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rambling on about min-maxing & perk choices


FileMachete

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Interesting to see the differences in what folks do perk wise. & the various definitions of min-maxing in dev thread were informative.

 

I remember playing an mmorpg where tanks 'had to' either be sword & shield, -or- large (two-handed) weapons. No mixing or, "you'll be totally gimped!"

 

Getting to level 50 was a months long grind, so I had a long time to consider things. Eventually decided to do the unheard of insanity of a 'split-spec'. So instead of getting that final uber move for my defense oriented sword & shield build, I spent all those final points getting mid-way up in the two-handed weapons spec. Then I practiced swapping weapons on the fly until it was -really- fast.

 

Then to prove it was actually useful, I challenged a stealther in our guild to a duel. Now there was no way a S&S tank could survive against his spec, just no chance at all. It would take the stealther a bit to kill one, but the outcome was inevitable. On the other hand, the damage output of a large weapons spec tank meant that they'd clean his clock.

 

So the clan gathers round, we get ready. I'm in S&S mode. "Go!" he comes at me and I shield slammed him, which landed, ran around to his back, swapping over to large weapon falcata, fired the opening attack to a chained style, which landed, extending the stun, then landed the follow-on, which ended him.

 

It was awesome :) & boy was he suprised. We dueled a bunch more times & he eventually figured out a couple counters and even won a couple, but the final count was decidedly in my 'gimped' split-spec favor.

 

Point being, I'd kind of though of myself as leaning towards min-maxing, but maybe not? I know what I like is to find unusual setups, that aren't popular & may take some finess to master, but ultimately are far better than they first appeared. Guess that's why I generally like the more complicated games out there.

 

In 7dtd I no longer buyPackmule early game, instead I'll use drop chests and just pick things up later once I have a ride. I might buy a lvl or two much later, if I haven't managed to get T6 armor, so I can use other armor mods instead of the pockets.

 

Rule #1 ? nope.  Quest Rewards one? nope, but I'm totally burned out on questing, heh.

Enough Strength for 3/5 in mining perks, but 0 points into clubs. Meaning I'm very gimped in melee.

Until later when I'll spec into knives as I'll have high Agility for Pistols/SMG/Light-Armor.

(actually prefer clubs to machete, but it saves a backpack slot, dangit.)

 

I usually feel pretty forced into high lvls of Int for stations, vehicle, traps & mainly Auger & Crucible.

 

Playthrough before this I had to go to 9 Int (had specs for +1) for a Crucible. Just never one for sale or loot & no schematic anywhere.

 

This playthrough has been radically different. Bought a Motorcycle day 16 or so. A T3 Auger next restock. Then trader had a Crucible for sale until day 23 restock, so I was out clearing pois to get enough stuff to sell to afford it, when I looted one. Yay!

 

Full disclosure: playing a nitrogen map w combo pack player made pois, so some of the looting luck is likely due to new pois.

Which, even if it speeds things up, is well worth it to me just to have new content!

 

With those critical items taken care of I've already taken Agility up so I can craft T5 Pistols/SMG & T5 Military Armor (looted the book).

Don't have nearly enough Military Armor Parts to craft a full set yet, but scrapping a very nice blue magnum allowed me to craft a T5 SMG even though I'd just crafted a T4 about a day earlier. Heck I've even lucked into the suppressor schematic so I'm really happy. No magazine mods/sches yet so I used a semi-auto mod along with scope & can for the SMG. Really liking it as a semi instead of full-auto. Saves ammo.

 

anyway... sry for rambling on, but I warned you in the title! :)

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Back in my D&D days (THAC0 4 lyf, yo) I was more into min-maxing. Nowadays I almost never do more than a basic perusal of synergies and discordance in skills & perks, just playing what seems like it might be fun. Because of this I am not as good a player as most, but I'm just too lazy to git gud. I used to play heavy Int, being the crafter in our little 2-person co-op party, but this time I'm doing Str/Per. I've always liked the shotgun as a main non-horde-night weapon and I'm still the party's miner so having Strength as a primary attribute has worked out.

