POIs....

I N E V E R had more ammo after i cleaned a poi than before (on 100% lootabundance)

(except i nerdpole direct to the stash)

[icehot]

In my modlet I've made it so the trader has a chance for the tool and die set in the secret stash in better barter 4 and 5 - reason is, I'm on day 114, and haven't found one yet, nor in the traders normal inventory, and I got to a point where I really needed it as I was using more ammo taking on POI's than I was getting from them.

 

Also a quest to take an item or something to another trader to make it so there's an in game way to discover other traders would be really cool.

 

Also I don't think better barter is OP at all, if anything I didn't notice it was doing much other than unlocking items in the secret stash.

[Doctor3D]

I N E V E R had more ammo after i cleaned a poi than before (on 100% lootabundance)

(except i nerdpole direct to the stash)

 

I was talking about in combination with the traders. You do continue to get more as you progress through the POI, but to really maintain the gains you have 5 traders to utilize. Ammo is continually gained using both the traders AND the POIs together. It also depends on what ammo you're using - the most common drop is 9mm - the second most common is shotgun. (But you're also accumulating brasss, paper, nitrate powder and gun powder as you run through them) Those should be the two weapons you use and you alternate. Leave the 7.62 for horde night. Go through a POI with a MP5 or Pistol and you'll accumulate some shotgun and some 9mm mostly as you progress through it and as you get to the stash. You'll have more shotgun ammo than when you started - and maybe less 9mm than when you started. No biggie - go to the next POI and this time just use the shotgun - repeat - repeat - go to the 1st trader and sell all the valuable loot you got - then buy all of his ammo, his casings, his nitrate powder, his coal, his paper repeat again with trader #2, and so on and so forth- and tell me you don't have MORE ammo...if you don't...I don't know man..you gotta aim better I guess

[DaChibii]

Sooo... I'm curious. What are all the playstyles of 7DtD? Because this is a rather nebulous statement. It's almost like saying 7DtD isn't just a survival/horde/crafting/sandbox game, but rather... it's every game: all of them.

 

This is important because really 7DtD should define what role Traders serve. Are the RP Quest Givers? Are they one-stop Walmarts that have everything a players needs? Are they old fantasy styled Inns, offering a safe place for a price. Are they meant to bypass mechanics that players find annoying/challenging/unfun?

 

Because frankly, if there is no reason to search for specific resources then players won't risk going anywhere else. Additionally if everything can be bought/sold at a market, then you might as well hire an economist to balance your system because at level of complexity... well it's going to be broken. This just returns to my early fear, that Fun Pimps doesn't actually know what they want 7 Days to Die to be, because they don't want to offend anyone as well want to cater to the largest audience. Minecraft is popular because it's simple. I don't think 7 Days to Die wants to be that simple, but it's going to have place restrictions on what it's trying to be.

 

My immediate suggestion concerning Traders: They only offer basic and secondary crafting ingredients for sale, but not purchase. And only purchase craftable or lootable items. This then reduces the scope of item 'worth' to a smaller selection which can then be based on production time. So for example it could be 1000 wood = 500 stone = 100 metal if mining stone takes twice as long as chopping trees, and metal is 5 times more rare then stone. Find the average time it takes to acquire 1000 wood and then put a $/min on that. This idea won't please everyone, but it should please enough while drawing few complaints. Mostly this allows builders not spend the majority of their time resource gathering, but rather crafting excess wares using what they need and selling the rest to acquire more supplies. It also favours those that scavenge and kill by offering a high price for rarer stuff. Basically, builders/crafters gain money by selling in bulk, where as wanderers/scavengers gain money by selling high value items which are limited in amount. Consumables like basic food & medicine, magazines, gas and ammo should be available as well, but unlike the above be offered for purchase/sale with the restriction that purchase price be less than the sale price (to prevent positive feedback loop).

 

Doing the above (at least answering the focus questions) will probably make the game better overall. At least long enough that you can work on other features.

[EpicSince81]

The biggest issue with traders at this point is, that after selling Steel stuff, Augers, Chainsaws for 20 days you can buy nearly all items that exist in the game. There is absolutely NO reason to go looting except if it makes fun for you. Also why bother with quests. And you get XP fastest by mining atm.

 

I'd rather have player trading economy and completely remove Traders from the Game. Turn them into Quest Npcs...

 

Then you need to meet people, do quests for stuff and loot buildings instead of mining 25000 iron and craft 12 Steel axes, pickaxes, shovels, machetes every other day and buy the world.

[Katitof]

Hey guys and gals, I am working on making traders and the economy as good as possible and need your input. My goals are:

 

1.) Support all play styles, so non crafters can get what they need.

For this let me know if there are any items or resources sorely missing from trader inventory.

3.) Perk balance. Are the trading perks too good? I typically get by without them so maybe they are OP?

 

These two are directly connected.

Base traders offer some stuff, but that stuff is hardly useful or even decent quality.

