Progression sucks

[Novamourne]

Quote

1. There is no progression through the game world. You have 8k by 8k map and there is little reason to explore it. You can just stick to Town with trader and are good for the rest of the game essentially.
2. Perk system is stiched together in a weird manner. Differentiating skills into atribute trees is way too restrictive. 
3. Loot is tied to gamestage, which means that better loot is locked behind grinding.
4. Rare loot is not gained by challenging gameplay but by...you guessed it grinding

I agree with your first point, but I'm not sure that its necessarily a bad thing. With the way that it is, it makes more areas viable for basing on. That's good for server populations. Also, I don't think it's as bad as you make it out. You can deplete an area or make it much less worth doing than going somewhere new.

On your second point, I couldn't disagree more. I think the perk system is as near to perfection as it ever has been. Your argument makes it sound like you want to be able to fully spec into one talent without committing to the tree and while I can understand that feeling I do think it defeats the purpose of having what is the equivalent to classes, and that does seem to be the point of the perk system. I think the game would be infinitely less interesting if you didn't have to commit to a tree.

For your third point, I don't see the problem here. Gamestage IS what brings the challenging game play. Zombies get harder the longer you survive, the higher your level. It's grinding, yes, but you can't convince me that a T5 quest/poi isn't more challenging than a T3 and you'd be lying to yourself if you tried to convince yourself of the same.

And on your final point, again I couldn't disagree more. You're asking for a guaranteed loot quality for certain things and that would be way worse than "random" loot. Game stage governs a lot of these things now. You can make an argument that it should scale better to offer more difficulty faster but just by surviving the game gets harder and by extension, everything you do gets harder including your grind.

[RestInPieces]

1 minute ago, Liesel Weppen said:

A system that allowes to resolves thoses issues is currently not implemented. Yes the current system is not the best, the previous was also not the best. To make it any better changes need to be made, but they are not done yet. So you can cry how much you want, it will take time to implement the required features.

All people agree that each crate need to have a specific loot table. That is simply not possible in A19.

So, essentially you just want others to stop asking for something different, because that "something" hasn't been implemented yet, which is the reason people are asking for something different in the first place.  

 

27 minutes ago, Liesel Weppen said:

And it is not an easy quick change, that maybe made for the next experimental build. Maybe we see such a system in A20.

Is that an educated guess? Enlighten us.

[Liesel Weppen]

2 minutes ago, RestInPieces said:

So, essentially you just want others to stop asking for something different, because that "something" hasn't been implemented yet, which is the reason people are asking for something different in the first place.  

No, but what people want to have different always turns out the same, and there have been such discussions with the same "result" at least 10 times, within the last few days. It simply becomes boring.

 

2 minutes ago, RestInPieces said:

Is that an educated guess? Enlighten us.

Ask Gazz or Fataal. One of them commented some of those discussions...

[Jebediah]

1 hour ago, Liesel Weppen said:

I wrote the point at least a dozen times now. You still won't get it if i repeat it one more time.

You repeat saying that a proper solution is "not possible" right now while you actually mean that it would just require some work. -> Irrelevant statement.

 

Then again when it's just a temporal solution and they are working on proper solution already, why isn't there any information on that?

[meganoth]

8 hours ago, Jebediah said:

You repeat saying that a proper solution is "not possible" right now while you actually mean that it would just require some work. -> Irrelevant statement.

 

Then again when it's just a temporal solution and they are working on proper solution already, why isn't there any information on that?

Liesel already said "what i got from some TFP members, they are already working on that". Which is nearly all the information we have. Roland mentioned zones with different levels of radiation and there is talk about biomes having their own danger setting, especially wasteland being more dangerous.

 

But TFP tends to not announce what they are working on, only what they have already implemented and is not in danger of being cancled again. I'm absolutely sure none of this will come to A19, if that's what you are thinking. This is stuff for A20 and you will probably hear details about it very late this year.

 

 

[RestInPieces]

28 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Liesel already said "what i got from some TFP members, they are already working on that". Which is nearly all the information we have. Roland mentioned zones with different levels of radiation and there is talk about biomes having their own danger setting, especially wasteland being more dangerous.

