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

[Raestloz]

"Immersion" basically translates to "things I like". I hate that word with passion. Every single game I see people saying "mechanics change! muh immersion!" and then rant to what amounts to "gimme back my favorite things"

 

But people making "funny" strawman comments about "Oh so how about this and this, huh? Oh you don't like it? But ImMeRsHuN?" is also disingenuous

 

There's this concept of "suspension of disbelief". I know, I know, this might be difficult but bear with me. Basically, people are willing to overlook things as long as its accepted as "well ok that's how it works"

 

Science people complain about visible lasers in basically every single sci-fi in existence, especially once you can block with reflexes. But that's fine as long as they all work like that. Laser rifles would guarantee your victory IRL because the only moment you can see the projectile is when it's already piercing your eyes, but we can all accept that Jedi can block them with Jedi reflexes because, hey, literally every single laser weaponry work that way in Star Wars Universe

 

Similarly, despite having what amounts to Ancient Magick, just called The Force(tm) this time, the Star Wars Universe doesn't simply conjure Avatar of Holy God or whatever. The Force, despite deliberately not elaborated upon, has a basic, consistent mechanic: it's magic, but it's limited to immediate physical prowess. Having The Force does not allow you to conjure perfect clones, or to teleport between planets, or to hack machines or whatever. It's limited to allowing you to do cool tricks. It behaves consistently across multiple trilogies.

 

===========================================

 

So how does that relate to 7DTD? The original question is this: Why the hell would sealed pre-apocalypse crates have post-apocalypse stuff in them?

 

It's not like people are asking "why the hell does this unassuming moldy backpack not have an AK-47 day 1"? No. They're talking about a pre-apocalypse, sealed crate not having what it should have: pre-apocalypse items. Really, it's not an unreasonable chain of logic. You'd walk into Shamway factory expecting it to have some stock of canned food, and walk into Shotgun Messiah factory expecting it to have a (shot)gun somewhere. Having a stone axe in a sealed crate breaks that logic.

 

You won't hear people complain that it only has a stone axe if the container is an unsealed box named "survivor cache" or whatever. That makes perfect sense

 

"But what about these totally unrealistic stuff? No comments on those?"

1. That's not what the question was about
2. People are not unreasonable monsters who think in extremes.

For example, "what about boxes storing meat"? Storage is gameplay mechanic, players have accepted that a human being is capable of carrying non-spoiling hundreds of items on their person since 1995. That is just how the game works, for the sake of gameplay. Disbelief has been suspended decades ago.

 

Just because something is "fiction", it doesn't mean all hell can break loose. The world needs to make sense, it needs to be consistent, and since 7dtd is based on our reality, suspension of disbelief works with the chain of logic that works similarly to our reality, you don't see Priests of Cthulhu calling in Tentacled Abomination, now do you?

[Solomon]

8 hours ago, Ralathar44 said:

Or just make safes and loot crates that are low gamestage spawn a new variant that look like they've already been looted.  That way you're getting what people left behind rather than what was originally there.  Also make them unlocked.  As the gamestage rises and the areas get more dangerous you start finding the traditional locked/sealed safes/loot crates because the danger has deterred would be scavengers....so you find better stuff.

But those upset are not arguing for these solutions, they are arguing that they want better stuff earlier, they are just doing it in a really roundabout way to disguise their true intentions.  I mean look at the OPs poll.  If we were REALLY talking about immersion then we would not be finding a ton of sealed crates full of loot packed up "probably over a hundred years ago. " as they said in their poll.  Everything would have already been looted long ago and finding an undisturbed cache freshly sealed still would be insanely rare.  But you don't see them complaining about that despite it being incredibly immersion breaking.

In what post apoc world 100ish years past the apocalypse are you going to find unlooted locations everywhere?  We couldn't even go a week into a pandemic without buying out the supermarkets, gun stores, and especially toilet paper lol.

Im all for legit solutions, i just want the damm stone age out of the loot tables.

 

Make the safes opened up, make repairing items harder, add in more guns and tools into the game what all come with their own downsides and soo on.

