Pay to Improve instead of Earning it

[Jeraal]

In what way shape or form was the post you quoted mean? You’re inventing stuff now which isn’t nice.

 

Now I feel a bit defensive...

 

I didn't read your post as mean neither. Snarky and or condescending, yes. But not mean

[Roland]

I didn't read your post as mean neither. Snarky and or condescending, yes. But not mean

 

Oh brother.... okay, I’ll let you guys chase me off. There is absolutely nothing snarky or condescending about suggesting a way to play the game that involves role play. But of course you know that since your goal isn’t to hear alternate viewpoints or to try something different. Your goal is to silence anyone who doesn’t share your view.

 

I posted what I wanted to convey and perhaps it will help someone who actually tries it to gain a bit more satisfaction while they play. Not everyone believes that efficiency is king...

[Styx7x]

Haven't tried it myself yet, but best bet is JaxTeller718's Action Skills (Deceptive Adaptation):

https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?94906-JaxTeller718-Modlet-Collection

 

or the original it was based upon, Deceptive Pastry's Return of Action Skills:

https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?99334-Return-of-Action-Skills-perks-that-level-as-you-use-them-(Test-Release)

 

 

 

10000% I recommend JaxTeller’s Action Skills. The original needs some updating in the code to work with A18 fully, but Jax’s implementation is incredibly satisfying and brings back the rewarding feeling of LBD. My group of friends’ server has it deployed and we all love it.

[Technech]

The problem is that we had LBD for ages, and many of us loved it. We got spoiled basically. Had the bland, casual-friendly system we have now been in play from the start we'd not be complaining.

 

To be honest, if the bland, casual-friendly system we have now been in play from the start, I would never played this game. LBD was what sparked my interest, as I love those kind of games.

[Technech]

Yes you are right, but I will always reminisce fondly.

 

That LBD system we had, it wasn't just that I liked it, nope much much more. I thought - as a player of video games for 40 years now - it was one of the best such systems I have ever encountered in any video game. A work of real genius. I'm not mad, I'm mourning.

 

Amen.

[Ghostlight]

What happened to the Gyrocopter?

 

It crashed to earth near my corpse. It was 76% health after that, though it may already have been damaged, I am not 100% sure.

 

Luckily, the guys I was playing with saw the funny side.....

 

 

For the record about 5 mins after re-spawn, I did the exact same thing a second time.

[Technech]

I find it a bit funny how Roland always brush aside anny complaints of the new system with "you can choose to ....". You know, that argument is perfectly valid for the oposite view also. You could choose not to spamcraft or powerlevel armor skils. I enjoyed spamcrafting, It gave us some meaningfull things to do in our base during nighttime (when Zs was a real danger at night).

I never bothered to spam my armorskils or healing skills, as I did perfectly well with natural progression.

But gething that purple stonehamer after a lot of crafting gave me a sence of acomplishment. Now, I raid some PoIs for the trader, and have more purple chainsaws and augers than I care to count.

[Dimpy]

That would imply you can level and gain whatever skill you wanted.

You double the experience you need every ~14 levels.

With current experience gain leveling in a normal pace caps at around level 80.

 

Good point. That's another major difference between A16 and A17. I don't like how much attention I have to put into making a proper character build early game to make sure my character isn't crippled late game by incorrect perk spending. This kind of thing is fine for Diablo, but in 7dtd i've never found staring at the perk screen and planning a character build to be particularly fun. Would MUCH rather have long term-planning/consequences applied to more tangible aspects of the game like what to loot and how to build my base.

 

Some of this could be addressed with a soft respec. The idea is that leveling would be adjusted to happen at roughly the same rate instead of exponentially decaying, but at the higher levels the player loses a random stat/skill at an increasingly fast rate. The end result is a similar number of total skill points as what we have, but at higher levels, you'll still be able to change your build.

[Brian9824]

I find it a bit funny how Roland always brush aside anny complaints of the new system with "you can choose to ....". You know, that argument is perfectly valid for the oposite view also. You could choose not to spamcraft or powerlevel armor skils. I enjoyed spamcrafting, It gave us some meaningfull things to do in our base during nighttime (when Zs was a real danger at night).