 

But TFP tends to not announce what they are working on, only what they have already implemented and is not in danger of being cancled again. I'm absolutely sure none of this will come to A19, if that's what you are thinking. This is stuff for A20 and you will probably hear details about it very late this year.

Meganoth, they have been hinting at this for years -- is there any quote from TFP that states their willingness to do that (loot-wise as well)? 

Because the latest changes reflect the exact opposite.

[meganoth]

9 minutes ago, RestInPieces said:

Meganoth, they have been hinting about this for years -- is there any quote from TFP that states their willingness to do that (loot-wise as well)? 

Because the latest changes reflect the exact opposite.

1) It isn't the opposite. The current changes were done to extend the stone age. Leveled loot was always in the game, they just made the higher loot levels impossible instead of really improbable because (they said) that never worked to satisfaction.

2) There is the quote from Madmole that RWG features will be a team effort for A20, I assume that not only road fixing but also features like radiation zones or biome-dependant loot should be part of that package. And there is Rolands statement and I seem to remember a developer saying that at least leveled biomes are on the current feature list. I would say the chance this is one of the features of A20 is about the same as legendary weapons.

 

[Ttocs]

Been playing a19 same as 17 and 18. Single player and 2 points per level. Making the rule that the 2nd point goes toward QoL rather than making me stronger. I know its not vanilla so not sure if its relevant but I havnt looked back since I started doing it. The wait for points is just too slow for me personally on vanilla. 

 

Not had a problem with the early tools and weapons, have actually enjoyed using the blunder for once as i usually skip over it.

[RestInPieces]

1) Opposite in the sense that if they actually want to add zoned loot, both lower and higher levels of loot should be probable and I fail to see how this change serves anything at all towards that goal. Even in the case they want to increase zone GS at, say, TX POIs, they will obviously also have to decrease or cap zone GS everywhere else anyway, because as the player GS rises else they will again end up getting the same loot. In other words I don't think the 18->19 change indicates a willingness for leveled zones in the slightest.

 

And from my experience until now, it's not that they only extended the stone age (which is good in my book), but also made lower loot levels improbable, which creates its own set of problems, part of which are being discussed in that crafting thread.

 

2) Been hearing that for a long time -- hope Roland's statement is fresh and that MM will include gameplay features and not just RWG features.

 

[meganoth]

32 minutes ago, RestInPieces said:

1) Opposite in the sense that if they actually want to add zoned loot, both lower and higher levels of loot should be probable and I fail to see how this change serves anything at all towards that goal. Even in the case they want to increase zone GS at, say, TX POIs, they will obviously also have to decrease or cap zone GS everywhere else anyway, because as the player GS rises else they will again end up getting the same loot. In other words I don't think the 18->19 change indicates a willingness for leveled zones in the slightest.

 

And from my experience until now, it's not that they only extended the stone age (which is good in my book), but also made lower loot levels improbable, which creates its own set of problems, part of which are being discussed in that crafting thread.

 

2) Been hearing that for a long time -- hope Roland's statement is fresh and that MM will include gameplay features and not just RWG features.

 

1) I never said the 19 changes indicate a willingness for leveled zones. They are orthogonal.

 

Don't understand where you see the problem. Lets say a slightly more dangerous area or biome just adds a constant value (for example 10) to loot gamestage. A toon on his first day would find maybe quality 4 stone spears instead of quality 1 stone spears. On day 5 his normal gamestage might be 15 and in a dangerous area he would be in a higher loot tier (which begins at 20), so he would already find pistols and iron spears.

 

All this needs to work is new data in the RWG that designates zones of difficulties and a few values to expose this to XML.  In this scenario where do you see toons getting the same loot in normal and in dangerous areas? To be clear, I consider a q4 spear to be better loot than a q1 spear.

 

2) Rolands statement was a few days ago

 

[RestInPieces]

36 minutes ago, meganoth said:

1) I never said the 19 changes indicate a willingness for leveled zones. They are orthogonal.

 

Don't understand where you see the problem. Lets say a slightly more dangerous area or biome just adds a constant value (for example 10) to loot gamestage. A toon on his first day would find maybe quality 4 stone spears instead of quality 1 stone spears. On day 5 his normal gamestage might be 15 and in a dangerous area he would be in a higher loot tier (which begins at 20), so he would already find pistols and iron spears.

