So was the point of A19 to get rid of "Realism"?

[meganoth]

1 minute ago, beHypE said:

I've thought about doing that. But then you have other issues, such as powerleveling way too much early and also raising your gamestage very fast compared to the time spent looting. The "best" solution would be to mod the game to lower the gamestage requirements to unlocking the next stage (something like 6/31/71 instead of the current 11/51/91). Haven't checked if it's easily doable though.

 

Anyway this isn't so much about "fixing the issue by modding or changing the settings" as it is about Vanilla progression that 95% of the playerbase are gonna experience as is.

Sure. But what can I say, I personally like the current progression speed, at least at the moment. Maybe I get burned out too eventually, who knows. Early and mid game I need so many mods to fill my armor slots and gun slots because now I get quality 6 (tier 0) weapons and armor relatively early. I need so much building material as well after I solved the food problem. I also still get a kick out of finding a q3 pistol if I only have a q2, so maybe I'm just easy to please.

 

What I would change though would be that crafting of high quality weapons is made to be a more evolutionary process. For example to craft a q5 weapon you first need a q4 weapon and about as many weapon parts as crafting the q4 weapon cost you. So you never would safe up weapon parts for a q5 weapon because crafting the q4 weapon would be a step in the process of crafting the q5 weapon.

 

 

 

[Roland]

8 hours ago, meganoth said:

I also still get a kick out of finding a q3 pistol if I only have a q2, so maybe I'm just easy to please.

I’m playing a “no repairs” game so when I find a higher quality stone axe than I can craft I love it. Once it is used up I scrap it and have to downgrade until I find another one. 
—————-

 

Look, even @beHypE admitted that they understand this is a halfway feature that isn’t done yet. That sometimes happens during development. Nobody, leastwise the devs, wants the current progression to be the final product. 
 

What’s the point of complaining if we already know this is temporary? Just to vent?  Fine, if so. But I really doubt it is detrimental. If people really can’t stand it and can’t/won’t mod it then they will set it aside until the next update. We are constantly seeing the return of people who haven’t played since Alpha 15 or even further back. I just helped two people convert their kickstarter keys into Steam keys because that was the last time they played. People always seem to come back to at least check. 
 

In this case, when they do, they’ll be able to go to the desert or wasteland or burnt forest biomes to find higher tier exciting loot early on and there will be a wider variety of primitive loot in the tables which will all make the game feel less linear than the current state. 
 

Playing now gives you the cred to later say, “ I remember the days when you were stuck with stone shovels until level 22...”.  Every iteration has its own personality and provides memories of different forms of the game. This too shall pass but it’s cool that we got to experience it. If not, shelve it for 6 months and then try it again. 

[FileMachete]

4 hours ago, meganoth said:

What I would change though would be that crafting of high quality weapons is made to be a more evolutionary process. For example to craft a q5 weapon you first need a q4 weapon and about as many weapon parts as crafting the q4 weapon cost you. So you never would safe up weapon parts for a q5 weapon because crafting the q4 weapon would be a step in the process of crafting the q5 weapon.

That's an intriguing idea. Speed bumps being we currently can't craft lower than we've spec'd. MM kind of responded to this but as I recall he didn't definatedly state it would be changed, could be wrong. Another likely big one would be the large overlaps in stats. If they simply added a bit of scripting so that there was no way that a newly crafted higher quality item could wind up being worse than it's ingrediant then that'd work.

---

On the Cowboy Tech bit, I was thinking of them as found items. Rational being that with so few normals left, and with all the firearms (don't forget we're in Arizona, so not only lots of Western culture fans, but probably enough modern stuff to arm a small nations military, heh) I'd expect that as survivors found 'better' guns they might stash their old ones around as fall backs or just toss them. Also, Ruger manufactures in AZ and they make a lot of single action revolvers.

 

As to the ability to make things from scratch, yeah, no question a single shot pipe gun would be far easier than pretty much anything but basic cannon & rough blunderbi. But we really don't want to even gaze into that rabbit hole. Other than the AK, nothing currently in game was designed with even the thought of mostly manual manufacture, while the cowboy stuff was. Yet even those leveraged steam powered lathes and drill press like machines for much of the gross work prior to the gunsmiths doing all the final fitting assembly and polish.

14 minutes ago, Roland said:

Nobody, leastwise the devs, wants the current progression to be the final product.

That's the best news I've heard in many days Roland, thanks for sharing it!