I never bothered to spam my armorskils or healing skills, as I did perfectly well with natural progression.

But gething that purple stonehamer after a lot of crafting gave me a sence of acomplishment. Now, I raid some PoIs for the trader, and have more purple chainsaws and augers than I care to count.

 

The issue was the ONLY way to raise a crafting skill or defensive skill was to use it in a way that wasn't actually playing the game. At least now you get gear by doing quests, playing the game, etc.

 

Before you got gear by sitting on a cactus spamming bandages or making macro's to make tools while you went afk, or using workbench tricks to craft high value items and then scrap them and repeat.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Good point. That's another major difference between A16 and A17. I don't like how much attention I have to put into making a proper character build early game to make sure my character isn't crippled late game by incorrect perk spending. This kind of thing is fine for Diablo, but in 7dtd i've never found staring at the perk screen and planning a character build to be particularly fun. Would MUCH rather have long term-planning/consequences applied to more tangible aspects of the game like what to loot and how to build my base.

 

Some of this could be addressed with a soft respec. The idea is that leveling would be adjusted to happen at roughly the same rate instead of exponentially decaying, but at the higher levels the player loses a random stat/skill at an increasingly fast rate. The end result is a similar number of total skill points as what we have, but at higher levels, you'll still be able to change your build.

 

There is an elixer trader sells that resets your skill points so you can reset whenever you want.

[Dimpy]

There is an elixer trader sells that resets your skill points so you can reset whenever you want.

 

I know. I was speaking for my experience in A17, since I haven't played A18 yet. The availability of a hard reset does potentially come with its own set of problems though.

[Ghostlight]

Yup. Perk choices are meaningless.

[Ghostlight]

The issue was the ONLY way to raise a crafting skill or defensive skill was to use it in a way that wasn't actually playing the game. At least now you get gear by doing quests, playing the game, etc.

 

Before you got gear by sitting on a cactus spamming bandages or making macro's to make tools while you went afk, or using workbench tricks to craft high value items and then scrap them and repeat.

 

As has been pointed out many times, spam-crafting as a means to raise crafting was removed from the game long before LBD was removed. Please stop using that as a knock at LBD, it's just mis-information.

[Dimpy]

deleted

[HungryZombie]

It crashed to earth near my corpse. It was 76% health after that, though it may already have been damaged, I am not 100% sure.

 

Luckily, the guys I was playing with saw the funny side.....

 

 

For the record about 5 mins after re-spawn, I did the exact same thing a second time.

 

Crazy!

[OzHawkeye]

As has been pointed out many times, spam-crafting as a means to raise crafting was removed from the game long before LBD was removed. Please stop using that as a knock at LBD, it's just mis-information.

 

Since when? I remember in A16 you could still spam craft to boost certain skills (to say nothing of sitting on cactus).

[eXSe]

Since when? I remember in A16 you could still spam craft to boost certain skills (to say nothing of sitting on cactus).

 

But WHY would you be doing that? I played the game organically and got better at what I was doing. There was absolutely no need to max out everything as fast as possible by cheesing anything... at least for me and the friends I was playing with. Everyone was doing what they enjoy and giting gud at it

 

Now, I know it's not coming back (without mods that is) and some may like that, but for me the game just lost some of the immersion it had back then and I miss that.

[beHypE]

I don't really understand why the old couldn't supplement the new, or the other way around I guess. We could have perk points to spend in specializations where we want them, exactly like now, and still have say 1-20 of "mastery" levels in a 7th tab, where doing damage with a certain weapon type grants you experience in that mastery and when you level up you'd say gain +2% damage and maybe some other stuff like +0.5% attack speed or something. You'd feel the progress of getting better by simply doing stuff, without deciding whether that +20% block damage is of higher priority than that 5% damage reduction. And most importantly in a way that both makes sense and reward specific action.