 

We've been entirely reliant on the trader and looting to get our crafting going, but by day 24 we have all the stations except the table saw (thank you Crack-A-Book tower!). The big limitation so far is vehicles. We've got bicycles but haven't yet found motorcycle handlebars, or the schematic. I am missing the Int perks.

 

A couple of years back I was playing Destiny a fair amount, generally just soloing around through the basic quests. My friend invited me to join his group for a raid and...well I may have been slightly better than dead weight, but not by a lot. These guys all had exactly the right gear and skills, having raided over and over and over trying to get the One True Gun to drop from the boss. Meanwhile I had picked up whatever random crap dropped in Cosmodrome. My "light" level or whatever it was was well above the minimum for the raid, but since I didn't really min-max my character (and I hadn't ever been on that raid), well it was nice that they didn't frag me themselves.

 

Lately I've been playing a little PSO 2 since they brought it to GamePass and...I just can't even with that game. I remember enjoying the first PSO quite a bit, but oh my god there are waaaaaay too many Fleebles and Gabbleblotchits and Henways to collect and refine and combine and enhance and train and >bleargh<. So I just take some quests, go kick some JRPG monsters, and leave, I'm sure, 75% of the potential character advancement on the floor.

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I can not speak for anyone else, so I'll refer to what others have said in the recent Dev post and how it refers to me.

*Prefix*: All this is going for a new character, since they were so nice and gave us the respec ability, late game speccing is similar, but not as horrendous since you already have a basesetup and farmed enough ressources to last a while. So in the late game there are no "mandetory" perks anymore, even if some combinations are better at dealing with Z's.

I do think certain perks are "mandetory".
And by that I do not mean that without them you'll die or that there aren't playstyles that don't need them.
I mean that there are base mechanics in the game (zombies, looting, xp, building and so on) which all have different requirements and outcomes.
But there are some that are, when compared to other playstyles, simply more effective, numberwise.

Yes I can exploit the ai and just live every hordenight on a tower. Or whatever exploit you want (driving away and running away beeing one that I would count as an exploit, since they are not dangerous enough, even though running was nerfed on higher difficulties so you can't do it without stam boosting drinks).
So the "base mechanic" that underlines (or should underline) is survival/surviving the hordes. Yes you can just have a different goal, but when it comes to what the absolute majority that plays "non-creative" does, it can be considered the underlying mechanic.

For this, you need certain things:
-since you cant run/exploit you will need weapons or traps to kill them. Both require looting and gathering. Therefor weaponperks and lootingperks (including more inventoryspace for faster looting since early on you don't have many mods) are "mandetory" in the sense that it will help more than swimming 20% faster (exxageratingly taken the weakest perk to make a point)
- since you can't fight zombies coming from 360° for the whole night (reloading, healing and so on) you want to have a basestructure. You can take over a prefab, some of which are already very sturdy. But if we say "trapping zombies at a hatch" is an exploit since it completely removes the base threat without risk, most prefabs are actually either to big (towers) or have a bad cornered layout that only works after some redecorating.
BUT after all that, nothing will trump a well made base with a trapsetup in mind. For which, you will need ressources.
It is correct that you can make super ressource efficient bases, but only because zombies don't yet target weakpoints (not a mechanic but a lack of one), so when we act as if they could, you need a lot of ressources to make that building. Which means mining and chopping. Which need at least the tools perk and the miner perks, otherwise you will simply waste time gathering only 50% or fewer ressources.
You CAN do it, but it is less effective than if you had spent it on "sneaking".
Now you can buy more or less what you want, (after Strength 7 Motherload,Miner,PackMule(at least 2-3) and since you already spent so many perks in strength, you might as well go with melee weapons. After only the mining, you start to notice the slower leveling and need to worry about what to skill next.
Agility is the worst offender since all it gives are "nice to have" perks. You do not solve any base mechanics with it.
Intellect does offer a nice range of options but trading is RNG based so if you don't have a trader with food near you, you want fortitude over intellect.
So you have 4 perk trees, where one is more or less useless for basegame solving (since you have melee, you do not need sneaking to save ammo)
And Fortitude and Intellect are a tie, with strength beeing a must have in the early game, as having your own base with out of good materials beats every prefab with wooden spikes.

