How to fix unfair randomness in the game once and for all

[Lemmers]

If you are never in a position to feel frustrated by the RNG then you also will never feel overjoyed finding what you need. It would be like riding a roller coaster that was completely flat the entire time. Alpha 17 already feels too predictable for an open world survival game.

[Cirion]

If you are never in a position to feel frustrated by the RNG then you also will never feel overjoyed finding what you need. It would be like riding a roller coaster that was completely flat the entire time. Alpha 17 already feels too predictable for an open world survival game.

 

This guy gets it. Sure you remove the problem of OCCASIONALLY (and I mean OCCASIONALLY) truly not getting the loot you need (which btw I have my doubts, because I NEVER have problems getting anything in any of my games... I do not know how people are so unlucky?) but like you said, you trade that for a boring predictable game.

 

I will say the beakers were the last thing I got in my last game, but it really didn't bother me at all. Certainly not like it seems to be bothering others here.

[OzHawkeye]

This guy gets it. Sure you remove the problem of OCCASIONALLY (and I mean OCCASIONALLY) truly not getting the loot you need (which btw I have my doubts, because I NEVER have problems getting anything in any of my games... I do not know how people are so unlucky?) but like you said, you trade that for a boring predictable game.

 

I will say the beakers were the last thing I got in my last game, but it really didn't bother me at all. Certainly not like it seems to be bothering others here.

 

I'm not a fan of having loot handed to us to be sure, but in one Alpha, back when we had Calipers still, it was Day 137 before I found my first one.

 

The trick to making RNG "acceptable" (for lack of a better word), is not to gate anything too essential behind it - that was always my concern about the "Forge Ahead" book, particularly if there's no workarounds.

 

I think right now the game is actually in a very good spot with it's RNG, indeed, my concern with it now would be there's too much that is craftable (or obtainable from traders), and not enough purely dependent on the loot hunt.

[A Nice Cup of Tea]

Speaking as someone who plays Roguelike games, not knowing whether you'll find something on day 1 or day 101 is part of the appeal of having random game elements.

 

Fudging the RNG so that it is no longer random but instead enforces smooth distributions would be a terrible move, as it would take a lot of the variation out of multiple plays.

[Gazz]

I think right now the game is actually in a very good spot with it's RNG, indeed, my concern with it now would be there's too much that is craftable (or obtainable from traders), and not enough purely dependent on the loot hunt.

Yah, it's all become REALLY dependable.

 

The forge is pretty reasonable as a perk unlock. Workbench to a degree.

The first 2 vehicles? Definitely. Vehicles 3+? I see no problem with some RNG in there...

Chem station? By the time you get into mass production of firearm ammo you already have alternatives and the means to explore so... not that critical.

[OldManBrian]

Yah, it's all become REALLY dependable.

 

The forge is pretty reasonable as a perk unlock. Workbench to a degree.

The first 2 vehicles? Definitely. Vehicles 3+? I see no problem with some RNG in there...

Chem station? By the time you get into mass production of firearm ammo you already have alternatives and the means to explore so... not that critical.

 

Just the forge, workbench, and bicycle I'd say. The minibike isn't much of a step up for it so it's fine for loot. For that matter, I'd put the bike as loot too, just have the option of a perk if people are having trouble finding one. (Though honestly, with the small maps we have now even the bike is really unnecessary.)

 

Everything else I'd say make it lootable a16 style schematics.

[Red Eagle LXIX]

Only problem I have ever had with RNG: Cooking pots.

It should be impossible to get to day 7 or search more than 3 house POIs kitchens without finding a single pot (I even searched an entire 6 floor apartment building once). 4 burner stoves, ovens, cabinets, fridges searched with no result. Yet, my luck this is quite common. Go in your kitchen and check the number of pots compared to the number of family members. Even in an apocalypse if every member of your family carried 2 pots out of the house I bet you'd still have left over pots.

Thus reaching day 7 or searching 3+ houses and not finding one is not only a problem with RNG but rather much bigger problem with immersion.

 

Especially when going to look for random hills in Wasteland is more reliable than searching the kitchens of buildings for such an item.

 

Don't get me wrong, I understand the gameplay reasoning. That said, it is not hard to find one (just the immersive points one would expect to find one they are more rare than random hills in certain biomes). Still when gameplay and RNG trumps immersion to that degree...

[Royal Deluxe]

I just remember my core issue with rng.