Even if I personally am reading it to mean (among other things) that stone axes damage to stone will be significantly increased.

(if that turns out to be wrong I will 'roleplay' that TFPs saw the light and buffed our early friend and just ignore that magical little modlet humming away in the background)

 

6 hours ago, Reckis said:

Not to mention that the style of "stone" weapons and tools that are depicted in the game require the ability to perform flint knapping, which if you have never done it is NOT an easy process. It takes a significant amount of practice and experience to learn where to strike, what "tools" to use to form the flint and how to get the shapes and edges that make such a stone tool useful.

Yes indeed. I took a tour at a National Park where part of it was about stone arrows and tools, and they had an area to give it a try. Even though I'm really good with my hands it was really difficult, and would take quite a while to become even passable at. No way would you be making and using stone arrowheads with all the sheet metal laying around.

[Solomon]

21 hours ago, FileMachete said:

Doesn't matter to this point though; consider just all kinds of modern knives. If the troubles have been going on for quite a while then you could imagine that most kitchen knives such as Chef, Carving, etc., those that were big & 'sharp', could all have been looted. Any decent 'hunting knife' would have been a real find. But would all of the Butter knives and just normal utensils get taken as well? There's only a tiny fraction of regular people left. Each pre-disaster dwelling would have had at least a half dozen or more knives of some sort. Even if there had been mass evacuations, who'd have taken everything in the utensils drawer? Most would have been lucky to remember to take food and a can opener.

In my home theres atleast 32 regular knifes, 10 decorative sword thingies (my father liked to collect these, they are sharp as hell) and atleast 10 regular weak knife what are barely sharp but function.

 

Unless someone loots this place to smelt stuff and trade it away i doubt anybody would take more than 1-2 knifes/swords.

 

21 hours ago, FileMachete said:

For arguments sake lets say a lot of folks did evacuate. And everything they took with them made it out as well. How many took all their gardening tools? A lawn mowers blade would make a decent machete. It's even the right mild temper.

Not to mention a lawn mower engine makes a lot more sense for a cobbled together generator. Who would haul a several hundred pound V8 out of a Crown Vic to use as a genie? And every car has basic tools to swap a flat. Lug wrench for a club.

True dat. If i would need to get myself a cutting tool from the ingame items what are shown, i could use one of those pieces of random metal nailed on doors to reinforce it.

 

Get a stone and start sharpening, it wont be great but would work.

 

17 hours ago, meganoth said:

Shockingly I have to agree with Solomon this time 😉. Immersion-wise the game could improve by just making the stone-age tools use iron instead of stones and look like it. The stone axe would still have to exist as a pure stone item to provide the initial bootstrap that allows you to get stone, wood, and metal at all.

 

At least for guns I think the pipe weapons are already a step in that direction. If we compare pipe guns with western tech (FileMachetes proposal), pipe guns win IMHO, because it makes sense that you can build them with scrap metal and duct tape, while historical guns have the same problem as the blunderbuss for justifying why they are there in such masses and how to build them easily.  Pipe guns have no problems being in weapon shipment boxes and households as today we can order 3D printed guns on the internet.

 

Thanks:)

 

I think that the only stone tool what makes sense is the sledgehammer because lets be honest after reading again what i wrote for replacement i realized that i would probably sooner tape a big rock onto a pipe/stick than go for that big pieces of iron.

 

 

How about we shift the gathering ability to the stone sledgehammer? By doing this we could give the regular gathering function to it minus the butchering and for new players their goal would be to go and hammer a car or whatever metal to get iron and make early specialized tools.

This would also make sure that players learn early on that there are tools for every purpose and they should use the proper ones for that. The sledge would be avarage for mining and metals, bad for ground and wood so the tutorial could state that you need various equipment.

 

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Also on a sidenote, the blunderbuss is essentially a hand cannon. Why doesnt the game has a cannon projectile for it?

[Tin]

My question is: Why are stone tools/weapons even on par, if not better in a lot of cases, then their iron counterparts?

 

Even in just a pure game sense, its a bit off putting, and breaks the flow in this games quality system.

If a stone tool/weapon, beats an iron tool/weapon on any level, it removes any sense of excitement of finally finding, being able to craft, getting the funds up enough to buy, or receiving one from questing. "Cool! I got an Iron shovel! Finall..Oh.. I finally get to iron, but my stone tools are still better..Okay..". Thats the level of of excitement, this iteration of the quality system, has brought me atm.  

 

There is a reason other similar types of games, make stone tools, weak sauce, compared to iron their versions.