I am well aware that you can play it differently. And I believe you when you say your sneaky archer with exploding bolts is far better than building your own base. But when it comes down to solving basemechanics, there is a clear way to go that the game 'advertises'.

Games 'advertising' a certain way to play is a whole other topic, so I won't go into it. But basicially, if it is easy to do and can be done from very early on, it is what most players will take as the core mechanic, even if it isn't at the end of the game anymore. And building your own house/bunker is something that a voxel game advertises, without even saying anything.

 

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Lots of good stuff guys, hope others will swing by and add to this cause it's definately better than tv right now :)

 

Your tale about questing in Destiny reminded me of another time in that mmorpg. I'd been asked to cover evenings for a couple months and the guys who'd got me started in the game were all in our IT shop on days, so I wound up all alone trying to grind out lvls. Mind you this was my first online gaming experiance, and I'm not a fast typer, so it was at first kinda sucky.

There was really only one place to level at the range I was at the time, and getting down into the cavern was not really something you could do by yourself. If you could then you basically needed to move on to better xp farming pastures.

So I'd logged in and waited around for a half hour hoping someone would come in and we could head on down. No such luck, so I tried by myself & almost made it but died. Running back took a while and when I made it back there were a few players there debating how to get down. Seemed they didn't really know the drill, and they were a bit low lvl for the area, but I needed help to get down, and then a group to play with to grind any decent xp. So I offered to explain how to make it through and we grouped up and by the skin of our teeth made it down.

 

Once down they all thanked me and then disbanded to reform their own group. Which normally would have been totally ok & expected. But like I mentioned, they really didn't know what they were in for...

I pointed them towards the 'easiest' mob area, and warned them that they had to be careful to pull singles or they could wind up with the entire spawn aggro'ing onto them. Sure enough 3 minutes later they come screaming out of that tunnel with about a dozen pissed off mobs on their tails :) I'm watching from a ledge above as half of them peel off into another tunnel that led to even higher lvl mobs and the other half tries to escape back the way they'd come down; which just led back to that super tough room we'd barely survived before, so not a rational escape plan. Things were entertaining and lol funny until one survivor from the even tougher mobs tunnel comes running back... onto my ledge, bringing all his new friends with him. So we all died in the end, heh.

 

Having nothing better to do I ran back to the cave, figuring I'd just have to wait around until hopefully a group would be on early and I could join them.

But suprise, I get back and most of those guys were back and waiting for me.

Waiting to _apologize_ for getting me killed... I was stunned to say the least.

Turned out they were UK players (no european servers at that time) and they really thought they'd done some horrible thing.

I assured them it was ok, and no hard feelings, the comedy had been well worth the price :)

Then I admit I played on their guilt a wee bit and convinced them that not only could we be a successful group xp'ing down there, but that they'd be doing me a favor. And we did. Turned out their way of playing was much, much more laid back than what I'd thought of as 'normal' due to the crew I worked with. So it took some adjustment on both sides to get things working smoothly, but once we did it was a real pleasure. They all knew each other in rl and were constantly ribbing each other, using all that funny english slang. We wound up grouping up a few nights and later I learned they were all 14-16 years old. Never would have guessed that. I'd thought they were in their 20s or 30s based on how mature they were about mistakes, loot drops, etc.

 

Looking back on that now it's really clear that my work friends were total min-maxers, boardering on obsessed heh.

And thinking about those english 'kids', maybe their "game ethic" made a deeper impact than I'd ever considered. "Games should be fun!" huh.

So I've never understood the fuss over whether someone decides to cheese horde night, or chooses to leverage gaps in the ai (talking SP/Co-Op where all agree). It's their play time and if that's fun for them then have a ball.

