Shotgun Messiah Factory not worth it it seems.

[psychatix]

I'm gamestage 64, and the best I've gotten out of these , the loot pile at the very very top of the factory, was a level 2 Marksman Rifle..which I"m pretty sure is a @%$*#! gun at a clip of 5. The other boxes had ammo, but not even alot of ammo...like 5-7 shotgun rounds and 10 rifle rounds. I thought this was like a raid of some kind to be honest, and it feels like that. Zeds come out of the damn walls at you, birds are flying in at you, radiation zombies on the roof, collapsing traps. 

I also went from the front entrance of the factory to the top, and purposely fought the radiated zombies because I found the Rad mod early on to stop their healing. Overall, I will NOT being do that ever again, I'm just going to nerd pole to the top for the loot, it is NOT worth the hassle of going through the entire damn factory. I looted as much as I could in there, and I got nothing decent.

The amount of ferals and birds that were in there was astounding as well. I'm definitely going to just nerd pole RIGHT up the side of the tower , claim my loot, and dip out. Waterworks gives slightly better loot than this, and even then it's HARDLY worth it, but thank god they added in a secret entrance behind Waterworks where the tree is, just a straight shot to the loot. Not sure why. 

As a side note, I honestly really hope they remove nerd poling. Unpopular opinion, I know, but it's too tempting to just nerd pole to the attic/top , get loot, and leave. Sometimes it'st oo tedious to just walk through the house. They need to put the loot in a heavily armored room somewhere below the ground that you literally can't get into unless you flip on some switches throughout the building. Make the walls around the loot room indestructible, and then put actual good loot in them. 

[RipClaw]

The loot is linked to your gamestage and not the POI. When you open a chest, it doesn't matter where it is.
 

[psychatix]

That's dumb, the loot should be locked at a certain gamestage for places like Shotgun Factory and Waterworks. Even at level 1, Gamestage 2, if you some how make it to the end of Waterworks, survive, and loot the locked chest, it should have gear MINIMUM at Gamestage 30-40, which then scales once you yourself go past gamestage 30-40. Shotgun Factory should have loot locked at Gamestage 50+ with how @%$*#!ing RIDICULOUS that place is. Looting 6 shotgun slugs, and a level 2 Marksman rifle when I'm gamestage 64 is absolutely ridiculous. 

 

I get what you're saying though, I'm never touching the factory again it seems, won't even take the chance of fallling off my nerd pole to my death. 

[RipClaw]

From what I read, it's planned to give certain POIs a gamestage bonus. But you have to expect harder zombies then. The loot is not free.

 

[iejen]

Problem is that loot can be nerdpoled. Therefor the biggest reward should come from the traderquest and not a random lootrun.

 

I agree that a tier 5 Quest should give 500+ Bullets or something

[SonicSonedit]

9 minutes ago, iejen said:

Problem is that loot can be nerdpoled. Therefor the biggest reward should come from the traderquest and not a random lootrun.

 

I agree that a tier 5 Quest should give 500+ Bullets or something

Back in A15 you both couldn't nerdpole to the top since buildings weren't "loot dungeons" and roaming zombies would prevent you from building weak temporal structures around POIs.

Basically devs shot themselves into the lag and now trying to apply band-aid to gunshot wound with stone age mechanic, cool

[iejen]

23 minutes ago, SonicSonedit said:

Back in A15 you both couldn't nerdpole to the top since buildings weren't "loot dungeons" and roaming zombies would prevent you from building weak temporal structures around POIs.

Basically devs shot themselves into the lag and now trying to apply band-aid to gunshot wound with stone age mechanic, cool

I dissagree on a personal level.

But they need tot find a perfect in between solution.

[Gr.o.m.]

How will removing nerdpoling improve the situation?

I can still build a ladder or place frames along a wall to build me a stairway to heaven.

Ofc you can rmove blockplacing at all as long as you are in a poi. But that will also cripple stealth build who can not jump and place ramps to stay in stealth.

Also prevend placing barbed wire and stakes, also forcing ppl from melee into gunning down zombies.

[Novamourne]

2 hours ago, psychatix said:

That's dumb, the loot should be locked at a certain gamestage for places like Shotgun Factory and Waterworks. Even at level 1, Gamestage 2, if you some how make it to the end of Waterworks, survive, and loot the locked chest, it should have gear MINIMUM at Gamestage 30-40, which then scales once you yourself go past gamestage 30-40. Shotgun Factory should have loot locked at Gamestage 50+ with how @%$*#!ing RIDICULOUS that place is. Looting 6 shotgun slugs, and a level 2 Marksman rifle when I'm gamestage 64 is absolutely ridiculous. 