 

 

Also on a sidenote im not sure how far this game plays in the apocalypse but since electricity is still running and most gear is relatively looking fine i wouldnt claim that the apocalypse has been going on for more than 10ish years.

4 minutes ago, Raestloz said:

It's not like people are asking "why the hell does this unassuming moldy backpack not have an AK-47 day 1"? No. They're talking about a pre-apocalypse, sealed crate not having what it should have: pre-apocalypse items. Really, it's not an unreasonable chain of logic. You'd walk into Shamway factory expecting it to have some stock of canned food, and walk into Shotgun Messiah factory expecting it to have a (shot)gun somewhere. Having a stone axe in a sealed crate breaks that logic.

Over on the reddit someone suggested that all these items outside of "perfect containers" aka safes, sealed crates or indoor "good condition" storage should come with various defects and such because if the reason for this stone age nonsense is to slow down the progression atleast do it in a way that the immersion stays relatively intact.

 

As you said finding an AK in a moldy backpack doesnt make much sense but finding a rusted away AK what barely deals damage and has low durability is actually okay.

[Raestloz]

I agree with having a different crate on early gamestage really. The sealed part is the problem, as long as there's nothing perfect, finding low level stone age tools would be fine

[katarynna]

I think the problem with that is the crates are generated when the map is. There is no way for the game engine to know you are going to loot a t5 poi at level 3 and make sure to generate the early gamestage crate.

 

Maybe i'm wrong, because i certainly don't have much technical knowledge in that area. But common sense tells me the crates and boxes are already generated, since poi's are not instanced.

 

They could probably do it for quest poi's, since the building resets when you start the quest. The crates there could be generated as different models based on gs of the quester. (again, relying just on common sense and deduction since i don''t have the technical knowledge to say for sure.)

 

However, it seems unlikely that every poi in the world would transform when you walk into it to make the crate appearance match your gamestage.

 

Unless you want some sort of mechanic added that makes it impossible for you to enter or build on a poi with crates that are meant for higher than your gs (such as the tradere auto-teleport when you get too close to a poi that is higher level than you are) which is more immersion breaking and a horrible mechanic for this type of game.

 

Just throwing out ideas here. I could very well be wrong.

[Raestloz]

Assuming for a moment that they put the loot in an area occluded from view, they may very well be able to regenerate crates based on current gamestage the moment you step on the perimeter

How this would work if you've already blasted open that room? I have no idea
But personally, the easiest solution right now is simply remove stone age tools from sealed crate entirely. I'm not saying good high level stuff have to be in there instead, I'm just saying the loot should not contain stone age tools

[katarynna]

So if you open a sealed crate at a low gamestage, you would only get polymer, paper, and such? No tools, weapons, or armor chance at all for sealed crates at low gamestage? (I am assuming you feel the same way about a lvl 4 stone spear as you so about stone tools and armor would make sense if they changed both of those).

 

I could live with it if they decide to change it to that, but I personally am enjoying finding a q6 stone ax when all i have is a level 2 and only 1 point in miner 69er. For progression purposes the first week, I like it the way it is much more than how you want it.

[Raestloz]

1 hour ago, katarynna said:

No tools, weapons, or armor chance at all for sealed crates at low gamestage?

That is extreme, and by its very nature the answer would be no

[Sawth77]

5 hours ago, Raestloz said:

But people making "funny" strawman comments about "Oh so how about this and this, huh? Oh you don't like it? But ImMeRsHuN?" is also disingenuous

 

2 hours ago, Raestloz said:

4 hours ago, katarynna said:

No tools, weapons, or armor chance at all for sealed crates at low gamestage?

That is extreme, and by its very nature the answer would be no

Would point out that if someone is looking for a more immersive experience, then finding such things in random backpacks, or even boxes, would be incredibly rare.  I have 2 bugout bags, one in my house and a smaller version in my car.  I can tell you that there's no axes, shotguns, body armor, forges, or other such crafting tools in the kit.  There is, for disclosure, a folding shovel and a length of rope in the trunk, and i have a weapon i take with me, but that's it.  I doubt a large percentage of people keep even those things in their car, by default.  I don't see the lack of those things, as hypothetically pointed out by Kata, as "extreme".  Walked past a lot of cars with shovels and axes in them, when you weren't near a tool store or work site?   Stuck in traffic, and while looking at the car beside you go "wow, that's a GREAT workbench and 22 tons of cobblestone you've got there?"