 

& just to be clear, I didn't read your post as being anti exploit or, "you must play this way!" Viktor :) I read it as outlining your following thought provoking thoughts. (and me thinks my thoughts are now just about mush, ha)

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I can't remember who first said it but I remember a GDC speaker saying "players will optimise the fun out of games", meaning that once players find an effective solution they'll choose to do the simplest most efficient approach, even if it's something they hate (ie repetitively running the same building for hours, just because someone has mathed the odds that it has the best drops).

 

I DEFINITELY believe there are multiple perks that are top tier to the point of being necessary and others that are so subpar no one in their right mind would/should put points into them.

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6 hours ago, Deadalready said:

I can't remember who first said it but I remember a GDC speaker saying "players will optimise the fun out of games", meaning that once players find an effective solution they'll choose to do the simplest most efficient approach, even if it's something they hate (ie repetitively running the same building for hours, just because someone has mathed the odds that it has the best drops).

 

I DEFINITELY believe there are multiple perks that are top tier to the point of being necessary and others that are so subpar no one in their right mind would/should put points into them.

quoted that video multiple times... sadly TFPs don't seem to agree... or if they do, they don't implement in in their game.

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On 6/13/2020 at 1:48 AM, Deadalready said:

I can't remember who first said it but I remember a GDC speaker saying "players will optimise the fun out of games", meaning that once players find an effective solution they'll choose to do the simplest most efficient approach, even if it's something they hate (ie repetitively running the same building for hours, just because someone has mathed the odds that it has the best drops).

 

I DEFINITELY believe there are multiple perks that are top tier to the point of being necessary and others that are so subpar no one in their right mind would/should put points into them.

Because it's an arms race that never ends; devs nerf one such "optimal" way to play, so players simply find another.  Unless said optimal method is legitimately detrimental to other players, they likely won't be changed.  I'm thinking of how some event farms in Guild Wars 2 made some quests for newbies a huge pain, so the devs nerfed the rewards...just one example.

 

Sometimes players are their own worst enemies...much like I am here in A18, where I've pretty much always played a strength/fort hybrid build, heh.

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9 hours ago, Kazgrel said:

Because it's an arms race that never ends; devs nerf one such "optimal" way to play -snip-

This is where I get confused, if it's a sandbox - let players play as they wish and ruin their own experience? By taking away some players ENJOY the game it almost feels like how someone is allowed to have fun is being dictated. There's several ways to cakewalk 7days but it's up to players to decide how they want to approach the challenges.

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20 minutes ago, Deadalready said:

This is where I get confused, if it's a sandbox - let players play as they wish and ruin their own experience? By taking away some players ENJOY the game it almost feels like how someone is allowed to have fun is being dictated. There's several ways to cakewalk 7days but it's up to players to decide how they want to approach the challenges.

agreed... to a point.
In minecraft, where there is basicially no challenge... sure.
But 7d2d is a survival horror game first and a sandbox 2nd. That was always the focus. That is why there is a creative mode, because it is a seperate thing.

You need certain limitations or other parts of your game suffer.

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Playing with my friends, one of us normally specs into Int early - to get vehicles and craft First Aid kits and later on to craft Recog and Fortibites.  This person also goes for better barter.

 

The other players spec into Salvage, Looting, Mining, and "farming" - neecesary "services" for the group.

 

The guy who goes for Int still needs to live through Horde night.  And frankly the Stun baton and junk turrets are no fun.  This means this guy also needs to put points into another tree to improve skill with another weapon.

 

So there are two problems her.  The int tree does not gain you XP for crafting stuff for the party.  And the points spent on Int is points taken away from being able to do more damage with another weapon.  Mining and Salvage nets you a fair amount of XP.  The only thing that gives the Int player XP is selling and buying, so he lags behind on XP, and therefore on levels, and so gets even less points to put into things that could give him more XP.