 

 In this scenario where do you see toons getting the same loot in normal and in dangerous areas? To be clear, I consider a q4 spear to be better loot than a q1 spear.

What I am saying is that as the player's GS rises they will end up getting max quality spears in normal zones, as well as more dangerous zones. And the sensible thing would be to cap those normal zones so that more dangerous zones are always more lucrative.  So, assuming they put various different caps for "T1-T5" POIs/zones, I don't see any merit in this change for this specific purpose. 

 

36 minutes ago, meganoth said:

All this needs to work is new data in the RWG that designates zones of difficulties and a few values to expose this to XML.

True. Hell, it largely depends on how they have set up things and their internal tools, but theoretically they could randomize any  prefab at instantiation/runtime, at least when it comes to traps or containers, which is why I don't understand why they went with the whole dungeon POI thing, that pushes players to nerdpole etc.

[Onarr]

21 hours ago, Novamourne said:

I agree with your first point, but I'm not sure that its necessarily a bad thing. With the way that it is, it makes more areas viable for basing on. That's good for server populations. Also, I don't think it's as bad as you make it out. You can deplete an area or make it much less worth doing than going somewhere new.

On your second point, I couldn't disagree more. I think the perk system is as near to perfection as it ever has been. Your argument makes it sound like you want to be able to fully spec into one talent without committing to the tree and while I can understand that feeling I do think it defeats the purpose of having what is the equivalent to classes, and that does seem to be the point of the perk system. I think the game would be infinitely less interesting if you didn't have to commit to a tree.

For your third point, I don't see the problem here. Gamestage IS what brings the challenging game play. Zombies get harder the longer you survive, the higher your level. It's grinding, yes, but you can't convince me that a T5 quest/poi isn't more challenging than a T3 and you'd be lying to yourself if you tried to convince yourself of the same.

And on your final point, again I couldn't disagree more. You're asking for a guaranteed loot quality for certain things and that would be way worse than "random" loot. Game stage governs a lot of these things now. You can make an argument that it should scale better to offer more difficulty faster but just by surviving the game gets harder and by extension, everything you do gets harder including your grind.

I am not sure you read my whole post, because I explain all the above points in greater detail.

2. Main issue is if you want to play certain way you are forced to use certain weapons. For example I went for scavanger build where you are stuck with long ranged rifles / spears. This does not fit well, because for the most time you are stuck in close quarters. Shotgun or pistol would be much better fit for it. I would really like it if weapons had different tree or progression, so the weapon choice and playstyles are seperated.
3. But thats exactly the problem. If you do T5 PoI you get same loot as doing T3. You should get better reward for doing harder content. That is not possible when loot is tied only to gamestage.

4. Yeah because it is so fun for your progression to be locked behind roll of a dice. I love games where you cannot find crucible for 30 days. 

[Jebediah]

On 7/11/2020 at 12:51 AM, meganoth said:

Liesel already said "what i got from some TFP members, they are already working on that". Which is nearly all the information we have. Roland mentioned zones with different levels of radiation and there is talk about biomes having their own danger setting, especially wasteland being more dangerous.

He could have just answered my first post in a brief and friendly way, linking atleast one of the alleged ten discussions this topic was dealt with already, quoting TFP that this is not going to be the final system. None of this is obvious after checking the patch notes again and searching the forum regarding this topic before posting. What i got instead was ad hominem... after we wasted everyones time because he assumed that i just want some change right now cause im pissed and stupid. I didn't whine about anything. He assumed to know what my intentions are, what is just arrogant and toxic. 

 

Im still not convinced that they would communicate a temporal change that poorly while they are asking for feedback and contructive criticism, essentially wasting the time of people caring about improving their game. Radidation zones and difficult biomes sounds good, but more like mid/late game progression.

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, Jebediah said:

He could have just answered my first post in a brief and friendly way, linking atleast one of the alleged ten discussions this topic was dealt with already, quoting TFP that this is not going to be the final system. None of this is obvious after checking the patch notes again and searching the forum regarding this topic before posting. What i got instead was ad hominem... after we wasted everyones time because he assumed that i just want some change right now cause im pissed and stupid. I didn't whine about anything. He assumed to know what my intentions are, what is just arrogant and toxic. 