That's not "extreme".   That's normal for us IRL.  In the 7 Days world, maybe normal *is* carrying tools around like that.  I pointed out elsewhere that the overwhelming majority of people have no idea how to craft modern tools...hell, the internet/power goes out for a few minutes and people start losing their minds.  But cobbling together some flat stones with a solid branch and some bindings like vines or twine isn't some huge stretch, in the absence of other implements.  Personally, I'd go a step farther and put making *any* tool behind a perk you needed to learn, for the very fact that people don't normally need to do that or have the know-how to pull it off with any level of precision.  *That* would be more immersive.  It's also something i'd be perfectly fine with (though i'm absolutely all for level gating perks like they were in A18, which isn't necessarily popular on this message board).

[Roland]

7 hours ago, Onarr said:

And I think we can agree that current stone age implementation has a lot to be desired. Can we? 

It depends. If this was the final intended implementation then yes, we can agree that it falls short. But if this is a work in progress then as a temporary implementation in flux then it’s not bad at all. It definitely offers a different experience. 
 

If your expectation is to never have to experience a feature that is partially done and only be exposed to completely finished designs then yes we can agree that you could not desire this. But if your expectation is that you will experience the game in various states of progress with some things not working as intended  then you’ll be interested to see how things will evolve and what we have right now is fine. 
 

If you believe that early access and the alpha phase of development is all bunch of bs that studios use to give excuses for their mistakes then you won’t be satisfied with anything. But if you believe that early access and the alpha phase of development are what they claim to be then you understand what you signed up for and are better able to roll with it when some parts aren’t done or some things get changed. 

[Dracula]

In my observation, this alpha has had the most outspoken criticisms of its various systems and implementations.  I think that's a great thing.  We're going to see a lot of changes with A20 because, if A19 were the final product, the game would require serious modding to appeal to everyone and would probably be forgotten pretty quickly.

 

I don't know what we'll see for A20.  My personal hopes are that they fix the texture tool and add a lot more user-managed options to the game world; zombie spawner selector being the biggest one, and a slider for AI block damage, stamina drain rate, etc.  I don't know how easy it would be to implement these things, but if they were to it would allow an autistic level of control that would enable people to set the game to exactly what they want it to be.  Will we see that?  I don't know.

 

Realism, for my play style, took a hit this alpha and I am not happy about it; overall.  I like the visual change and how some things are progressing; biomes blend better, water is more natural, hitboxes got a nice tweak, early survival feeling like you've been left for the wolves is great, etc.

 

I think a better way to get feedback to address these things would be to have subsections that are dedicate to certain playstles on the forum.  For example; someone who plays with zombies disabled and works to rebuild all the POIs in a city will offer a completely different perspective than a nomad who has no base and plays on the highest difficulty with the highest spawn rate and frequency for hordes.

[Laz Man]

8 hours ago, Raestloz said:

"Immersion" basically translates to "things I like". I hate that word with passion. Every single game I see people saying "mechanics change! muh immersion!" and then rant to what amounts to "gimme back my favorite things"

 

But people making "funny" strawman comments about "Oh so how about this and this, huh? Oh you don't like it? But ImMeRsHuN?" is also disingenuous

 

There's this concept of "suspension of disbelief". I know, I know, this might be difficult but bear with me. Basically, people are willing to overlook things as long as its accepted as "well ok that's how it works"

 

Science people complain about visible lasers in basically every single sci-fi in existence, especially once you can block with reflexes. But that's fine as long as they all work like that. Laser rifles would guarantee your victory IRL because the only moment you can see the projectile is when it's already piercing your eyes, but we can all accept that Jedi can block them with Jedi reflexes because, hey, literally every single laser weaponry work that way in Star Wars Universe

 

Similarly, despite having what amounts to Ancient Magick, just called The Force(tm) this time, the Star Wars Universe doesn't simply conjure Avatar of Holy God or whatever. The Force, despite deliberately not elaborated upon, has a basic, consistent mechanic: it's magic, but it's limited to immediate physical prowess. Having The Force does not allow you to conjure perfect clones, or to teleport between planets, or to hack machines or whatever. It's limited to allowing you to do cool tricks. It behaves consistently across multiple trilogies.