 

I get what you're saying though, I'm never touching the factory again it seems, won't even take the chance of fallling off my nerd pole to my death. 

The loot is tied to your game stage because that's what governs how difficult a POI is. If you rush to a T5 POI with a T2 game stage, you shouldn't get T5 loot. That breaks the reward cycle.

[RipClaw]

2 minutes ago, Gr.o.m. said:

How will removing nerdpoling improve the situation?

I can still build a ladder or place frames along a wall to build me a stairway to heaven.

You're right. Removing Nerpoling wouldn't change anything.

If you want to prevent someone from grabbing your unguarded loot, it shouldn't be unguarded or it shouldn't be all in one place.

[mdf25]

The problem also comes wity the overuse of dungeon style POIs. 

 

In A16 the skyscrapers were the only dungeon ones whereas other POIs were meant to be broken into and not all had guaranteed loot crates at the end.

 

I think what needs to happen to help bring back the fun factor, is to have non-dungeon versions of all the dungeon POIs apart from skyscrapers and factories, then spread it 80% normal 20% dungeon. Normal POIs have no loot crates at the end or maybe 1-2 dotted randomly throughout. No lights to guide, and less sleepers. Dungeons would then have more sleepers but guaranteed loot crates.

 

To balance out the factory loot crate issue with low quality loot at the end, simply make 2 variants of loot crates, one guarsnteed to have better loot and those are only ever found at the end of long POIs

[JCrook1028]

Imo, there's not a single Tier 5 POI worth doing. I haven't done one since very early on in A17. It's just a waste of my time. If you wanna go do em for fun great, have at it. But if you're doing it out of a hope for better lot give that idea up til at least A20.Insert other media

[RestInPieces]

4 hours ago, mdf25 said:

The problem also comes wity the overuse of dungeon style POIs. 

 

In A16 the skyscrapers were the only dungeon ones whereas other POIs were meant to be broken into and not all had guaranteed loot crates at the end.

 

I think what needs to happen to help bring back the fun factor, is to have non-dungeon versions of all the dungeon POIs apart from skyscrapers and factories, then spread it 80% normal 20% dungeon. Normal POIs have no loot crates at the end or maybe 1-2 dotted randomly throughout. No lights to guide, and less sleepers. Dungeons would then have more sleepers but guaranteed loot crates.

 

To balance out the factory loot crate issue with low quality loot at the end, simply make 2 variants of loot crates, one guarsnteed to have better loot and those are only ever found at the end of long POIs

 

So at some point, TFP, instead of making dozens of POI variations though scripts with randomized loot containers, traps etc, with chances that factored in zone, POI or even spawns, they decided to:

 

Populate the world with pretty much identical "dungeon POIs" in a randomly generated sandbox, place a loot box at the specific spot (in a destructible voxel game), stuff them with sleepers and making roaming zombies a rare sight and make item scaling more dependent on GS to homogenize every POI even more. Followed by a barrage of unsurprising band-aids like increasing the sleeper randomization, amount of "non-dungeon" POIs and now, allegedly, GS increases for POIs AKA slow, but useless steps towards what people were asking for in the first place.       

 

In my opinion, the same thing keeps happening with most systems in the game through the alphas, like the AI, crafting or perks, to the point that I frankly wonder whether they will create more problems than they fix in next alpha. Not to say that there haven't been plentiful and significant improvements, but some decisions are just baffling.

[myrkana]

2 hours ago, JCrook1028 said:

Imo, there's not a single Tier 5 POI worth doing. I haven't done one since very early on in A17. It's just a waste of my time. If you wanna go do em for fun great, have at it. But if you're doing it out of a hope for better lot give that idea up til at least A20.Insert other media

I do them all the time. I get at least 2-5 levels from killing the zombies. I do it with one other person and we'll go back to our bikes/boxes 2 or 3 times and empty stuff out. Come back with a ton of materials and food. Some of them have quite a bit of cobblestone and cement piles spread around. Easy cement I dont have to smelt down in my forge for 10 days. 