 

Im still not convinced that they would communicate a temporal change that poorly while they are asking for feedback and contructive criticism, essentially wasting the time of people caring about improving their game. Radidation zones and difficult biomes sounds good, but more like mid/late game progression.

Liesel Weapon does not know how to do friendly 😁.

 

But seriously I have reread your conversation and your first post was only half critizism and half rant. His answers lacked sources but were first relatively neutral. Then you both got "louder". You were missing or not believing his info, he misinterpreted your intentions. In sports the trainer would coerce you both to shake hands now and start afresh. 😉

 

I forgot most of what has been discussed here and I might have already mentioned it, but if you are refering to the stone age and a more controlled progression, that is not necessarily temporary. When they have the ability to make difficulty and loot depend on position they will probably first try to upgrade the current system with it and only reinvent it completely if that doesn't work (I'm guessing, but developer time is scarce, they want to get finished and the time for experiments is mostly over)

 

[Roland]

Either you are into the development aspect of this and are following the developers' posts or you aren't. If you aren't then don't complain that stuff isn't communicated. You don't even have to read the whole forum. Simply follow Madmole, faatal, gazz, and even myself. I just explained this in another thread. Gazz has also explained it as has Madmole. 

 

When you want to know something, ask questions instead of making accusations based on feared assumptions.

 

Step 1: Tie enemies and loot to gamestage so that basic loot has easy enemies guarding it and better loot has tougher enemies guarding it.

Step 2: Code the game so that specific areas can be tagged with a higher or lower gamestage making that biome, city, or POI have different loot and enemies from surrounding POI's

Step 3: Implement some kind of warning system that communicates to players that this POI might be too much for them. This will be handled by levels of radiation. The code currently has three levels of radiation as an area effect but it is not implemented yet.

Step 4: Implement a random event manager to dynamically place unique challenges in the path of the player that can further modify the normal gamestage of the player.

 

Result: A world that has a variety of places all around with a spectrum of threats and loot possibilities. Do you want that assault rifle on Day 1? Then enter that radiated building and hope you don't die of radiation sickness while running past ferals and find that strong box in the loot room. But if you pull it off you get the gun. You see where the supply drop fell but the Random Event Manager placed a squad of bandits around it and they will loot it and disappear in 3 minutes. Now you know this drop will be better than the last one which just had a few basic zombies wandering near it attracted by the blinking light....

 

Welcome to Alpha 19 AKA Step 1. I don't know what order or what timeline the remaining steps will be implemented but I can say that TFP is aware that the current progression is not shippable.

 

[Jebediah]

17 hours ago, Roland said:

Result:

Players clear the ferals, don't loot, grind game stage, loot the better rewards without having to deal with a more difficult threat, do the same with all houses and POIs. Players might figure out a way to clear the ferals in a smart way or just die a few times, guaranteed get an infinite durability high level weapon, slow progression failed. The new player loots the easy POIs and frustratedly realises after hours of looting empty safes and stone spears that he isn't just unlucky.

[Roland]

9 hours ago, Jebediah said:

Players clear the ferals, don't loot, grind game stage, loot the better rewards without having to deal with a more difficult threat, do the same with all houses and POIs.

For sure that will be one of the results.  People gaming the system in unnatural ways is as certain as the sun rising each morning. But as long as the game provides a way to play it straight then I’ll be happy. 

[Dracula]

On 7/13/2020 at 1:33 PM, Roland said:

I don't know what order or what timeline the remaining steps will be implemented but I can say that TFP is aware that the current progression is not shippable.

 

I find this to be very refreshing news and to hear that things will shift to a more balanced playing style is why I keep getting excited about Alpha progression.

[Roland]

Here is a question: why has there been zero complaints about the steel axe or iron club being found in sealed crates? Those items look obviously cobbled together from post apocalyptic junk. Several of the rifles and guns appear to be hand crafted from available parts rather than machine manufactured. But not a peep. 
 

They could replace all the sealed crates with post apocalyptic styled containers but I suspect the complaining would not abate....

 

My suspension of disbelief that this argument is just about immersion is crumbling. 