 

===========================================

 

So how does that relate to 7DTD? The original question is this: Why the hell would sealed pre-apocalypse crates have post-apocalypse stuff in them?

 

It's not like people are asking "why the hell does this unassuming moldy backpack not have an AK-47 day 1"? No. They're talking about a pre-apocalypse, sealed crate not having what it should have: pre-apocalypse items. Really, it's not an unreasonable chain of logic. You'd walk into Shamway factory expecting it to have some stock of canned food, and walk into Shotgun Messiah factory expecting it to have a (shot)gun somewhere. Having a stone axe in a sealed crate breaks that logic.

 

You won't hear people complain that it only has a stone axe if the container is an unsealed box named "survivor cache" or whatever. That makes perfect sense

 

"But what about these totally unrealistic stuff? No comments on those?"

1. That's not what the question was about
2. People are not unreasonable monsters who think in extremes.

For example, "what about boxes storing meat"? Storage is gameplay mechanic, players have accepted that a human being is capable of carrying non-spoiling hundreds of items on their person since 1995. That is just how the game works, for the sake of gameplay. Disbelief has been suspended decades ago.

 

Just because something is "fiction", it doesn't mean all hell can break loose. The world needs to make sense, it needs to be consistent, and since 7dtd is based on our reality, suspension of disbelief works with the chain of logic that works similarly to our reality, you don't see Priests of Cthulhu calling in Tentacled Abomination, now do you?

You make a good point.  Just like how What aboutisms are used in politics to gain acceptance....lol

 

I assume the sealed crate perception comes from the fact that they are labeled as such.  The quick fix would be to just change the loot container name and appearance...

 

Minor detail to me and can wait until later as long as it gets updated before gold.

[Ralathar44]

3 Questions:

1.  How do we know sealed crates are from pre-apocalypse?  I see nothing in game that confirms this.  Why would you assume any sealed crate is automagically a pre-apocalypse crate?  WE CAN MAKE THOSE CRATES OURSELVES lol.  So I'd call it a baseless assumption to say when those crates were filled and sealed.

2.  Isn't it actually super immersion breaking for there to be sealed crates everywhere with even middling value stuff in them, much less high value stuff?  We went 1 week into a pandemic and people bought out the grocery and gun stores.  We had some minor (compared to an apocalypse) bit of civil unrest and people were looting and burning stuff like crazy.  Now imagine both of those being 100 times worse.  And we're expecting there to be all these caches of high value loot in obvious locations that somehow nobody looted in decades?  Get real.  That's the definition of unrealistic.

3.  I notice nobody complains about our ability to defeat solid steel safe doors with basic lockpicks and a stone axe.  Isn't that Immersion breaking AF?  Realistically safes and safe doors and etc would require high amounts of knowledge, skills, and materials to defeat.  You shouldn't be getting into those before high power drills and explosives.

I utterly reject all this immersion/realism reasoning because it's so cherry picked it's stupid.  This has nothing to do with realism or immersion.   I could easily mention more things, this is just 3 highly relevant things off the top of my head.

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, Dracula said:

In my observation, this alpha has had the most outspoken criticisms of its various systems and implementations.  I think that's a great thing.  We're going to see a lot of changes with A20 because, if A19 were the final product, the game would require serious modding to appeal to everyone and would probably be forgotten pretty quickly.

 

How impressions differ. For me it seems this alpha has the highest acceptance rate and the most favourable comments of all alphas I witnessed. This may change when it is released as stable and seen by a wider audience, but still...

 

 

[Dracula]

11 minutes ago, meganoth said:

How impressions differ. For me it seems this alpha has the highest acceptance rate and the most favourable comments of all alphas I witnessed. This may change when it is released as stable and seen by a wider audience, but still...

