Alpha 19 A19 Loot Progression

[Maxley]

I love 7dtd. I think the game has been steadily improving and the latest alpha is the best version so far. I do have one gripe however and that is loot progression. Except for toilet pistols and purchasing from traders, there is basically no chance of finding a weapon of any higher tier than a blunderbuss or a tool of a higher tier than stone if you are below a certain gamestage.

 

Spoiler

 

I understand that having loot progression tied to gamestage is meant to prevent players from skipping past the stone age and instantly becoming op in the early game. I agree that players should have to progress, but I also believe that never having the chance to find something exciting, like an AK47, because of gamestage ruins a lot of the fun of looting.

I propose a middle ground solution.

 

How to balance finding above blunderbuss tier weapons in the early game (AK47, 9mil, etc)

1.) Ammo- Ammo is extremely abundant in A19. There are ammo piles behind every 10th picture, traders give you 150-200 ammo for one quest, secures storage chests give you more as well as shipping crates, etc. Just reduce the amount of ammo which can be looted. It can be argued that this looted ammo is needed to defend against the coming hordes, but I believe players can use bows and blunderbusses and will find a way even with less ammo at their disposal in the early game. Blunderbuss ammo is easily craftable, which keeps it as a viable alternative to a handgun or machine gun if handgun and machine gun ammo is made far less abundant.

 

2.) Repair Cost- [EDIT] A lot of people have said using tool/weapon parts for repair would be a hassle. You would have to carry too many items for repairing. SO! I suggest instead simply increasing the amount of repair kits required to repair something. That way it will be harder to maintain an above blunderbuss tier weapon early game which will allow blunderbusses to still be useful as an alternative. Repair kits are the solution to almost everything, which is a problem. Repair kits can be made with duct tape, cloth, and forged iron which are all easily obtainable, even in the early game. If weapons required their respective parts to be repaired, then there would be a limit to the usability of a higher than blunderbuss weapon in the early game. So, even if you find an AK47 in the early game, you would only be able to use if for so long before it broke. When it breaks you would need to find machine gun parts if you wanted to repair it.

 

Also, it could be made so repair effectiveness is tied to a players proficiency in the use of that weapon type. So a player who only has 1 level of machine gunner (or whatever its called) can only repair 30% of weapons durability in one go (for example). A level 5 can repair 100%.

 

3.) Gamestage RNG Hybrid Loot- If AK47's and other tier one weapons were made once again findable in the early game, gamestage could still play a role in limiting their effectiveness. For example, a player of gamestage 1-15 (An example set of numbers) can not find AK47's above quality level 1.

 

4.) Rarity- Even if tier one weapons and tools are findable in the early game, they could be made to be less common and more of a reward when they are found. Weapon bags could have a random chance to spawn at the end of the current dungeon crawl houses. Currently, they're pretty much always there; and even though they display actual guns sticking out of the zipper, if they are looted below a certain gamestage, they only ever contain blunderbusses. Make it so they somewhat rarely spawn at the end of a dungeon crawl, but when they are found, they are much more likely to contain an actual gun or at least gun parts. The same with gun safes. Make them rare to spawn, but with a high chance of gun loot. And with those super secure storage chests, make those certain to spawn guns, but of course they should be hard to break into and well guarded. In the regular unlocked secure storage chests at the end of dungeon crawls, the gun loot chance should be low and instead have a high blunderbuss and stone tool chance.

 

Just some ideas. I like where the game is going, but this one area I hope receives some more balancing.

[Solomon]

Repair by parts would be a nice way to balance things around especially if they fix the droprates, thought i still thinks its a fundamental problem that we try to treat these essentially craft and forget low grade gear as something what needs its own stage.

[RipClaw]

The loot system is not yet in its final form. For A20 it is planned that there will be POIs with better loot but they are more difficult. Then you can get your gun on day 1 but you have to take a risk.

 

[Sjustus548]

1.  Looting a lot of ammo early game can be a problem but after awhile we get the vast majority of our ammo from crafting it.  Lead, coal, nitrate, and brass are so plentiful in the worlds that it is so easy to craft tons of ammo quickly.  I would love to see all those resources reduced and possibly restricted to different biomes where they can be found.  

