The loot linearity is killing my interest in this game

[The_Great_Sephiroth]

Yeah I saw your reply in the other thread. Thank you. I am currently making an S+ for 7 Days and may do that. Don't know what S+ is? Search for "Structure Plus", a majorly popular Ark mod.

[fabulux]

Here is what I don't understand about the implementation of this linear loot idea as a means to slow down progression:

 

If you spam trader quests, you will get far better item and resource rewards than from looting. This is even more effective with points in Better Barter and Daring Adventurer. Do this and you completely avoid being hindered by the new loot system.

 

Also, with 1 point in Advanced Engineering and 1 point in Miner 69'er you can make quality 2 iron tools at level 1. These will be better than anything you can loot for quite some time (more points in 69'er = even better tools). One point in Salvage Operations =  a quality 2 wrench. Furthermore, with a point in your melee weapon skill of choice you can make quality 2, tier 2 melee weapons at level 1. These are also better than what you will be looting for several, if not many levels. It's very possible to have a quality 2 iron fireaxe, claw hammer, iron pickaxe, iron shovel, wrench and an iron spear (baseball bat, iron knuckles or hunting knife) within the first few levels.

 

The bottom line is you can quite easily sidestep the imposed loot progression. If TFP really want to make the early game last longer or whatever, they need to look at many more things than simply tying loot to gamestage. 

 

p.s. Stone age implements in shotgun messiah, working stiff and pass'n gas crates is silly and demoralizing. Please find a better solution (maybe up until a certain GS, those kind of container would spawn as secure wooden chests or something).

[Kalen]

2 hours ago, fabulux said:

It's very possible to have a quality 2 iron fireaxe, claw hammer, iron pickaxe, iron shovel, wrench and an iron spear (baseball bat, iron knuckles or hunting knife) within the first few levels.

 

The bottom line is you can quite easily sidestep the imposed loot progression. If TFP really want to make the early game last longer or whatever, they need to look at many more things than simply tying loot to gamestage. 

 

I'm not so sure about being able to do all that within the first few levels.   Thats a lot of resources (particularly iron) to craft all that.   Just mining it alone will get you several levels.   Even if you can, putting in all that work is hardly sidestepping progression.... it actually is progression.

[JCrook1028]

3 hours ago, fabulux said:

The bottom line is you can quite easily sidestep the imposed loot progression. If TFP really want to make the early game last longer or whatever, they need to look at many more things than simply tying loot to gamestage. 

 

They know the trader balance is off. They have said so many times. This is already planned to be fixed to be in line with the loot GS scaling.

[Kalen]

48 minutes ago, JCrook1028 said:

They know the trader balance is off. They have said so many times. This is already planned to be fixed to be in line with the loot GS scaling.

Have they?   I know they've said that the traders stock needs to be balanced.   I certainly might have missed it, but I haven't seen anyone say anything about quest rewards needing to be changed, which is what this dude was talking about.

[JCrook1028]

1 hour ago, Kalen said:

Have they?   I know they've said that the traders stock needs to be balanced.   I certainly might have missed it, but I haven't seen anyone say anything about quest rewards needing to be changed, which is what this dude was talking about.

What they said is that they know the traders break what they are trying to do with early loot and that it will be fixed. That obviously includes both quest rewards and stock for sale.

[Solomon]

7 hours ago, fabulux said:

If you spam trader quests, you will get far better item and resource rewards than from looting. This is even more effective with points in Better Barter and Daring Adventurer. Do this and you completely avoid being hindered by the new loot system.

Traders are yet to be "fixed" to respect the current loot system so in the next update they will no longer sell you tools what you otherwise cannot loot.

 

As for the intelligence way, i think the idea is to force people to spend their points there to unlock the easy crafting instead of going for perk trees what have more actual usage.

[Ornias]

As much as I use the trader I would still argue the game was better without them. I would rather traders sell bulk materials than actual armor/weapons. 

[RestInPieces]

I don't use the traders at all. Both when it comes to fetch quests and supplies. I have to pretend they do not exist, but my overall experience is way better.

 

[Ornias]

I do play with the no traders mod on occasion. That is all you really need to extend the early game vs the current loot progression. I remember spending 40 days to find the minibikes for idiots book before. 

[warmer]

On 9/8/2020 at 8:50 AM, Laz Man said:

Then they would need to call it random looter or Russian roulette looter lol..

Well my idea is to work from the premise that lucky looter helps you notice more things others would otherwise miss.