 

 

Favorable in certain areas; stamina is still a highly-contested point, the loot system has been a nonstop debate, etc.  Again; whichever camp you're more inclined towards will have preferences and what's better for one is worse for others.

[Ramethzer0]

19 hours ago, Roland said:

No, but see...keeping stacks of meat in a wooden crate in the desert is okay with the immersion police. It’s the finding a blunderbus when they wanted an assault rifle that apparently gets them swarming. 😜

Yeah, let em stay mad.  There are plenty of immersion breaking things for me too (and its recorded I do @%$*#! about them) but the blunderbuss is not a @%$*#! weapon.   I frequently tell people it (and shotguns in general) are the best melee weapons in the game!  

[Boidster]

11 hours ago, Raestloz said:

Assuming for a moment that they put the loot in an area occluded from view, they may very well be able to regenerate crates based on current gamestage the moment you step on the perimeter

It could be done at quest start, when the POI is regenerated. The POI designer already has "helper" blocks you can put into your design which will change dynamically each time the POI is reset. So a kitchen cabinet might be open or closed, or a car might be whole or mostly destroyed, the picture might hide a wall safe or it might not, and so on. They probably could put a loot helper block (variation of the existing loot helpers) which changed its appearance based on gamestage. The rest of it is just a change to the loot tables.

[Laz Man]

4 hours ago, Ralathar44 said:

3 Questions:

1.  How do we know sealed crates are from pre-apocalypse?  I see nothing in game that confirms this.  Why would you assume any sealed crate is automagically a pre-apocalypse crate?  WE CAN MAKE THOSE CRATES OURSELVES lol.  So I'd call it a baseless assumption to say when those crates were filled and sealed.

2.  Isn't it actually super immersion breaking for there to be sealed crates everywhere with even middling value stuff in them, much less high value stuff?  We went 1 week into a pandemic and people bought out the grocery and gun stores.  We had some minor (compared to an apocalypse) bit of civil unrest and people were looting and burning stuff like crazy.  Now imagine both of those being 100 times worse.  And we're expecting there to be all these caches of high value loot in obvious locations that somehow nobody looted in decades?  Get real.  That's the definition of unrealistic.

3.  I notice nobody complains about our ability to defeat solid steel safe doors with basic lockpicks and a stone axe.  Isn't that Immersion breaking AF?  Realistically safes and safe doors and etc would require high amounts of knowledge, skills, and materials to defeat.  You shouldn't be getting into those before high power drills and explosives.

I utterly reject all this immersion/realism reasoning because it's so cherry picked it's stupid.  This has nothing to do with realism or immersion.   I could easily mention more things, this is just 3 highly relevant things off the top of my head.

I would assume it's because the crate is labeled as a "Sealed" shipping crate, has a company brand name on it.  Much like when people find sealed containers of the past from various manufacturing/packaging companies.  One expects to find things from that company and not it was a convenient box someone used to store stuff.

[katarynna]

31 minutes ago, Boidster said:

It could be done at quest start, when the POI is regenerated. The POI designer already has "helper" blocks you can put into your design which will change dynamically each time the POI is reset. So a kitchen cabinet might be open or closed, or a car might be whole or mostly destroyed, the picture might hide a wall safe or it might not, and so on. They probably could put a loot helper block (variation of the existing loot helpers) which changed its appearance based on gamestage. The rest of it is just a change to the loot tables.

Of course. If they went that route, poi's you are doing a quest in would be easy i suspect.

 

The problem would be all the other poi's that people enter without a quest. Those who are complaining about getting primitive items at the shotgun messiah factory when they looted it at lvl 9 don't have a quest. I don't think it is possible for those to be changed the way the game works now.