 

I absolutely dislike that i cant transport high amounts of stuff.

Means as soon as i have 10+ full crates moving my my base is a pain in the ass.

 

And theres the problem. To build the final crates of my base need so many work that i need too many stuff.

 

I hope someone is able to create a truck with arround 1000 Slots of storage.

At best transferable from seed to seed by a own savefile like the character.

 

With that i would not start from scratch now the 50th-100th time in A17.

[Khulkhuum]

I like the idea Project Zomboid has. From one perspective, if you choose an easy setup with light settings, you easily get quite a lot of loot all around the city, but if you shift it too hard you get barely any. So i'd say there is a steady change when you shift your difficulty.

 

Another thing is even if you wanted to gather everything (on easy every cabinet is stocked with lots of items) the containers you have in your chosen shelter (any building, but building new ones requires some skill) will sooner or later fill in and there will be tons of other stuff you can't take. Sure that's immersive when you see cabinets, shelves and cupboards full of kitchenware, stocked food, clothes and various tools, yet there are also so many things to do you have to prioritize what your goal is for each day.

 

7DTD is surely different, but i wouldn't mind a game mode (or a mod) that would lower the stack sizes considerably, but at the same time filling most of the containers with multiple things inside (currently it's rare to get more than one item anywhere, not to mention get any item). This way you have to manage your inventory more efficiently.

 

Like i mentioned though, 7DTD is different, finding items is way different, RWG is more complicated and all of this constitutes to how people play and how RNG sometimes makes fun of us, but sometimes grants us the best thing from the start. Compare this to receiving a weapon from a Black Knight (rare chance) in Dark Souls at the beginning - YOU GET OP!

[Hollowprime]

Yah, it's all become REALLY dependable.

 

The forge is pretty reasonable as a perk unlock. Workbench to a degree.

The first 2 vehicles? Definitely. Vehicles 3+? I see no problem with some RNG in there...

Chem station? By the time you get into mass production of firearm ammo you already have alternatives and the means to explore so... not that critical.

 

Are we playing the same game? It's literally the difference between having 300 or 600 ammo. How is ammo less important than say upgrading your motorcycle to a jeep? The extra space for trading ? is it so hard to trade coffins,beds and picnic tables instead of 3's of tools and armor ?

 

No. If anything ammo should get a MAJOR buff in quantities. I would go as far as suggesting the following:

remove the ammo recipe that doesn't require beaker , change beaker into a hard crafting item ,allow chemistry station MUCH earlier on the game, and make medicine creation *mandatory* for survival. No more passive healing. No more passive anti infection .

Even though you added lots of skill points for medicine higher items are waste of skill points. Why use medicine when you can go passive regeneration AND full tank armor? The overall effective hit points skyrocket when you level up fortitude but it's not the same when you level up intelligence. End game medicine should make you a monster zombies should fear.

Add numerous RNG recipes each turning you into a different (temporary) kind of "monster". Each early recipe will FORCE you into ADAPTING just like the hardcore survivors that you are.

 

Want regeneration during battle and punch like the hulk? Here's some T-virus potion. You better pump up tones of anti biotics and drink lots of water though.

You want to carry 2000 ammo like the Terminator ? Too bad they weight like 200 kg. You'll need steroids for that . And of course you'll need to have lots of supplies for the after effects to replenish all that nutrients your body will crave after stressing so much .

 

Or you'll die. In both cases.

 

Instead you drink bear and go rock lee on them zombies no side effects except a little bit of eye stretching ... See what I mean? Being drunk makes you go super saiyan. It's bloody lame ...

[Cirion]

The issue is relying too much on ammo. I get it, you like to use ammo for your build, and that's not necessarily wrong, but don't expect it to be easy to do because a lot of this game relies on NOT using ammo if you make a base right (Spikes, electric fences, blade traps... etc). Honestly ammo seems overall easier to get in A17 compared to A16 anyway as it is.

 

For me anyway ammo only seems to be a major commodity on very high difficulties (Insane) and even then personally it's not a big deal as long as you use plenty of physical traps and/or adjust the loot quantity slider bar. I know people dislike the answer of just mod or use sliders, and oftentimes I myself hate when people tell me that, but in this case it's rather warranted, especially if one is adamant about using guns for everything when other options are available (melee weapons, physical traps) which get the job done just as well.

