Building/Crafting game involves too much skill spec

[sadpickle]

The main problem with the perk/skill system right now is that a large amounts of perks provide no benefit beyond unlocking recipes. In MP this is less of a problem because only one person really needs the perk to make the workbench or the cement mixer or whatever. Everyone else can focus on combat perks or do whatever they want, but SOMEONE has to put considerable amounts of points into unlocking recipes unless they want to play the game without access to all the things. The person with these perks provides value because they can make more workbenches, vehicles etc. for the players who do not have the unlocks. It probably works well in MP; to be honest I don't know because I don't play MP.

 

The issue is single player. Unless you're intending to just build with cobble for a very, very long time, you are required to put points into intelligence purely to unlock the build recipes. You can be a more EFFECTIVE player in SP if you ignore building in favor of combat and survival perks, but then you are intentionally depriving yourself of recipe unlocks to do so. There's just not enough points to go around, especially around level 40 imo where you need to make trade-offs between recipe unlocks or becoming just acceptable at combat (POI dives after level 30-40 are extremely dangerous due to ferals). If you focus on building spec you really don't have a chance against ferals, even with good gear. Combat performance is heavily weighted by spec, because there are so many combat perks and they all stack.

 

I don't have a solution that solves it, but it's clear that building spec (spending points on building perks) needs to be vastly reduced, perhaps eliminated altogether. I don't think schematics is the right answer. Right now painting has an RNG element; find the magazines and unlock all the paints. It's non-offensive because painting is not critical to game mechanics. If a workbench were gated behind a schematic it would be aggravating beyond words. Really, I should be able to build any workbench so long as I have the materials. In this scenario, the builder will probably spec strength to maximize material gain, though they are not REQUIRED to especially in MP, where resource acquisition can be done by someone other than the builder.

 

This is a voxel game and I want to build in it. But it's also a survival game with a difficulty curve that absolutely DEMANDS speccing into combat at some point. Otherwise the game stage gets too high for your combat ability, at which point you're playing at a major disadvantage. This has happened more than once for me and it's because I'm spending just enough points in INT to unlock recipes at soon as they are available, and spreading the rest between material gain and occasionally, combat. This is probably why TFP made the level gates so high; it's supposed to encourage you to spread out your points, but really it just encourages me to level as fast as possible to get the unlock (which raises gamestage). When I get to level 40 or 50 or 70, whatever, I am going to have enough points in reserve to get the build perks I want. Meanwhile my GS is spawning irradiated everywhere and I have no combat ability to speak of anymore. The only zeds I can fight realistically are random spawns.

[SylenThunder]

This has been a huge discussion for months, and it being re-worked already in a18.

[Katitof]

Without reading, I can tell you all of your issues become irrelevant with A18.