 

Unless any poi who's boundary you cross resets as if you have a quest there. Which would be less immersive if that's your thing. It would be a nightmare in mp, if every poi resets every time anyone enters it's perimeter. I assume that would be a massive performance hit as well? And then for mp (not allies)... if a lvl 5 guy goes to a t5 poi and everything resets for the level 5 person, what happens if a non-allies lvl 120 also enters it? does it regen to suit his gs even though the lvl 5 is still there? if not, the max lvl player will be looting t6 primitives from all sealed crates.  so to me, the quest reset mechanic would absolutely not work to change the sealed crate appearance based on gamestage.

 

The only other way i can think of to accomplish changing the appearance of sealed crated based on gamestage would be by making every poi instanced, which is the absolute opposite of open world and not an option for this game.

 

Honestly, it seems to me the best fix is for those who get hung up on the "sealed" part of the item name to change the displayed name to "hastily resealed" crate with a mod. That will 100% fix the immersion complaint while requiring no complete game mechanics changes and staying true to the vision of TFP.

 

 

 

 

 

The only

[Nfg]

You know what really breaks the realism in this game for me, being able to lift a 300+ lbs of concrete 10 meters over my head. Also building a chainsaw or anger with a car engine. Yet none of the realism post ever talk about it. It's very odd. If tfp really wanted amazing realism, they should replace the 4x4 with a post war jeep with all the attachments. I would love to be able to backup to a tree and mow it down with a massive saw blade on the back of my jeep.

 

I honestly like how they slowed the stone age down. I always found it a bit boring when I was able to be fully decked out and have a steal base by day 7, now I barely have weapons or concrete by day 14. It's definitely a nice change of pace. I love it if they made the POIs with a minimal game stage too, it would be great to be scared of going into a factory on day one again Also I kinda like the idea of the end loot only showing up for quests. Then I wouldn't be tempted to just cheese it real quick, although a radiated feral or something standing guard would help that too. Actually, a better idea would be to have all POIs "normal" then load/change to the dungeon version with the traider quests. 

[Ralathar44]

3 hours ago, Laz Man said:

I would assume it's because the crate is labeled as a "Sealed" shipping crate, has a company brand name on it.  Much like when people find sealed containers of the past from various manufacturing/packaging companies.  One expects to find things from that company and not it was a convenient box someone used to store stuff.

Fair when viewed surface level.  When you start thinking about it though....

I'd trust box labeling to be accurate in the apoc about the same amount as I trust the cookie tin at my Grandma's house to have cookies in it instead of sewing supplies.  If people are looking to stow things in the apoc alot of them are going to use what's available rather than make new boxes or repaint them because the labeling isn't accurate.  Because if we're talking "realism" there are a host of issues/disconnects between how we play in the game and how IRL works.  For one they won't be as stupid as players who know they can come back to life if they die, lingering in dangerous areas is bad and sitting on useful weapons is also bad.  Normal people also have to sleep and do things other than work 24/7 so there is a much higher priority on spending their time wisely.  Normal people also can't carry around 4 tons of lumber/nails/paint with them and then build the box in from fresh lumber 5 minutes flat with no tools on hand either.

But even with player rules I could fill a box with bees and write "dukes" on the outside of it.  I could put dukes in a box labeled Shamway.  In fact on multiplayer servers I highly recommend mislabeling a few "high value" boxes for the sake of baiting raiders :P.  I commonly did stuff like that in Rust and killed people all the time with my bait houses.

So if you're talking finding Shotgun Messiah boxes at the Shotgun Messiah factory or a gun store, I'd agree with you.  But if I'm finding those boxes in other locations then I'm gonna say that the odds someone got a shipment of guns in the apoc and never bothered to open it....but bothered to lock it away in a safe room.....those are some long odds.  People wouldn't even sit on guns like that NOW.  That box would be opened the day it arrived at a house :P.

So IMO location basing means that the boxes likely hold what they are labeled as if it fits the location.  Outside of that it's complete pot luck.  And it's still amazing that all these boxes haven't been looted by the time we arrive on the scene :).

[Laz Man]

48 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

Fair when viewed surface level.  When you start thinking about it though....