 

Get rid of the cheese. That armor thing needed you to actually walk over cactus to be efficient ? Remove it, or find something that rewards you for not taking damage over time if you come up with something clever. Crafting made you a better crafter so spamcrafting was min-maxing ? No more. The only way to get better is to hit those ores, and every % of damage made rewards X experience points. Can you stare at a wall all day and gain experience ? Sure, but you'll only stare at that same wall in a more efficient way. No crossover points, no cheese mechanics. By all means be the god of the wood and farm trees all days. You'll do more damage to wood for the next forest, big deal.

[OzHawkeye]

But WHY would you be doing that? I played the game organically and got better at what I was doing. There was absolutely no need to max out everything as fast as possible by cheesing anything... at least for me and the friends I was playing with. Everyone was doing what they enjoy and giting gud at it

 

Now, I know it's not coming back (without mods that is) and some may like that, but for me the game just lost some of the immersion it had back then and I miss that.

 

Because it was exploitable. If the game is going to support multi-player, then it should have a reasonable balance to it. The old LBD system could be pushed to the max in ways that were counter-intuitive to organic play. One player, willing to grind through it, could gain an advantage over other players by doing it.

 

I actually did kinda like LBD, but it's gone, and as you say, there's two-thirds of bugger all chance of it coming back, but one reason for it going at less, was its effect on MP I suspect.

[RestInPieces]

Agree that removing the LBD was a bad choice. Besides the glaring amount of feedback in favor of the LBD, it offered another layer of uniqueness and immersion to the game and imo this is one of the few games that are best suited for such a system. The cheese and loopholes could have been easily removed. Unfortunately TFP seem to be adamant about their choice, but who knows - if enough people want it, they might even decide to re-implement it, in the previous or in a different, adjusted form.

[Hyperbolt]

but who knows - if enough people want it, they might even decide to re-implement it, in the previous or in a different, adjusted form.

 

And im guessing there has already been a poll out where people can vote wether they prefer the old or the current skill system?

[mr.natural]

And im guessing there has already been a poll out where people can vote wether they prefer the old or the current skill system?

 

Yep and it has been mentioned (Madmole) not to bring back that discussion again.

[Roland]

Yep and it has been mentioned (Madmole) not to bring back that discussion again.

 

...on the dev diary specifically. We obviously don’t restrict LBD discussions elsewhere.

[Lorca]

ding ding ding! And here we have the true motivating factor for LBD. When it comes down to it all the talk about wanting the feeling of progressing by doing pales to the actual desire to be efficient and have a system in place that can be exploited for the sake of efficiency.

 

Did I like LBD just fine? Yes. Because I played the game organically and so it really was no different than how I play now or how I played before it was implemented. But do I think it was good for the game? Nope. LBD became the reason for the game existing instead of simply the method of progressing. The idea of progressing by spamming something repeatedly overwhelms the game in unnatural ways because the desire for efficiency is too strong to resist for those whose whole purpose for doing things is to skill up.

 

This was so apparent on the forums when you were able to view threads about the gameplay before Alpha 11 and then after Alpha 11. Post Alpha 11 more and more threads were about gaming the system to gain maximum efficiency even if it meant playing in non-realistic ways for an actual survivor of an apocalypse.

 

Now, I don't personally care if all someone lives for is to get xp and skillpoints as quickly and efficiently as they possibly can but I can understand that the developers didn't want their game to be viewed as a game about efficiency spamming of repetitive activies.

 

I also hope that there will be mods that return the feature for those people who want to feel the rewarding feeling of efficient power leveling. I will definitely play that mod as well.

 

People who value efficiency will find the fastest way to do what they want whether there is LBD or not. I don't care about efficiency, but loved LBD. Earning athletics points for running around alot, and earning knife skills from shiving zombies...that felt natural. Nothing to do with efficency.

[ZombieSurvivor]

People who value efficiency will find the fastest way to do what they want whether there is LBD or not. I don't care about efficiency, but loved LBD. Earning athletics points for running around alot, and earning knife skills from shiving zombies...that felt natural. Nothing to do with efficency.

 

That gives me an idea. What if a new bar is created for just running. the more you do the more it fills up and then levels up. increasing speed and stamina a tiny bit.