 

Ammo should be at least SOMEWHAT of a commodity rather than given as a freebie. If one can freely expend ammo without a second thought to worrying about running out, I think that's bad game design personally.

 

Tradeoffs can and should be made between firearm selection too. If someone is using an SMG or AK-47 for literally everything (POI's and blood moon hordes) of course you're going to have ammo problems. Use more cost effective weapons, like marksman, shotgun, magnum, or better yet, melee weapons, crossbows when you can.

[Hollowprime]

The issue is relying too much on ammo. I get it, you like to use ammo for your build, and that's not necessarily wrong, but don't expect it to be easy to do because a lot of this game relies on NOT using ammo if you make a base right (Spikes, electric fences, blade traps... etc). Honestly ammo seems overall easier to get in A17 compared to A16 anyway as it is.

 

For me anyway ammo only seems to be a major commodity on very high difficulties (Insane) and even then personally it's not a big deal as long as you use plenty of physical traps and/or adjust the loot quantity slider bar. I know people dislike the answer of just mod or use sliders, and oftentimes I myself hate when people tell me that, but in this case it's rather warranted, especially if one is adamant about using guns for everything when other options are available (melee weapons, physical traps) which get the job done just as well.

 

Ammo should be at least SOMEWHAT of a commodity rather than given as a freebie. If one can freely expend ammo without a second thought to worrying about running out, I think that's bad game design personally.

 

Tradeoffs can and should be made between firearm selection too. If someone is using an SMG or AK-47 for literally everything (POI's and blood moon hordes) of course you're going to have ammo problems. Use more cost effective weapons, like marksman, shotgun, magnum, or better yet, melee weapons, crossbows when you can.

 

I don't even use weapons unless I'm cornered dude. And that hardly ever happens. I just sledge hammer zombies into electrifying blade traps (which is quite funny) . RNG does not affect me to the slightest except how I progress my base. And somehow it's even worse than A16.4 because in the previous version I could at least get my beaker , get my nice auger and pickaxe to build a mega base and could buy tones of solar panels that were lagging the game but were still funny nonetheless .

Now I can't do anything other than killling zombies non stop . No pyramid builds. No hanging gardens of doom. Beakers are harder than ever to find and it doesn't matter for base building since auger is literally steel pickaxe tier.

 

I just stay in my base near a pig farm or a soldier camp to farm bones every few hours. 50 hours in after having 2000 zombie kills and game stage about 300+ or so I just quit.

 

You might think I'm bolstering about my skills but I consider myself average to be honest. I see lots of people reaching thousands of zombie kills in just a few hours so I think I'm doing predictably ok. Increasing the difficulty is not going to do any favors since it turns zombies into bullet sponges and me into a glass cannon.

 

Perhaps in the future I'll consider playing with 200% player block damage but right now I'm sitting with over 600 hours in A16.4 ,over 100 hours in A17 and I'm just going back and forth trying to find where that spark went.

[Cirion]

I am not seeing your problem then I guess based upon what your wrote? You don't seem to have issues surviving in any way, but rather just limited in building your base? I don't consider that game breaking at all. Annoying perhaps, but if you can survive, then I don't see the issue.

 

No arguments though that A17 seems to be missing some of the spark that A16 had. Hopefully the next couple of A17 patches bring some life back to the game.

[The-Walking-Dad]

The unfair randomness is SURVIVAL! Don't take that away from us... or tis will become a scripted game...

[Cirion]

The unfair randomness is SURVIVAL! Don't take that away from us... or tis will become a scripted game...

 

Quoted for justice. Rick in TWG never knew where he was gonna get more food or more ammo a lot of the times. Of course since Rick was scripted to not die, of course he eventually did get food or ammo when he needed it but many other people in show were not so lucky as we know. I think sometimes the SURVIVAL part gets lost in the mix for sure. Being guaranteed to survive is no longer survival....

 

I'm not a fan of having loot handed to us to be sure, but in one Alpha, back when we had Calipers still, it was Day 137 before I found my first one.

 

Man, once again you guys are just so unlucky I don't even know how it is possible to be so unlucky lol. I think the worst was maybe waiting until day 30-40 for me? 137? Dude lmao... that's some next level unlucky. Don't go quit your day job to play the lotto LOL

 

Perhaps that explains why I am not bothered? I'm not the luckiest person, but I'm also not the unluckiest. I always get stuff in a reasonable time frame.

[Royal Deluxe]

Dont try to reason anything with TWD.