I'd trust box labeling to be accurate in the apoc about the same amount as I trust the cookie tin at my Grandma's house to have cookies in it instead of sewing supplies.  If people are looking to stow things in the apoc alot of them are going to use what's available rather than make new boxes or repaint them because the labeling isn't accurate.  Because if we're talking "realism" there are a host of issues/disconnects between how we play in the game and how IRL works.  For one they won't be as stupid as players who know they can come back to life if they die, lingering in dangerous areas is bad and sitting on useful weapons is also bad.  Normal people also have to sleep and do things other than work 24/7 so there is a much higher priority on spending their time wisely.  Normal people also can't carry around 4 tons of lumber/nails/paint with them and then build the box in from fresh lumber 5 minutes flat with no tools on hand either.

But even with player rules I could fill a box with bees and write "dukes" on the outside of it.  I could put dukes in a box labeled Shamway.  In fact on multiplayer servers I highly recommend mislabeling a few "high value" boxes for the sake of baiting raiders :P.  I commonly did stuff like that in Rust and killed people all the time with my bait houses.

So if you're talking finding Shotgun Messiah boxes at the Shotgun Messiah factory or a gun store, I'd agree with you.  But if I'm finding those boxes in other locations then I'm gonna say that the odds someone got a shipment of guns in the apoc and never bothered to open it....but bothered to lock it away in a safe room.....those are some long odds.  People wouldn't even sit on guns like that NOW.  That box would be opened the day it arrived at a house :P.

So IMO location basing means that the boxes likely hold what they are labeled as if it fits the location.  Outside of that it's complete pot luck.  And it's still amazing that all these boxes haven't been looted by the time we arrive on the scene :).

I posted a suggestion in the dev diary.  They should just replace the world "sealed" and make the boxes more cobbled together...probably an easy compromise...Im sure they want the specific brand names on them for gameplay reasons despite the realism concerns that you outlined...:)

[Ralathar44]

10 minutes ago, Laz Man said:

I posted a suggestion in the dev diary.  They should just replace the world "sealed" and make the boxes more cobbled together...probably an easy compromise...Im sure they want the specific brand names on them for gameplay reasons despite the realism concerns that you outlined...:)

Pretty much, which is why I hate the realism argument when it comes to 99% of video games since it always falls apart when it comes to gameplay and then people start picking and choosing what they want to keep according to their own headcannon. 

[Loboling]

While I do prefer the new loot system. Once they implement more rigorous GameStage adjustments per area they can implement this change seamlessly. So I hope they do. 

I expect to find a few demos guarding the valuable loot, even on day 1, but if you can grab it, you can get a gun early. 

I think, like they already do, they can continue to expand a bit on which loot is in what containers. From there, adjust Gamestage by biome, and have each poi have a gamestage increase. (Like +80 for shotgun masiah, + 50 crack a book, etc) This will adjust the loot and the difficulty of the spawned zombies. Further, when poi density exceeds a certain value, that area should also have a higher gamestage. So basically, higher gamestage in cities. Include more wandering hordes in cities when this poi density area is entered. 

I think the loot being tied in part to gamestage is great though. I just think it needs some fine tuning to make each poi more unique or poi areas more unique. And loot containers need some slight adjustments to their loot tables. Like stone tools in sealed pre-apocalypse crates. 

[AtomicUs5000]

18 minutes ago, Laz Man said:

I posted a suggestion in the dev diary.  They should just replace the world "sealed" and make the boxes more cobbled together...probably an easy compromise...Im sure they want the specific brand names on them for gameplay reasons despite the realism concerns that you outlined...:)

I think this is good enough.
I personally enjoy finding an excellent stone axe from time to time. and would hate to see that go away.

[Raestloz]

10 hours ago, Ralathar44 said:

3 Questions:

1.  How do we know sealed crates are from pre-apocalypse?  I see nothing in game that confirms this.  Why would you assume any sealed crate is automagically a pre-apocalypse crate?  WE CAN MAKE THOSE CRATES OURSELVES lol.  So I'd call it a baseless assumption to say when those crates were filled and sealed.