This just makes for a more varied loot table vs now, which I feel IS the main point behind lucky looter. Your min sure could be low, but your max just might give you a shotgun day 1

[Roland]

On 9/8/2020 at 6:37 AM, FridayPie said:

A groundless statement. First, to visit forum one should be approved on forum (manually , apparently). I spent 5 years waiting for my account application to be approved (and about two dozen attempts). Second, not all of them English speaking or kind that bother with saying anything. TO be honest, personally (emphasis, personallY) I don't know anyone who doesn't despise new loot system when playing online, and that probably about a hundred of people in two communities. It's not designed for it.

How'd you finally sneak in here? I thought I was pretty consistently pressing the reject button every time you tried but now that you're here that is one less thing on my list to do. 😉

 

In my personal experience, it has been pretty evenly split. It's just one of those things that a ton of people appreciate and enjoy or that another ton of people hate and find tedious. There are some important changes coming that hopefully will make things better for everyone.

[RestInPieces]

On 8/29/2020 at 5:18 AM, Roland said:

in order to play Diablo you don’t need to uninstall this game. Just in case that was a deal breaker

Just saw this -- anyone playing Pleablo instead of Path of Exile nowadays is too far gone, don't bother explaining!

[fabulux]

19 hours ago, Kalen said:

I'm not so sure about being able to do all that within the first few levels.   Thats a lot of resources (particularly iron) to craft all that.   Just mining it alone will get you several levels.   Even if you can, putting in all that work is hardly sidestepping progression.... it actually is progression.

Of course that's progression. It's impossible to not progress in this game, unless you log in and literally do nothing (but I would hesitate to call that playing the game). This is in reference to loot progression.

 

What I'm suggesting is that if you take engineering and miner 69'er and make some iron tools (no matter what level you get them all... 5,6 whatever), and then go out and loot some Working Stiff crates, the items in that crate are going to be far inferior.  Looting crates and chests is next to useless in early - mid game. Your time is better spent doing other things. The issue with this is that many people enjoy the heck out of looting;. When looting is vastly inferior to other methods of acquiring gear, people get irritated. Looting should be exciting. It currently is not.

 

I can say that looting bookshelves is still fun

[Kalen]

58 minutes ago, fabulux said:

Of course that's progression. It's impossible to not progress in this game, unless you log in and literally do nothing (but I would hesitate to call that playing the game). This is in reference to loot progression.

 

What I'm suggesting is that if you take engineering and miner 69'er and make some iron tools (no matter what level you get them all... 5,6 whatever), and then go out and loot some Working Stiff crates, the items in that crate are going to be far inferior.  Looting crates and chests is next to useless in early - mid game. Your time is better spent doing other things. The issue with this is that many people enjoy the heck out of looting;. When looting is vastly inferior to other methods of acquiring gear, people get irritated. Looting should be exciting. It currently is not.

 

I can say that looting bookshelves is still fun

Looting at any stage of the game is far from "next to useless".    Sure, if you craft items superior to what you would be finding at your gamestage then looting specifically for those items is useless as you wont find them.... but who loots for just that specific reason?    There are scores of things you need to acquire and looting is the best way to do so.   Personally, I'm not terribly fond of the current looting rules.... but its really not THAT bad that it can be called useless.

[Sunlight_Swift]

Wow I love it actually. I think a19 is incredibly fun and I prefer it over all others significantly. But I can understand what I think is going on in the division in interest in this system. It kind of boils down to what kind of rpg player you are. Roguelike or standard progression. I think honestly in the past 7D2D suffered from its very very loose randomness. Although it contributed to realism in one way, it caused an odd unrealism in another. Where before you kind of found your own things to do with the game, now the game gives you things to do and also has freedom.

In a real survival scenario its not actually a sandbox. You have specific progressive goals of securing acquisitions and all. Your not going to be making a farm and building underground or hanging out on a lake or any myriad of do whatever ideas that come with sandbox games. In a survival sandbox game the realism would require a level of linearity in activities because in reality and nature, we are gonna tend to do the same cycles of requirements.

Also consider that its not realistic to think that people are gonna be hitting lottos on good crap left and right in reality. Reality is a tight survival competition and finding huge advantages usually takes a lot of time and effort, not chance. A chance major advantage is very rare. So having barred access to great things is a valid approach to replicating that effect. It takes effort and time to grow to new advantages.

But on the other hand I also see the unrealism in the fact that this is already past an apocalypse so it isn't exactly humans dropped in a hunger games wilderness. In this world the huge advantages did happen and survivors may be able to reclaim that already grown power and use it. That feels like a natural assumption.

So I would suggest to bridge that gap, I would just bar the really great acquisitions behind not levels, but extremely difficult resistance. Resistance that would require both levels and skill and good loot to break. More stronger baddies. Maybe even keys to chests with certain very great loot that have to be taken from a zombie surrounded by irradiated zombies or dogs and things. To me making it skill based can maintain the realism of assumption of getting great things in a decayed high tech reality, while maintaining the reality of tight survival linearity of biological requirements and cycles of activity to grow and progress in strength.