 

The solution is so trivially simple that it boggles the mind.  Why is there a skill tree inside another skill tree?  Int, Fortitude, Strength, Agility, etc are a pain.  If all the skills, each with level 1 to 5, were open to any player, that would solve the entire problem.  Just spec into Mining and Run-and-Gun.  Or Salvage and Sledge hammer.  etc.  To prevent anyone from putting 5 points straight into any one Perk, either gate the higher levels of Perks behind a Level Gate or make them cost more points.  Move the Skill itself, with it's benefits, into a separate tree that requires points to unlock but does not itself unlock Perks, UNLESS there is more than Skill that allows you to unlock each Perk.

 

 

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We play similar and i also hate that the base-perks also enhance specific weapons.

 

However, your INT-Player is not limited to use batons and junk turrets. He should use whatever weapon he likes even without any skills for that weapon. Especially in the beginning that works well. Junk turret is also a good unattended support for blood moon, so the int-player can put up a junk turret and shot with e.g. a pistol.

You can also turn on xp sharing for your group. During bloodmoon your int-player will then get also many XP without even killing any zed.

Usually for us the int-player is also the builder, building our base or upgrade pois. You don't get XP for crafting but you get a @%$*#!load of XP for building.

 

This way our int-player usually is even one of the most advanced in skills.

 

What you are doing is min-maxing in perfection. Not using weapons, just because you don't have skills that optimize that and then complain about this player "can't" do anything. He can! You just don't want to.

 

There have been level gates in earlier alphas and people also complained about that because after some time you have skill points over, but not the required level reached yet, and they didn't want to spread their skills. So basically with level gates you enforce players to allround their skills OR just wait for level ups. With the current system players are preferred that specialize into specific tasks. Sadly with the weapon buffs within the base perks, they should also prefer using weapons that are tied to their skillset, but they are NOT FORCED to use those weapons.

 

 

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One other point: Once perked into the engineer perk (I think) the INT player gets ALL the xp from the electrically operated traps, and as far as I know not shared to the group.

 

The baton is surely crappy and in need of some balancing (it is EA after all, balancing takes time). But fully perked two junk turrets are impressive in their damage output and the ammo is never a problem. Any unlearned gun you use on top of that in sum is comparably or better than what you can do with a fully learned gun (Caveat: I never calculated it, just subjective impression). And since you don't have to learn that other gun you have the option to take the best quality gun you can find, no matter if it is a shotgun, rifle or SMG (or even a melee weapon)

 

 

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Generally speaking, the weapon skills inside the specific trees make good sense to me.  Clubs and heavy weapons use strength for better swings, etc.

Personally, i'd like to see a more fluid integration of skills and weapons.  This could be done more along an RPG element where weapons are their own skill tree, but you get bonuses from having the main stat associated with the weapon.  You can get really good with a baseball bat, but your strength would determine how hard you can really hit something, or your fortitude would help conserve stamina per swing.

Honestly, i'm still otherwise perfectly fine with the current skill tree setup.  I know that's not necessarily the more popular view, but I have zero problems with skills being gated.  I personally don't play an intelligence build, because i don't find it really fun.  Most of the building/crafting can be found or bought through magazines, and things like concrete mix are easy enough to find and make (provided you find a functional mixer).  

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59 minutes ago, Sawth77 said:

Generally speaking, the weapon skills inside the specific trees make good sense to me.  Clubs and heavy weapons use strength for better swings, etc.

Personally, i'd like to see a more fluid integration of skills and weapons.  This could be done more along an RPG element where weapons are their own skill tree, but you get bonuses from having the main stat associated with the weapon.  You can get really good with a baseball bat, but your strength would determine how hard you can really hit something, or your fortitude would help conserve stamina per swing.

Honestly, i'm still otherwise perfectly fine with the current skill tree setup.  I know that's not necessarily the more popular view, but I have zero problems with skills being gated.  I personally don't play an intelligence build, because i don't find it really fun.  Most of the building/crafting can be found or bought through magazines, and things like concrete mix are easy enough to find and make (provided you find a functional mixer).  

When you argue that some weapons aremore suited for some perks, you quickly realise that that doesn't hold for all of them and that the rest was forced into a spot in an artificial attempt to balance it all.