 

If you want to make actual money and buy items that are actually needed if you're not dumping points into int, you NEED barter perk, no other way around it, you just have to have it and if you have best armor, weapons and mods, you HAVE to spec into full barter, which means you need 10 int, which means you might as well just pick the perks and craft the stuff yourself. That sadly goes for every singular craftable item.

 

While it is logical to have all crafting behind int, its also a massive problem, because if you want to do anything crafting wise, you have to spec for it and you can't even rely on buying that stuff, because again, you have to go full int anyway.

From my observations, the price between 0/5 barter and full barter is IMMENSE and while you may get something nice in secret stash with 0 points, you almost always get something great with 5 and the price drop together with higher selling price is just too good to pass.

 

As it is now, you are always forced to spec into int, regardless if you want to craft items yourself or not.

Not being able to get better vehicle then a minibike and said minibike being pretty damn terrible(due to lack of vehicle mods I assume) is also a factor pushing people into enough int to at least get a hog.

[crossed]

This is important because really 7DtD should define what role Traders serve. Are the RP Quest Givers? Are they one-stop Walmarts that have everything a players needs? Are they old fantasy styled Inns, offering a safe place for a price. Are they meant to bypass mechanics that players find annoying/challenging/unfun?

This is what I was thinking reading the OP. You can pretty much bypass the survival aspect of the game using vending machines and traders so they're pretty op... unless that's their supposed role, then they work as intended, some items could be even more common (seeds, brass, acid, oil, ammo...)

 

I don't see how is it possible to balance the game for every playstyle (including being a lumberjack and such) without throwing any sort of challenge right out the window, so as others before I'd also like to ask for options to turn off vending machines and/or traders if possible.

I know we already have the option to ignore them but it really breaks immersion..

[Weazelsun]

Much like Guppy suggested, I have to agree with it. Continue with the different specialized goods that traders are meant to look like they would have. So for example Trader Jen could have a good amount of medical/ science goods while Trader Bob who looks to be like a mechanic type could have a good amount of mechanical/scrap/ goods related to making vehicles or building resources, etc. Also crafted goods should sell more if they take more resources to make and/ or be favored to bought by specific traders. I also like the idea of having a unique quest that could be done once every 7 days or even a year in-game to gather specific items or resources for the traders.

[iejen]

I'd like to see more traders anyway.

If we focus on building a settlement why not have traders live in settlements?

 

They could life in a small camp with an armor salesman, weapon salesman, resource salesman and doctor.

It will give the game a more alive feeling.

 

Now we have Joe, the man who sells it all!

 

Also where do the traders sleep ?

In the bedroll underneath?

[iBane]

Are you saying the same goods at a different trader have a difference in price?

 

With the upcoming blood moon optoins (every day,3,7,10,14,30,random, never) a person can role play more freely and aren't forced into horde night inevitable destruction. So being a rogue traveler with just a few shacks to stay in here and there should be viable, or just a guy with a basic brick fort should be able to withstand a few wandering hordes or heat map hordes. Of course you can scavenge concrete mix now so a small concrete base is definitely doable early game now.

 

Beakers at traders might be a nice addition. They seem rare to find at the moment...I'm LV 50 currently (not level grinding) and haven't seen a beaker yet at a trader, in loot, or in an air drop.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

I increased the chance for rare medicine group, which includes beakers. I think more are in 17.1 loot than before too.

 

Is this tied to game stage? At level 50 with at least a couple of points into better barter I rarely see medical items at traders and have not seen a beaker ever. Medical does seem to frequently be a quest reward option, but no beakers so far.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

I'll ask around, if its still possible I'll definitely put it in.

 

I agree traders are setup nicely in 17.1. Don't have everything I want and I don't have endless amounts of Dukes, but lot's of useful stuff to by and tough choices to make.

[RipClaw]

Is this tied to game stage? At level 50 with at least a couple of points into better barter I rarely see medical items at traders and have not seen a beaker ever. Medical does seem to frequently be a quest reward option, but no beakers so far.

 

I think it refers to the lootcontainer which can contain medical items like the bathroom mirror or the medicine cabinets in the Pop-N-Pills.

In 17.1, these should more frequently contain items like first aid kits or beakers.

[Laz Man]

Joel, any thought about adding a gambling function to the trader?

 

Once you get rich, it's a nice coin sink at a chance at something good.

 

A good example of this is the gambler in diablo 2 where you see the type of item but dont know the quality/rarenest.

[Laz Man]

This is what I was thinking reading the OP. You can pretty much bypass the survival aspect of the game using vending machines and traders so they're pretty op... unless that's their supposed role, then they work as intended, some items could be even more common (seeds, brass, acid, oil, ammo...)

 

I don't see how is it possible to balance the game for every playstyle (including being a lumberjack and such) without throwing any sort of challenge right out the window, so as others before I'd also like to ask for options to turn off vending machines and/or traders if possible.

I know we already have the option to ignore them but it really breaks immersion..

 

Maybe a better setting is item scarcity instead of turning them off. They do add quests which I feel adds to the gameplay.