I like how it is very well but I think the best direction of growth would favor increased resistance to better loot more than magical time gates of progress. Although I do feel this is a very fucntional game with this system, it appears that people just want that feeling of chance more at getting what should logically be available. Perhaps also hide all the bullets in harder to break resistances. So then you get a pistol in a toilet but you won't be shooting it until you have to be Rocky with 5 zeds and a dog in a gun store. I really think tougher situations barring progress is more satisfying than time.

I don't like the older system that was more roguelike. Binding of Isaac is fun but its totally not real to me the way old 7d2d played out. It seems realistic on the surface but look at nature and real survival and the habitual actions of players deviated way into silly unrealistic activities compared to that. However I would suggest maybe implementing an alternative mode to the game perhaps as a whole. Maybe Progressive and Roguelike. One is more in the realism of just finding anything anywhere and progressive being more like an rpg and probably closer to the actual 'feel' of survival(which is actually linear and repetitive) that is like a19.

To me though the game's focus is best represented by the name. Things should feel ominous, difficult, deadly and time needs to be a factor. Those are all in the name. You can't take progression out for chance too much or you lose the spirit that is encapsulated in the name with '7 days.' Its meant to represent time, preperation and challenge. It shouldn't be easy so having loot grow with monster difficulty is ideal. Getting great guns and weak zombies breaks it. Getting weak guns and strong zombies still fits and is probably a better goal. Easier difficulty, easier opposition. But the tools should always not make the game a cakewalk no matter the gamestage or it breaks that tension and it becomes an abandoned neighborhood exploration game.

[Solomon]

11 hours ago, Sunlight_Swift said:

It kind of boils down to what kind of rpg player you are. Roguelike or standard progression.

Also depends on what kind of looter you are, if you are like me you are spending an absurd amount of time taking literally everything from each and every POI and when your 50th weapon bag still results in the same stone tools you already have en-masse it gets annoying especially if you know theres better stuff out there.

 

If the loot rebalance progresses like this and traders will be programmed the same way as loot there will be another bunch of angry people here complaining because the most common counter argument here is that trader quests and inventory can bypass all this system.

[RestInPieces]

12 hours ago, Sunlight_Swift said:

I think the best direction of growth would favor increased resistance to better loot more than magical time gates of progress.

Exactly. Environmental gating would be far better. Not only for reasons of immersion, but also gameplay, player agency and longevity, as I described in my previous posts in this thread. I don't think modifiers are a great idea, but definitely much better than what we have now.

 

And yes, randomness keeps the game from becoming bland fast, but too much of it makes it abstract. A game like this though, with a sandbox world of repeated random prefabs has no choice other than to have a decent level of randomness when it comes to loot/events and enemies if it wants to be replayable in the long-term.

 

45 minutes ago, Solomon said:

If the loot rebalance progresses like this and traders will be programmed the same way as loot there will be another bunch of angry people here complaining because the most common counter argument here is that trader quests and inventory can bypass all this system.

Wish the trader was more of a goal you would have to work for, rather than a disconnected, from the rest of the gameloop, convenience that throws items at you.

If they want to gate traders stocks/quest economy sources, I hope they at least make it less artificial than gating them behind a meta number, or via continuous quest/rep grinding. 

 

E.g. player finds an abandoned trade post, which is decently difficult to clear or/and rebuild. Also has to craft a radio which is a mid-tier "workstation", to be able to "call" a trader to the area as long as a trade post is already cleared. Gets quests via radio in their base, reward spawns near completed quest goal in a container (not this bloody back and forth). Quests and quest frequency from radio calls are random or triggered by what you find in the world, tech achievements etc. I believe the greatest time hurdle in this would be building the workstation radio asset, which is, well, time better spent than making 99 different candy icons.

 

 

[Solomon]

10 hours ago, RestInPieces said:

E.g. player finds an abandoned trade post, which is decently difficult to clear or/and rebuild. Also has to craft a radio which is a mid-tier "workstation", to be able to "call" a trader to the area as long as a trade post is already cleared. Gets quests via radio in their base, reward spawns near completed quest goal in a container (not this bloody back and forth). Quests and quest frequency from radio calls are random or triggered by what you find in the world, tech achievements etc. I believe the greatest time hurdle in this would be building the workstation radio asset, which is, well, time better spent than making 99 different candy icons.

I would much more prefer somekind of....how to say it.... emergency radio channel like deal.

 

The idea would be that the place you are in is truly abadoned no humans left except the upcoming bandits what set up some bases. As you progress you can find a radio kit what you can upgrade with the better barter perk. You can only use the radio kit at radio towers to connect into them and broadcast your signal, once that is done now you can make some deal with faraway people for dukes.