 

You can partly fix it by letting multiple perks affect a specific weapon - perhaps agility lets you swing the bat OR the machete faster, while strength lets you swing either one harder.  So both strength and agility can be stats that affect the same weapon.

 

Then you eventually arrive at a point where all the skills (I hate that they are so confusingly called skills in stead of just stats or attributes) in some way affect each weapon.  

3 hours ago, Liesel Weppen said:

We play similar and i also hate that the base-perks also enhance specific weapons.

 

However, your INT-Player is not limited to use batons and junk turrets. He should use whatever weapon he likes even without any skills for that weapon. Especially in the beginning that works well. Junk turret is also a good unattended support for blood moon, so the int-player can put up a junk turret and shot with e.g. a pistol.

You can also turn on xp sharing for your group. During bloodmoon your int-player will then get also many XP without even killing any zed.

Usually for us the int-player is also the builder, building our base or upgrade pois. You don't get XP for crafting but you get a @%$*#!load of XP for building.

 

This way our int-player usually is even one of the most advanced in skills.

 

What you are doing is min-maxing in perfection. Not using weapons, just because you don't have skills that optimize that and then complain about this player "can't" do anything. He can! You just don't want to.

 

There have been level gates in earlier alphas and people also complained about that because after some time you have skill points over, but not the required level reached yet, and they didn't want to spread their skills. So basically with level gates you enforce players to allround their skills OR just wait for level ups. With the current system players are preferred that specialize into specific tasks. Sadly with the weapon buffs within the base perks, they should also prefer using weapons that are tied to their skillset, but they are NOT FORCED to use those weapons.

 

 

OK ... I knew someone would point out the obvious - that you can use a weapon without spending points - and that wanting points into a weapon must surely make mea min-maxer.  There's a very obvious flaw in that.

 

People don't just want to be the best with a weapon for the sake of efficiency.  Being able to kill a zed "better" is what this kind of game is about.  In fact this needs a new thread.

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20 minutes ago, Tahaan said:

OK ... I knew someone would point out the obvious - that you can use a weapon without spending points - and that wanting points into a weapon must surely make mea min-maxer.  There's a very obvious flaw in that.

As i said, i don't like the main perks pushing weapons also. But you said "he can't help/do anything" but he can.

He will not be that good as a fortitude build with an M60 of course, but that's what different roles come with in multiplayer anyway. A agility build with a pistol or SMG will also not pull out the DPS of a machine gunner.

 

Quote

People don't just want to be the best with a weapon for the sake of efficiency.  Being able to kill a zed "better" is what this kind of game is about.  In fact this needs a new thread.

Doesn't need a new thread, there already thousands of them on the forums. If you want one player to be full INT to craft everything for the group, he will not be the best fighter. The other way round the whole group would have to resign a lot of stuff if it had no crafter. An also playable alternative is to not spec an INT-player but hope to find the books for the most important items.

 

I like the suggestion from above way more: Put the weapon-skills with higher effect into an own tree and let the base attributes only side effect the weapon damage.

Instead of giving 200% headshot damage for automatic weapons by fortitude and "just" 10% more damage by the machine gunner skill, imho it would be better to put it exactly the other way round. Would be even more better if e.g. fortitude increases headshot damage for ALL weapons, and only the specific perks increase overal damage for that specific weapons (and those not require any base skill to be at a certain level).

 

BUT then you still have to choose where to put your points. You still can not skill crafting stuff quickly and improve weapon damage (or do both but with slower progress for each). It just solves the dependency that an INT-player tends to use junk turrets and stun batons because he already has buffs for them through the int-perk.

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I'm basically fine with the system as it is (I see attributes as roles, not literally attributes of the person). But I would change the attributes to also have an utility-bonus as well as a weapon-bonus. Because often you spec into other attributes late game (or sometimes even early game as single player) without using those weapons.