These idiots who walk for weeks and encumber about too few water in the region.

They never heard of a bicycle ?

[Ghostlight]

Yah, it's all become REALLY dependable.

 

The forge is pretty reasonable as a perk unlock. Workbench to a degree.

The first 2 vehicles? Definitely. Vehicles 3+? I see no problem with some RNG in there.

 

We have an item tier system in the game just asking to be part of this. Make crafting (of everything in the game that has a tier) be capped at tier 4, so that tier 5 and 6 things need to be looted. You could also add tiers to mods as well and do the same. Then we'd have interesting (pump the air when you find one) RNG, not crippling, frustrating RNG. We'd also have more of an endgame.

[Royal Deluxe]

We have an item tier system in the game just asking to be part of this. Make crafting (of everything in the game that has a tier) be capped at tier 4, so that tier 5 and 6 things need to be looted. You could also add tiers to mods as well and do the same. Then we'd have interesting (pump the air when you find one) RNG, not crippling, frustrating RNG. We'd also have more of an endgame.

 

for that they plan to add legendary items

[Prisma501]

for that they plan to add legendary items

 

Are you saying this game isnt finished yet?! Are you saying this game ISNT FINISHED YET?!

 

Wtf?!

 

Cheers

[Ghostlight]

for that they plan to add legendary items

 

I want end game looting to yield meaningful items at a reasonable rate. Legendary items sound like you will find them once in a blue moon, and perhaps never. While I welcome anything that gives something of an endgame, these sound too "legendary". I WANT legendaries to be legendary, but we also need something in between the almost nothing (mods I guess) that we have now and legendary. E.g finding a tier 5 Shotgun when one can only craft up to a tier 4 normally. Or, dare I say it, gun parts.

[Royal Deluxe]

I want end game looting to yield meaningful items at a reasonable rate. Legendary items sound like you will find them once in a blue moon, and perhaps never. While I welcome anything that gives something of an endgame, these sound too "legendary". I WANT legendaries to be legendary, but we also need something in between the almost nothing (mods I guess) that we have now and legendary. E.g finding a tier 5 Shotgun when one can only craft up to a tier 4 normally. Or, dare I say it, gun parts.

 

So far i understand it legendarys will not be abundant but not too scarce too.

Because of the random factor you simply will scrap or sell most of them.

 

See the normal items as the essentials and the legendary as the Cherry on the cake

 

At least i hope that i understand them right.

They will be the reason to loot in endgame.

You can craft all basics but for these nice items you need to leave your base

[stasis78]

I was convinced back in A14 and I'm still convinced now, that the RNG in this game is broken, and I don't care what the pimps say contrary to that. I get random numbers, I get that weird results can happen, but I have seen - far too often - entirely improbably things happening repeatedly. The RNG in this game "sticks" or gives the same result in short bursts. I'm convinced that's half the problem here.

 

I hear this in every game that has an rng. You just don’t understand how random works. But thank you for the entertainment and proving that, yet again, Most gamers have no math skills.

[AlyssaFaden]

I hear this in every game that has an rng. You just don’t understand how random works. But thank you for the entertainment and proving that, yet again, Most gamers have no math skills.

 

Hey, chill. (a) I have a background in te technical world. I've been in the programming sphere since the 90's. Yes I understand how RNG works. (b) I'm also a tabletop gamer and thrown enough dice since the 80's to know how RNG works, and often very much against you. QUite literally your comment is crass, rude, unwarranted, stupid, immature, and typical internet troll bait. Back the hell up and take a breath, kid.

 

I know enough of RNG to know that if there's a 10% chance to spawn a fat mamma (for example, numbers pulled out of my arse), and I spawn 6 zombies, and every single one is a fat mamma ... then those are long freaking odds indeed.

 

And if I see it happen repeatedly ... then those long odds are becoming distinctly improbable odds.

 

And if I keep seeing improbable odds happening on a regular basis .. i.e. the unlikely is actually common, then there just might be something amiss somewhere.

 

So, seriously, grow up a bit and then come back and maybe we can chat like intelligent adults instead of children on the playground.

[stasis78]

I have had 0 problems with rng in 7 days and have 2500 hours of play so yeah there isn’t a problem with their random number function(s).

[Ghostlight]

Yeah the RNG is doubtless broken. Every time I draw a 5-land hand, the next card is always a land. Always, I tell you!