 

Once the deal is made you get a 24h (ingame day) countdown and at the end of it a caravan of armored trucks arrive. You pay at the window and they drop off the crate for the goods or load your stuff on it and get payed.

 

This would make people need to explore and find specific locations for the traders and would make much more sense for all the treasure hunt quests to do them as they are not in that area.

[RestInPieces]

4 hours ago, Solomon said:

I would much more prefer somekind of....how to say it.... emergency radio channel like deal.

 

The idea would be that the place you are in is truly abadoned no humans left except the upcoming bandits what set up some bases. As you progress you can find a radio kit what you can upgrade with the better barter perk. You can only use the radio kit at radio towers to connect into them and broadcast your signal, once that is done now you can make some deal with faraway people for dukes.

 

Once the deal is made you get a 24h (ingame day) countdown and at the end of it a caravan of armored trucks arrive. You pay at the window and they drop off the crate for the goods or load your stuff on it and get payed.

 

This would make people need to explore and find specific locations for the traders and would make much more sense for all the treasure hunt quests to do them as they are not in that area.

An armored caravan, or them throwing away assets they already made should be out of the question but connecting a network of radio towers, which already exist and could be found through exploration (without quest pointers), or equipping the post with workstations and helping it "develop" (like a colony mini-game) e.g. to expand the traders' stock etc, is already more interesting than what we have now and could be done with minimal effort. I expect the people whose job is to design this game, will plan this thoroughly and think of better and more involving mechanics than these.

 

At any case, whatever TFP decide to do, besides more types of quests etc, imo, these things have to happen:

 

-The back-and-forth thing has to go away. Traversing distances should be promoted, but not in this bland fetch-return way.

-Traders have to be gated, but in a way that connects them with the main gameplay loop (tech, exploration etc), not an arbitrary meta number or quest tier grinding.

 

 

 

[Solomon]

3 hours ago, RestInPieces said:

An armored caravan, or them throwing away assets they already made should be out of the question but connecting a network of radio towers, which already exist and could be found through exploration (without quest pointers), or equipping the post with workstations and helping it "develop" (like a colony mini-game) e.g. to expand the traders' stock etc, is already more interesting than what we have now and could be done with minimal effort. I expect the people whose job is to design this game, will plan this thoroughly and think of better and more involving mechanics than these.

 

At any case, whatever TFP decide to do, besides more types of quests etc, imo, these things have to happen:

 

-The back-and-forth thing has to go away. Traversing distances should be promoted, but not in this bland fetch-return way.

-Traders have to be gated, but in a way that connects them with the main gameplay loop (tech, exploration etc), not an arbitrary meta number or quest tier grinding.

They dont need to throw away assets at all just move them around a bit. Like lets do it this way:

 

The trader bases are abadoned and rundown fortresses, the players can use them as they would do on regular POI's. They also have a radio somewhere what you can connect to the emergency channels.

 

The trader audio is now played throught the radio as if someone just picked up the call. The trader models are now the drivers of the truck, they take the money from you, open the back and let you handle the deal.

 

 

[fabulux]

On 9/11/2020 at 3:41 AM, Sunlight_Swift said:

...I would just bar the really great acquisitions behind not levels, but extremely difficult resistance.

 

...I think the best direction of growth would favor increased resistance to better loot more than magical time gates of progress.

 

...having loot grow with monster difficulty is ideal.

I agree.

 

I also agree the traders need work. There is a large gap between quest rewards/trader inventory and loot from chests and crates per your gamestage.

I do enjoy questing, but if that is what they plan to stick with, we need more POIs or more variations in quest types. Going to the same POI, over and over and over isn't ideal...

[JCrook1028]

9 hours ago, fabulux said:

I agree.

 

I also agree the traders need work. There is a large gap between quest rewards/trader inventory and loot from chests and crates per your gamestage.

I do enjoy questing, but if that is what they plan to stick with, we need more POIs or more variations in quest types. Going to the same POI, over and over and over isn't ideal...

Traders will be brought in line with loot in A20. The Devs have said so multiple times.

[nitron_biohazard]

I actually kind of miss the earlier alphas where we had more quality levels. Even with the linear loot and the slowdown it causes it's still so quick to go up to tier 3 or 4 of things since there's so few loot quality tiers.

[JCrook1028]

1 hour ago, nitron_biohazard said:

I actually kind of miss the earlier alphas where we had more quality levels. Even with the linear loot and the slowdown it causes it's still so quick to go up to tier 3 or 4 of things since there's so few loot quality tiers.

I think you're confusing Tiers with levels..... When quality level went to 6oo we only had 2 tiers mostly. Now we have 3 tiers and only 6 quality levels.