 

But A19 might change that a little. Lots of utility perks have been reduced. The interesting part is whether a perk that was reduced from 5 to 3 steps still has the same attribute-gate for the third level or if the gate was increased.

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38 minutes ago, Tahaan said:

When you argue that some weapons aremore suited for some perks, you quickly realise that that doesn't hold for all of them and that the rest was forced into a spot in an artificial attempt to balance it all.

You can partly fix it by letting multiple perks affect a specific weapon - perhaps agility lets you swing the bat OR the machete faster, while strength lets you swing either one harder.  So both strength and agility can be stats that affect the same weapon.

 

When you consider the basic point of stats vs weapons though, the point holds merit.  While some weapons might have been more "forced" that others, I can't say that their placement doesn't make sense.  Would also point out that balance can be tweaked, changed will likely be made, and so on.

However, your second point is where we diverge a bit.  Having strength only, for example, affect one weapon rather than all melee (or at least melee from a single weapon type, if you want to make that point) seems wrong.  For example, you're working out and getting stronger, and you choose between a club and the machete.  When you pick the machete up, after working with the club, you don't suddenly get weaker and can't swing as hard.  You may not know it as well as the other weapon.  or (in IRL terms) adjust for the weight of the weapon, but how hard you *can* swing isn't changed by switching weapons.  Agility may give you faster swings, or a higher crit chance, or other perks, but switching weapons wouldn't diminish your current strength level.  I agree that more than one stat could apply to weapons (see previous sentence), but having stats do an either/or wouldn't seem right (or even remotely realistic, even given the nature of the game).

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1 minute ago, Sawth77 said:

When you consider the basic point of stats vs weapons though, the point holds merit.  While some weapons might have been more "forced" that others, I can't say that their placement doesn't make sense.  Would also point out that balance can be tweaked, changed will likely be made, and so on.

However, your second point is where we diverge a bit.  Having strength only, for example, affect one weapon rather than all melee (or at least melee from a single weapon type, if you want to make that point) seems wrong.  For example, you're working out and getting stronger, and you choose between a club and the machete.  When you pick the machete up, after working with the club, you don't suddenly get weaker and can't swing as hard.  You may not know it as well as the other weapon.  or (in IRL terms) adjust for the weight of the weapon, but how hard you *can* swing isn't changed by switching weapons.  Agility may give you faster swings, or a higher crit chance, or other perks, but switching weapons wouldn't diminish your current strength level.  I agree that more than one stat could apply to weapons (see previous sentence), but having stats do an either/or wouldn't seem right (or even remotely realistic, even given the nature of the game).

I never said it should affect only one weapon.  I want every stat to have some kind of benefit to essentially most if not all of the weapons.  For example Str could give you additional range on the bow (arrow speed) and perhaps agility gives you accuracy and perception lets you get a higher chance to have crits (as an example)

 

 

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35 minutes ago, meganoth said:

I'm basically fine with the system as it is (I see attributes as roles, not literally attributes of the person). But I would change the attributes to also have an utility-bonus as well as a weapon-bonus. Because often you spec into other attributes late game (or sometimes even early game as single player) without using those weapons.

Generic weapon buffs ok, but i don't like STR "forces" you to use shotguns for example. We litteraly do roles, i'm usually the cook with master chef, but i don't like to play shotguns. So why the heck does this role "force" me to use shotguns? As i'm the cook, i'd mostly also do living of the land. That those two are in different skill trees is also anoying. The huntsman is also in fortitude what prefers automatic weapons. Who the heck hunts animals with an AK? And animal tracker than is in perception tree.... WTF.

I'd be fine with STR increases melee damage for all melee weapons. A firearm does not do more damage, just because you are strong... but maybe it reduces the recoil? Fortitude could increase critical hit chance, perception increase accuracy. I'd say agility might increase stamina use while a weapon is drawn, but there is no such mechanic in 7d2d. Maybe increase reload speed. INT may increase durability of weapons. But all of them do it for EVERY weapon.