And that is a consistent flow and expectations. Stone to get by until you get to iron, then steel, etc.,. 

 

imo. A stone tool with a quality of anything, shouldn't be on par with its weakest iron counterpart.

Unless they want to introduce some form of magic to the game? At least then, it would be a little more consistent as to the why their quality system is the way it is, but not much.

 

Whoa! You have a stone ax of smashing q5! It was made by that mysterious master stone craftsmen, that imbued it with magical properties to make it stronger then a q1 basic Iron ax! 

 

I don't really care much about the realism or game argument. I'm more about the consistency and expectations of the current quality system.    

[beHypE]

Totally agree with the above point. "Unlocking" the next age is just the beginning of the path to upgrading your gear. Sadly, once you finally unlock iron tools / steel tools, they are of no use for another decent chunk of time. From my experience, it starts getting better at Q3+ for iron tools, if you can sustain the stamina drain. But it's not a huge increase either way - and that is, with "filler mods". I suspect it's even harder to replace your Q6 iron pick with a Q3 steel pick if you have all the proper mods installed.

 

Maybe stone tools should be capped to Q3, iron tools to Q4 and steel tools+ Q6. It would make the progression more natural, while also providing way more room for number tinkering. With 3 tiers (and I'm dimissing the auger here) and 6 quality levels, that's 18 different "steps". And the Q6 -> Q1 transition is arguably never a good one, and it makes finding your first iron/steel tool a complete non-event.

 

One could also preach for the other obvious idea, which would be to simply remove Q1-Q2 iron/steel tools from the loot tables completely.

[meganoth]

3 hours ago, Tin said:

My question is: Why are stone tools/weapons even on par, if not better in a lot of cases, then their iron counterparts?

 

Even in just a pure game sense, its a bit off putting, and breaks the flow in this games quality system.

If a stone tool/weapon, beats an iron tool/weapon on any level, it removes any sense of excitement of finally finding, being able to craft, getting the funds up enough to buy, or receiving one from questing. "Cool! I got an Iron shovel! Finall..Oh.. I finally get to iron, but my stone tools are still better..Okay..". Thats the level of of excitement, this iteration of the quality system, has brought me atm.  

 

There is a reason other similar types of games, make stone tools, weak sauce, compared to iron their versions.

And that is a consistent flow and expectations. Stone to get by until you get to iron, then steel, etc.,. 

 

imo. A stone tool with a quality of anything, shouldn't be on par with its weakest iron counterpart.

Unless they want to introduce some form of magic to the game? At least then, it would be a little more consistent as to the why their quality system is the way it is, but not much.

 

Whoa! You have a stone ax of smashing q5! It was made by that mysterious master stone craftsmen, that imbued it with magical properties to make it stronger then a q1 basic Iron ax! 

 

I don't really care much about the realism or game argument. I'm more about the consistency and expectations of the current quality system.    

Your "magic" argument is about realism.

 

But I agree that for gaming reasons the current system may need some adjustment. I think a q6 stone axe could be better than a q1 iron axe but then you should also on average find q1 iron axes earlier than q6 stone axes. And if not then the q1 iron axe must at least have the chance to be better than the q6 stone axe (because of random values). With weapons or armor that might be not as important since you get weapon or armor parts out of the q1, but the q1 iron tools seem totally useless

 

 

[Tin]

5 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Your "magic" argument is about realism.

Nope. Its about consistency and expectations. 

No different then expecting a fireball level 2 spell, to be more effective then a fireball lvl1 spell in a magic based game.

Or a laser blaster to be more effective then a 9mm pistol, in a scifi game.

Unless that is a realism "argument" as well 😕

[meganoth]

5 minutes ago, Tin said:

Nope. Its about consistency and expectations. 

No different then expecting a fireball level 2 spell, to be more effective then a fireball lvl1 spell in a magic based game.

Or a laser blaster to be more effective then a 9mm pistol, in a scifi game.

Unless that is a realism "argument" as well 😕

Depends. Your expectations for fireballs and laser blasters are derived from fiction (books or movies). But your expectations of stone tools vs. iron tools are derived from reality. And most games using stone and iron tools also derive their implementation of those tools from reality.

 

By the way, it would be perfectly ok for a laser blaster to be only useful against robots and being very ineffective against humans (might even have been used that way in the game Might&Magic 6).