[theFlu]

18 minutes ago, Roland said:

Here is a question: why has there been zero complaints about the steel axe or iron club being found in sealed crates? Those items look obviously cobbled together from post apocalyptic junk. Several of the rifles and guns appear to be hand crafted from available parts rather than machine manufactured. But not a peep.

Haven't taken part in this discussion, but since you ask; I would consider the apocalyptic look of the items as the bug, rather than the fact that they're found in tool stores. And it's a trivially minor bug for the items that would need skill and workstations to craft - the higher, "manufactured" quality of those items is obviously implemented in the game mechanics, the look is just a "unified placeholder" (although having factory-made skins for the ones found in loot would emphasize the apocalyptic feel of the self-made stuff, and would just overall be pretty neat).

 

For stone tools, yeah, they're a twig and not-even-a-sharp stone bound together by grass by game mechanics, finding those in a store crate is .. unlikely.

[Roland]

I would be all for re-skinning all the primitive items as rusty, dented, and pockmarked versions of pre-apocalypse manufactured versions. They would have all the same stats as their primitive brothers and would only show up in loot. 
 

But then I’m happy finding a yellow stone axe in the loot room to replace my orange one. Not everyone is happy with that even if it were to be reskinned as a yellow rusty manufactured axe that was functionally the same as a yellow stone axe. 

[theFlu]

Heh, not that I disagree, but have you checked the stats though.. the iron tools are effectively a reskin of the stone ones, no real difference in performance (sure, some differences, but any upside for iron is demolished by the stamina use) Just toss some of those in the store boxes, and no-one will be any stronger anyway.. and at least they'd scrap to iron

[Feycat]

On 7/5/2020 at 7:27 AM, Onarr said:

Loot is tied to gamestage, which means that better loot is locked behind grinding.

No, loot is locked behind playing. What do you consider "grinding" when everything gives you xp? You don't even have to try to level, just playing the game does it. Build a base, fight a horde, clear a POI, complete a quest, go mining. All of it gives xp, so what are you "grinding" exactly?

Also, thanks but no thanks, I love this change. It means I can have level 6 padded gear with lots of mods instead of crappy grey gear while I wait to get high enough for military armor. My heavy armor peeps are wearing level 6 scrap. Low level high quality gear is an awesome change.

[Onarr]

8 hours ago, Feycat said:

No, loot is locked behind playing. What do you consider "grinding" when everything gives you xp? You don't even have to try to level, just playing the game does it. Build a base, fight a horde, clear a POI, complete a quest, go mining. All of it gives xp, so what are you "grinding" exactly?

Also, thanks but no thanks, I love this change. It means I can have level 6 padded gear with lots of mods instead of crappy grey gear while I wait to get high enough for military armor. My heavy armor peeps are wearing level 6 scrap. Low level high quality gear is an awesome change.

Its doing similar easy content 100 times before you get that one thing you want, where there is little reward in between. In comes from MMORPGs where you are killing one mob over and over and hope for a drop.

 

Havnig 4 mod item armor is certainly nice, but as you yourself stated, this kills the progression. You stay at T1 far longer

9 hours ago, Roland said:

Here is a question: why has there been zero complaints about the steel axe or iron club being found in sealed crates? Those items look obviously cobbled together from post apocalyptic junk. Several of the rifles and guns appear to be hand crafted from available parts rather than machine manufactured. But not a peep. 
 

They could replace all the sealed crates with post apocalyptic styled containers but I suspect the complaining would not abate....

 

My suspension of disbelief that this argument is just about immersion is crumbling. 

Its not about immersion, it imho never was. Its about value of the item you cannot use combined with new linear progression. You know that this crap will be in your box for a while.

[Roland]

45 minutes ago, Onarr said:

Its not about immersion, it imho never was.

Excellent. So since we’ve established this current state is just a step towards having tougher places with better loot alongside easier places with worse loot then we can all be forgiving and patient while we wait for it to happen and since it never was about immersion it will be fine if the junk is still in sealed crates as long as there is also non-junk available somewhere by Day 2 because— let’s be honest here— more than even one day for you guys is too long being stuck with early game stuff. Amirite?
 

Now, if you don’t have patience then mod it or uninstall it until it’s done. Feedback can shift to other stuff now. That the progression really seems unfinished somehow is a known issue. Thank you.