 

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42 minutes ago, Liesel Weppen said:

Generic weapon buffs ok, but i don't like STR "forces" you to use shotguns for example. We litteraly do roles, i'm usually the cook with master chef, but i don't like to play shotguns. So why the heck does this role "force" me to use shotguns? As i'm the cook, i'd mostly also do living of the land. That those two are in different skill trees is also anoying. The huntsman is also in fortitude what prefers automatic weapons. Who the heck hunts animals with an AK? And animal tracker than is in perception tree.... WTF.

I'd be fine with STR increases melee damage for all melee weapons. A firearm does not do more damage, just because you are strong... but maybe it reduces the recoil? Fortitude could increase critical hit chance, perception increase accuracy. I'd say agility might increase stamina use while a weapon is drawn, but there is no such mechanic in 7d2d. Maybe increase reload speed. INT may increase durability of weapons. But all of them do it for EVERY weapon.

 

We already had that in A17 I if I remember correctly. If strength governs melee damage, everyone doing melee needs to level strength to be good at melee. Or perception to be good at guns. I'm not saying it was a failure but most people just played the same perk distribution, used the same melee weapon, the same gun, every game and that was a main reason it was changed. Now you have 5 distinct roles Madmole designed, but deviations cost more. In A19 maybe some deviations cost less than before because of the perk reduction, we'll see.

 

 

 

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Agree that folks can pick up and use any weapon they want, but not so much about non-specced effectiveness.

Just took some screenshots to see in-game data for a couple things (and I can't reliably recall their values).

 

One pretty big bit that I'm just not clear on is how the "head shot bonus" is applied. Everyone and every weapon, I think, gets a default 200% _sneak_ hit bonus. So does the increase in head shot bonus from Perception only apply during the first hit, _while_ sneaking? Or is the +10-100% above the 200% always applied to headshots?

 

Using "Dead Eye" (rifles) in the Perception Tree. Showing both the Perception bonus & the Dead Eye bonuses for Perception-5 & 7, Dead Eye 3 & 4.

Guessing those are the common targets to shoot for (pardon the pun :) )

 

Oh, and looks like the max XP gained from electrical trap kills is 50%. No idea if that gets shared.

 

 

A18.4__PerceptionSS01_PerceptionAtLvl5.jpg

A18.4__PerceptionSS02_DeadEyeAtLvl3.jpg

A18.4__PerceptionSS03_PerceptionAtLvl7.jpg

A18.4__PerceptionSS04_DeadEyeAtLvl4.jpg

A18.4__ItellectSS2_AdvEng_IfAt5gives50percOfTrapXP.jpg

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8 hours ago, Tahaan said:

or make them cost more points. 

They do cost more points. Paying the attribute cost is the extra expense. If all you need to make you happy is to have the higher tier perks cost more then just think of every point you put into the governing attribute as a payment towards that highest perk and the good news is that you also get a bit of a buff from that attribute as well.

 

Also, if someone who is perked all the way into intelligence and has two junk turrets placed next to him and then picks up an M60 that has a couple mods added to it but he is otherwise unperked at all into that M60--- I guarantee you that intelligence player is going to have fun and survive on horde night.

 

I just don't understand why people act like if you don't perk into a particular weapon you are somehow barred from using it. And for the intelligence guy I'm willing to bet having two junk turrets working side by side with you is plenty of compensation for not being fully perked into whatever other weapon you might be using in tandem from an undeveloped governing attribute.

 

 

8 hours ago, Tahaan said:

gate the higher levels of Perks behind a Level Gate

No thank you. If we had never tried doing that I might say "hmmmmmmmmm, why not?" but level gates were a disaster and I pray they never make a return.

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Int is a very powerful tree on horde night.  Last 150+ GS we did, our INT player scored the most kills.  Specced dual junk turrets just shrreds.

 

And that's on top of all of the traps that he built and all the kills he got from whatever gun he was shooting....

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Headshot damage is added to every headshot with the fitting weapon.

 

Sneak damage is only added on the first shot since after that you are not hidden anymore. But the damage increase is applied to any sneak damage not only to headshots

 

 

 

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