 

If someone wants an argument about realism, by the way, a crafter who made an iron axe the first time in his life might create a form so bad that the stone axe has a blade that looks more like a hammer. Such an iron axe might actually be worse for cutting a tree than a stone axe build by a really good survival specialist. I think I saw a clip by someone showing how it is done and his stone axe made in a day of work was quite good actually.

 

[Roland]

@Tin have you looked at the range of possible values?  I wonder whether there is enough room to not allow overlap between 18 levels of progression. 24 levels if we add the chainsaw and the auger to their respective hand tools. 

[eXSe]

I too feel that there should be a clear advantage for the player to upgrade to better tools. Maybe even lessen the stamina use with the upgrade to better tier and level to reflect the craftsmanship required to make those items.

 

I mean, people invent better things to ease their day to day, not to make it harder on themselves. Right?

[Kalen]

1 hour ago, Roland said:

@Tin have you looked at the range of possible values?  I wonder whether there is enough room to not allow overlap between 18 levels of progression. 24 levels if we add the chainsaw and the auger to their respective hand tools. 

You're probably right on that.   I may be in the minority here, but I'd rather they did away with random stats on items.   That way they'd have more wiggle room to ensure a smoother progression in item stats.   It really bugs me that a higher tier or higher quality item can be inferior to a lower because of random stats.

 

[Tin]

13 hours ago, Roland said:

@Tin have you looked at the range of possible values?  I wonder whether there is enough room to not allow overlap between 18 levels of progression. 24 levels if we add the chainsaw and the auger to their respective hand tools. 

With the way they are currently doing it? I would say yeah? it can be done. 

but it would be a pita if they (TFP) want to maintain the: 5-6 levels of quality, for every item that uses a quality rating.

 

I'm just letting "whomever" reads this, that the current way it is done leaves me feeling, a bit less enthused, during the transition phases.

 

I know what I would "try"(er adjusted) but 🤷‍♂️ I'm just one fish, in an ocean of opinions (edit: (Only based on a19. No idea what 'may' or "may not" be in A20))

 

Spoiler

 

For instance (just talking from my perspective):

I wouldn't even bother with putting quality ratings on primitive weapons/ tools.

Let the skill/perks handle any "bonus" increases for those. You break them? make another.

They are cheap and easy to make. The "get you by stage".

You shouldn't want to be using them for any length of time. Not when you "know" there is better, more reliable things out there. 

I would also just have all primitive stuff able to be made by the player from the get go.

You have been living in this world. Basic knowledge should be a thing, whether you lost memories or not.

 

That opens up a little more room for the other weapons/tools, to be adjusted with more ease.

In turn will help give more solid/distinctive increases between the/ primitive/ iron/ steel/ High tech/ stages.

Also allows for the loot container list, to be more manageable.

 

I also would just change the quality system a bit by:

 

Primitive: 

Only has the one "quality level" default. A Quick transition stage to get people comfortable in the game. 

Since its the quasi tutorial stage. 

(lasts at most to Week 1 or 2)

 

Iron:

Has 3 quality levels.

Need to spend a bit of time in this stage. 

The stage where the player is just getting established, to mostly established.

Starting to look for things to test to mettle, being a bit more able to take risks. 

(last around week 2-21)

 

Steel:

Has 5 quality levels.

Takes quite awhile to get through. 

Players are mostly finished being established (pending on play style).

Adjust to the uptick of the game stage increases.  

Taking more risks. Starting to put themselves in more danger.  

(last around week 21+)

 

Unique's/ Legendary: ?   

week ? 

 

*The week length stuff I haven't done. Mostly what I would like to strive for in doing at some point*

 

 

Again just my opinions.

   

[Boidster]

2 hours ago, Tin said:

Again just my opinions.

Your ideas are almost exactly the same as my own. I'd add that I don't think primitive weapons or tools should accept mods (nor should plant fiber clothing).

[Solomon]

15 hours ago, eXSe said:

I too feel that there should be a clear advantage for the player to upgrade to better tools. Maybe even lessen the stamina use with the upgrade to better tier and level to reflect the craftsmanship required to make those items.

 

I mean, people invent better things to ease their day to day, not to make it harder on themselves. Right?

Also true, why would i waste my time in smelting and hoarding iron if the stone on the stick is better tool?

[meganoth]

2 minutes ago, Solomon said:

Also true, why would i waste my time in smelting and hoarding iron if the stone on the stick is better tool?