[Reth]

To MM: as others have mentioned, you need to define the exact role you want traders to play.

 

Should traders be able to completely replace:

 

• crafting by selling tools/weapons/vehicles?
  
• mining and wood cutting by offering all materials in sufficient quantities?
  
• farming and food gathering/preparation by selling enough food/drinks?
  
• PoI exploration by offering rare mods and other rare loot?
  

As we all know, being a lumberjack is OK, of course, but it is hardly a viable SP survival scenario. My personal preference would be for traders to supplement all the activities above, not replace them.

[crossed]

Maybe a better setting is item scarcity instead of turning them off. They do add quests which I feel adds to the gameplay.

Sure, I really like the quests, and an option to keep the traders just make them less op would be great if they're willing to put more effort into it, I'm just not sure they are (or that they should) so I asked for the simplest solution

[Jan2607]

My thoughts about it:

I never used trader skills in A17. I got enough money and there are so many more important things to spend points. There was no high priority for it. But I have to say that I never played farther than around day 16 yet. If you level up and need to buy good quality items from the trader, it could be a different story.

 

The trader quests show, how far away they are, but not in which direction. But it makes a huge difference if I want to accept that quest in which direction it is (when I'm 2 km away from my base and the quest is in the opposite direction even more far away, it is not worth it). Maybe it should roughly state the direction (for example north or southwest...).

 

Some stuff is sold in to few quantities, especially resources like brass, nitrate powder or coal.

 

The secret stash is not interesting enough in my opinion. It rarely has really rare items and never something I need.

 

But my most important thought is about trader placing in RWG: Sometimes they are clustered in one spot or in only one region. It can be really hard to find traders sometimes (apart from the one you have to travel because of the quest). They definetely should spread more over the world.

[Noompsie]

price of meat is fine. It's mainly the newly spawned player that needs it and he doesnt have the coins to spend too much on it.

 

I hate the idea of traders specializing. RNG is a bitch and who knows where the traders will be placed. Firstly you have to find them all, and secondly they could all be on the opposite side of the map to your spawn area. I think I would totally ignore the traders if this was implemented.

 

I do like the idea of trader quests, taking goods from one trader to another. Great way to bring all the traders in a game out.

[Noompsie]

The biggest issue with traders at this point is, that after selling Steel stuff, Augers, Chainsaws for 20 days you can buy nearly all items that exist in the game. There is absolutely NO reason to go looting except if it makes fun for you. Also why bother with quests. And you get XP fastest by mining atm.

 

I'd rather have player trading economy and completely remove Traders from the Game. Turn them into Quest Npcs...

 

Then you need to meet people, do quests for stuff and loot buildings instead of mining 25000 iron and craft 12 Steel axes, pickaxes, shovels, machetes every other day and buy the world.

 

If your at the point in your game where you can craft and sell steel stuff, augers, chainsaws etc, then your at endgame and in my opinion probably playing on past the point where a lot of players have quit and started a new playthrough. I personally have never got to crafting augers before i get bored with the game and start over.

[madmole]

I was talking about in combination with the traders. You do continue to get more as you progress through the POI, but to really maintain the gains you have 5 traders to utilize. Ammo is continually gained using both the traders AND the POIs together. It also depends on what ammo you're using - the most common drop is 9mm - the second most common is shotgun. (But you're also accumulating brasss, paper, nitrate powder and gun powder as you run through them) Those should be the two weapons you use and you alternate. Leave the 7.62 for horde night. Go through a POI with a MP5 or Pistol and you'll accumulate some shotgun and some 9mm mostly as you progress through it and as you get to the stash. You'll have more shotgun ammo than when you started - and maybe less 9mm than when you started. No biggie - go to the next POI and this time just use the shotgun - repeat - repeat - go to the 1st trader and sell all the valuable loot you got - then buy all of his ammo, his casings, his nitrate powder, his coal, his paper repeat again with trader #2, and so on and so forth- and tell me you don't have MORE ammo...if you don't...I don't know man..you gotta aim better I guess

 

You have a min/maxer/play to win mindset. This isn't how to role play at all. I use one firearm exclusively and perk up in it so that it's effective. You don't need to lug around a bunch of guns then and one perked up gun is better than 3 unperked IMO. I sell every other ammo type I'm not using for the build back to the trader.

 

As I mentioned, we're trying to support role players a little more. If I just want to play a wasteland scavver who quests for the traders and turn horde night zombies off, in an upcoming build I'll be able to do so. When bandits are added and more quest types become available this will be a fun way to enjoy the game. On the same token minecraft lovers will be able to build massive forts and not worry about getting overrun. And if your hardcore, turn on hordes every night Anyhow, its going to be interesting. Your concerns seem best addressed by fixing loot abundance.

[canadianbluebeer]

Everyone is talking about the lack of beakers, yet I'm getting them as an option in the quest rewards quite frequently. (as in almost all of them). That was a 240->B8 save, so could be it.

 

I like the idea of specialized traders though.