2.  Isn't it actually super immersion breaking for there to be sealed crates everywhere with even middling value stuff in them, much less high value stuff?  We went 1 week into a pandemic and people bought out the grocery and gun stores.  We had some minor (compared to an apocalypse) bit of civil unrest and people were looting and burning stuff like crazy.  Now imagine both of those being 100 times worse.  And we're expecting there to be all these caches of high value loot in obvious locations that somehow nobody looted in decades?  Get real.  That's the definition of unrealistic.

3.  I notice nobody complains about our ability to defeat solid steel safe doors with basic lockpicks and a stone axe.  Isn't that Immersion breaking AF?  Realistically safes and safe doors and etc would require high amounts of knowledge, skills, and materials to defeat.  You shouldn't be getting into those before high power drills and explosives.

I utterly reject all this immersion/realism reasoning because it's so cherry picked it's stupid.  This has nothing to do with realism or immersion.   I could easily mention more things, this is just 3 highly relevant things off the top of my head.

1. For the same reason you expect canned lamb ration to have, I dunno, lamb ration in them? You cannot in fact craft a "Sealed" shipping crate.

 

2. "Decades"? Do you know how long bodies decay? Because within decades you're definitely not going to see the zombies anymore, their flesh rotting such that they can't move even if they want to. This entire line of argument is doomed from the start

 

3. "What about this other stupid situation?" I've addressed this in my post

 

Your logic basically falls apart on its own. If we have to assume, as per your logic that "Nothing is real, everything is permitted", then why don't we already have Harry Spotter building a Hogwash castle to rule over the pitiful peasants? Casting down zombies with his wand, his castle protected by a giant green dragon, an army of Magickcian under his command, teleporting in and out wherever and whenever they please. Would've made a great Duke of Navezgane, now would it? Wingardium LEVIosha, not Wingardium LeviOSHA, as they say
 

Why don't we have the ability to loot a storage from 60 feet away? I mean we already can break a tree with our bare hands with barely a single scratch, there's no need to maintain "realism" now is there?

 

We don't have those because we expect the game to be based at least on reality.

How do you make a campfire with just 5 stones when it clearly has more than 5 stones in it? No idea

How do you dump 6000 wood on a campfire and it's still just a small collection of stones? No idea

But how do you clear a water? You boil it. You filter it. Just as it is in real life.

How does the process work? No idea

 

Why in the flying fox do you not complain about those? Because those are plausible.

Yes, you do in fact use stones when making a stone-based campfire.

Yes, you do in fact burn wood for fuel, or coal, or paper.

Yes, you can in fact boil water to purify it

 

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But how do you reconcile stone axe vs huge metal gun safe? What about Ur ImMeRsHuN?

I'm not sure if you understand what immersion is. People can accept breaks from reality as long as it works consistently. As long as it works as expected. That is called Suspension of Disbelief. THAT is what makes immersion works. That is what makes people accept swinging around a plasma based melee weaponry without so much as a single protective hilt is not a problem

 

You're not going to see Harry Spotter and the Sniper's Stone any time soon because that breaks the consistency of the game. The game is set in post apocalyptic America. Law of physics still apply. That setting is consistent everywhere in the game. In line with that, we expect magic to not exist, at least so far

 

Stone axe deals damage. Things get broken when they get damaged. This works consistently with every single thing in the game. A gun safe is just yet another thing in the game, ergo gun safe can be broken by virtue of hitting it with a stone axe. For hours on end. It works as expected

 

You don't see a shovel in shamway box, you get gas from gas station and processing oil, you get food from fridges, you get water from water cooler, you get books and paper from a book case. The game consistently follows real life logic as far as loot is concerned. You can expect to get the appropriate stuff from a certain themed container as you would expect in real life.

 

So it seems to me, it's weird to reject the notion that sealed, pre-apocalypse crate should not contain pre-apocalypse items. As far as loots go, it breaks the expectations, the disbelief is no longer suspended.

 

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and with that, using "oh that's not how it works IRL, checkmate" is really an old argument that doesn't work anymore.

You don't need to pee, nobody does in the game

You don't dislocate your joints firing an M60 machine gun from the hip. Nothing does

 

Just, please, it's really not about Realism. It's about making it consistent with the setting of the game, which is based on realism. Those two are actually different, believe it or not.