The forged iron cost of the few tools is relatively unimportant. But if you don't waste your time with smelting iron you won't be able to build a lot of stuff made of iron and steel and won't be able to pay recurring costs for darts or the repair of dart traps, darts, blade traps, steel blocks, iron doors.

 

[Solomon]

2 hours ago, meganoth said:

The forged iron cost of the few tools is relatively unimportant. But if you don't waste your time with smelting iron you won't be able to build a lot of stuff made of iron and steel and won't be able to pay recurring costs for darts or the repair of dart traps, darts, blade traps, steel blocks, iron doors.

 

I didnt mean it as an actual ingame sceniario but as if you are at home trying to invent better tools.

 

Like would you replace your old computer to the newest ones if your old one still performs better than those?

[meganoth]

5 hours ago, Solomon said:

I didnt mean it as an actual ingame sceniario but as if you are at home trying to invent better tools.

 

Like would you replace your old computer to the newest ones if your old one still performs better than those?

Everybody probably knows that the potential of an iron axe to be better than a stone axe is there. But if you have to build one without any experience your first exemplars might be just good enough to be smelted again for the next attempt.

If you could choose at the start to work either with stone and iron, you naturally would choose iron. But assuming you first had to build losts of stone axes you might be actually so good at building stone axes that your first iron axe would disappoint

 

If you were inventing better tools, your first prototype will probably be worse than a standard quality tool. Only after you improved that prototype through lots of iterating you will end up with something better.

 

Example: The first LCD screen ever built was probably something with 16x16 pixels black and white. While normal cathode ray tubes at that time showed 800x600 pixels in color. But the developers probably already knew that that new technology could some day replace CRTs.

 

 

[Roland]

So the high quality stone tools are better than the low quality iron tools because we crafted and used the stone tools so much for the first couple of weeks we really really learned them by doing. And until we gain some experience with the stone tools through doing they may not be better.

 

It IS still alive....

 

[Solomon]

4 hours ago, meganoth said:

Everybody probably knows that the potential of an iron axe to be better than a stone axe is there. But if you have to build one without any experience your first exemplars might be just good enough to be smelted again for the next attempt.

If you could choose at the start to work either with stone and iron, you naturally would choose iron. But assuming you first had to build losts of stone axes you might be actually so good at building stone axes that your first iron axe would disappoint

 

If you were inventing better tools, your first prototype will probably be worse than a standard quality tool. Only after you improved that prototype through lots of iterating you will end up with something better.

 

Example: The first LCD screen ever built was probably something with 16x16 pixels black and white. While normal cathode ray tubes at that time showed 800x600 pixels in color. But the developers probably already knew that that new technology could some day replace CRTs.

That  would make sense were we playing a game with learn by doing systems but thats not the case.

 

A quality 1 iron axe will never be better than your quality 5-6 stone axe, no matter what you do. It will stay that bad and even after countless hours of using the iron axe it will be still bad because our tier system is on crafting and not on usage.

 

Also just to note it but realistically speaking if our situation ingame was true it would make more sense to make the stone tools even better because material costs are the lowest while the quality is exponentially bigger so it would look like as if LCD screens just died out middleway at 1024x768 resolutions because cathode rays got to the point where they are cheaper and offer triple resolution.

[meganoth]

6 hours ago, Solomon said:

That  would make sense were we playing a game with learn by doing systems but thats not the case.

 

A quality 1 iron axe will never be better than your quality 5-6 stone axe, no matter what you do. It will stay that bad and

even after countless hours of using the iron axe it will be still bad because our tier system is on crafting and not on usage.

 

An iron axe will certainly be better than the quality 6 stone axe, when you learned to craft it better. Iron axe is iron axe, the quality is just a minor variable like the age of the survivor is.

 

A game uses abstraction to have situations make sense generally, not in excrutiating detail. So LBD is actually happening in this game because first you craft (or find) iron axes that are worse than the stone axes you (or the other crafters) learned to craft at high quality. Then with time your crafting gets better and your iron axes surpass any stone axe because iron is the inherently better material for axes. This is LBD, the learning is just simulated with putting perk points into miner69.  The detail you have to ignore is that strangely you also FIND better and better stone and iron axes as if the other people in this world learn too.

 

6 hours ago, Solomon said:

 

Also just to note it but realistically speaking if our situation ingame was true it would make more sense to make the stone tools even better because material costs are the lowest while the quality is exponentially bigger so it would look like as if LCD screens just died out middleway at 1024x768 resolutions because cathode rays got to the point where they are cheaper and offer triple resolution.