 

We looted the food factory (shamway? I cant remember) and came out with a ton of canned food, plus it made a good first horde place to hide out in and like 4 levels from all the zombies we killed. Shotgun messiahs tend to have gun rates spread around so we get a lot of different weapons and ammo., also irc there a room with a bunch of bookshelves early on in it.  

 

How can you say its not worth doing when you havent dont it since A17?

 

5 hours ago, mdf25 said:

The problem also comes wity the overuse of dungeon style POIs. 

 

In A16 the skyscrapers were the only dungeon ones whereas other POIs were meant to be broken into and not all had guaranteed loot crates at the end.

 

I think what needs to happen to help bring back the fun factor, is to have non-dungeon versions of all the dungeon POIs apart from skyscrapers and factories, then spread it 80% normal 20% dungeon. Normal POIs have no loot crates at the end or maybe 1-2 dotted randomly throughout. No lights to guide, and less sleepers. Dungeons would then have more sleepers but guaranteed loot crates.

 

To balance out the factory loot crate issue with low quality loot at the end, simply make 2 variants of loot crates, one guarsnteed to have better loot and those are only ever found at the end of long POIs

how does that bring back fun? itll take away any reason to loot those buildings outside quests and very specific expeditions for pots and stuff early game.

 

 

9 hours ago, iejen said:

Problem is that loot can be nerdpoled. Therefor the biggest reward should come from the traderquest and not a random lootrun.

 

I agree that a tier 5 Quest should give 500+ Bullets or something

it can be. But with this being a sandbox type game, that leaves it up to the player how they want to play the game. Occasionally I nerdpole up something, usually I follow the dungeon or get lost in the place and just beat down doors. 

 

[Adam the Waster]

i think in the factorys. there should be a Large warehouse like area that is FULL OF boxes and Zombies!

 

 

[bloodmoth13]

17 hours ago, iejen said:

Problem is that loot can be nerdpoled. Therefor the biggest reward should come from the traderquest and not a random lootrun.

 

I agree that a tier 5 Quest should give 500+ Bullets or something

This.

If i knew i could always get t6 weapons id nerdpole to the top. 

 

They should probably still have a boost though, being able to do one mid game should be more rewarding than the lootbox in a random house.

 

[psychatix]

18 hours ago, Novamourne said:

The loot is tied to your game stage because that's what governs how difficult a POI is. If you rush to a T5 POI with a T2 game stage, you shouldn't get T5 loot. That breaks the reward cycle.

I disagree. If you're at T2 gamestage and you somehow make it to the end of a T5 POI, you should be rewarded T5 loot every time. Couple that with making the loot pile at the end NOT something you can easily just nerd pole too. Like Waterworks BEFORE they put in the back door STRAIGHT to the damn loot room. 

[katarynna]

If you are at t2 gamestage and make it to the end of a t5 poi, you have only been fighting t2 zombies is a very large building. Therefore you should only get t2 or perhaps t3 loot imo.

 

if there was a change so that t5 poi's always have max gs zombies, then i would agree that t5's should always have t5 loot.

[Guest]

13 hours ago, RestInPieces said:

In my opinion, the same thing keeps happening with most systems in the game through the alphas, like the AI, crafting or perks, to the point that I frankly wonder whether they will create more problems than they fix in next alpha. Not to say that there haven't been plentiful and significant improvements, but some decisions are just baffling.

It's like they're working without a design lead or something. Or whoever is lead is just not the right person for it? TFP seem constantly surprised by the effect their changes to the game have, so much is done ad hoc and/or rationalized after the fact. Aside from a few projects that just died along the route, this is the bumpiest EA experience I've ever had. I'm not even mad about it because I got my money's worth a long time ago, but I've become increasingly skeptical about this game ever reaching its potential.

/rant

[Black Hat]

Wait till gm 100 if you don't want too much disappointment.

[Onarr]

2 hours ago, katarynna said:

If you are at t2 gamestage and make it to the end of a t5 poi, you have only been fighting t2 zombies is a very large building. Therefore you should only get t2 or perhaps t3 loot imo.

 

if there was a change so that t5 poi's always have max gs zombies, then i would agree that t5's should always have t5 loot.

Problem with that is you could nerpole there. Imho there first needs to be some mechanic that prevents players from claiming loot this way. The keys to secure room sounds good. Places like armory should be locked

[FA_Q2]

Most of the loot in the Shotgun Messiah is not at the final stash - most of it is in the building anyway.