 

Realistically iron as a material is far superior for axes than stone. No stone axe can ever be made as sharp as an iron axe without the stone chipping. This is a fundamental physical property of the material. So if you put say one month of research into building stone axes and one month of research into building iron axes then the resulting iron axe would normally be better than the stone axe. In the game it is simulated that you always start with stone tech (because iron tech is not available from the start) so you put that month of research into stone axes first. Then iron tech becomes available to you and the month of iron axe research starts. And you need that time to catch up with iron tech before you are equally good at iron tech as you are at stone tech. At which point the inherent quality of the material decides which axe is better.

 

The LCD screens were in reality much worse than any CRTs for the first decade of their existence. When the first LCD screens reached the resolution of a CRT, they were sold for >$5000 a piece while a CRT cost $300 (values just rough estimates, it was a long time ago). But the CRT was at the end of its technological range, you could pour endless money into research and would not get much better CRTs. LCD were at the start, their material cost was prohibitive, but it promised to be so much more powerful.

 

If you look at it today, the material a CRT is made of still could be produced much cheaper than an LCD if you had to start from zero. Building a factory than can produce electronic chips costs hundred times more than building a factory to build class tubes and needs many more advances in technological knowledge. But one of the secrets to make LCDs cheaper is mass production, so the prohibitively expensive cost of making the factory gets spread over millions of produced LCDs.

 

 

 

[Kalen]

9 minutes ago, meganoth said:

A game uses abstraction to have situations make sense generally, not in excrutiating detail. So LBD is actually happening in this game because first you craft (or find) iron axes that are worse than the stone axes you (or the other crafters) learned to craft at high quality. Then with time your crafting gets better and your iron axes surpass any stone axe because iron is the inherently better material for axes. This is LBD, the learning is just simulated with putting perk points into miner69.  The detail you have to ignore is that strangely you also FIND better and better stone and iron axes as if the other people in this world learn too.

LBD is in the game as an abstraction?  That it such a stretch that you can't possibly believe that..... 

 

if you can craft quality 5 stone axes you are also crafting quality 5 iron axes which invalidates your statement of:

 

"first you craft (or find) iron axes that are worse than the stone axes you (or the other crafters) learned to craft at high quality"

 

A stone tool, IMO, should never out perform an iron tool.

[meganoth]

13 minutes ago, Kalen said:

LBD is in the game as an abstraction?  That it such a stretch that you can't possibly believe that..... 

 

if you can craft quality 5 stone axes you are also crafting quality 5 iron axes which invalidates your statement of:

 

"first you craft (or find) iron axes that are worse than the stone axes you (or the other crafters) learned to craft at high quality"

 

A stone tool, IMO, should never out perform an iron tool.

 

You are correct about the fact that you learn crafting all axes at the same time.

 

So you actually learn (aka perk into miner69) to craft axes generally independant of material. But might not know a few tricks so that a steel axe has to be learned by a separate schematic.

 

I don't think a stone axe of quality 5 can ever be better than an iron axe of quality 5 in the game (provided you have the stamina). So the stone tools you craft never outperform the iron tools you craft at the same time. Does that work for you or not?

 

But lets say you don't perk into miner69. Then you will find stone axes made by people who didn't have a forge but learned how to produce very good axes. Compared to the iron axe of quality 1 that you can craft, those artisan stone axes are better and when you find an artisan iron axe it will be much better.

 

 

 

[Kalen]

6 minutes ago, meganoth said:

But lets say you don't perk into miner69. Then you will find stone axes made by people who didn't have a forge but learned how to produce very good axes. Compared to the iron axe of quality 1 that you can craft, those artisan stone axes are better and when you find an artisan iron axe it will be much better.

I get your point.... I just dont agree.   I maintain that an iron tool should always out perform a stone tool.   Even when the iron tool is QL 1 and the stone tool is QL 6.

 

It's not game breaking, of course.... but it is annoyance.

[beHypE]

@meganoth I don't wanna sound like a prick but I think you've read too many counter-arguments madmole has written in the past. I mean we're not talking abstraction, realism, immersion here, and no matter how you wanna roleplay this whole quality progression thing, it won't change the gameplay aspect of it. We're talking about game design resolving around excitment due to upgrading your gear. And right now, that expected thrill of advancing to the next tier of items is inexistent. I don't care how dull you think the blade of a noob blacksmith should be on his first craft - I care about how much I should be thrilled to find an iron tool when I currently wield the very first item (let that sink in) that I craft in the game...