 

2.  This is a great idea.  The parts seem mostly pointless right now, especially when you have a quality 6 of something you use.  It would be great to need shotgun  parts to repair my quality 6 auto shotgun that I'm using.  

 

3.  I would like to see loot changed up so you can only find certain loot in certain containers or in certain buildings.  Want a gun early in the game?  Go hit up a gun store and hope they have what you are looking for.  Need medicine?  A hospital would be a great place to look.  Houses can still have the things that you are looking for, medicine cabinets and gun safes, but they need to be a little more rare and have the chance to be empty due to already being looted by another scavenger.

 

4.  Yeah this is like I was talking about in 3.  

[Maxley]

4 hours ago, RipClaw said:

The loot system is not yet in its final form. For A20 it is planned that there will be POIs with better loot but they are more difficult. Then you can get your gun on day 1 but you have to take a risk.

 

I hope so. Going through a gun factory should basically guarantee you come out with at least 1 gun, but of course the building as well as the surrounding area should be packed with zombies.

 

 

1 hour ago, Sjustus548 said:

1.  Looting a lot of ammo early game can be a problem but after awhile we get the vast majority of our ammo from crafting it.  Lead, coal, nitrate, and brass are so plentiful in the worlds that it is so easy to craft tons of ammo quickly.  I would love to see all those resources reduced and possibly restricted to different biomes where they can be found.  

 

2.  This is a great idea.  The parts seem mostly pointless right now, especially when you have a quality 6 of something you use.  It would be great to need shotgun  parts to repair my quality 6 auto shotgun that I'm using.  

 

3.  I would like to see loot changed up so you can only find certain loot in certain containers or in certain buildings.  Want a gun early in the game?  Go hit up a gun store and hope they have what you are looking for.  Need medicine?  A hospital would be a great place to look.  Houses can still have the things that you are looking for, medicine cabinets and gun safes, but they need to be a little more rare and have the chance to be empty due to already being looted by another scavenger.

 

4.  Yeah this is like I was talking about in 3.  

 

Yeah raw resources are extremely plentiful. I’m also hoping the fun pimps separate resources into different biomes and also make it so there’s just less resource deposits in general. A while ago I had an idea for oil shake deposits where instead of directly mining it, you would have to either create or restore an oil rig on the oil shake deposit. The oil rig would generate a certain amount of oil per day so that you can’t just have infinite supplies after a couple of day’s mining it.

For the weapon parts, yeah I think no one enjoys looting them currently since they are not used very often. In my last game I had like 60 steel armor parts so thought I might as well try to make some armor. I made several level 5 blue pieces, but even though I was wearing like level 3 steel armor, all the pieces I made had worse stats.
 

yeah I like the idea of specific buildings for specific loot. I know it is that way somewhat right now, but I think the problem is that houses have too much good loot of all varieties which makes specific buildings like shotgun massiahs unnecessary. I think houses have there basic treasure chest at the end, and very rarely have specific shipping crates like working stiffs etc. 

 

10 hours ago, Solomon said:

Repair by parts would be a nice way to balance things around especially if they fix the droprates, thought i still thinks its a fundamental problem that we try to treat these essentially craft and forget low grade gear as something what needs its own stage.

 

I understand what you are saying. We shouldn’t drag out our a stage just to force players to use a set of weapons and tools in the game for longer. I feel making higher grade weapons and tools available in the early game but having them be rare and difficult to maintain as far as repairing them goes would make it so stone would still be valuable as a backup when you run out of durability on your AK47 for example.

[th3s0n1c]

20 hours ago, Maxley said:

So, even if you find an AK47 in the early game, you would only be able to use if for so long before it broke. When it breaks you would need to find machine gun parts if you wanted to repair it.

I like this idea.. it makes perfect sense and its a fixable throwback to how A16 used to be without getting too complicated or boring.

I'd even add to the suggestions by saying: lvl 1 guns we find early could already be broken or nearly broken.

 

 

"A while ago I had an idea for oil shake deposits where instead of directly mining it, you would have to either create or restore an oil rig on the oil shake deposit. The oil rig would generate a certain amount of oil per day so that you can’t just have infinite supplies after a couple of day’s mining it. "

Could work for SP, but would be terrible for PvP MP... or maybe.. it would actually become a Point Of Interest people would fight for.. who knows?

 

" I’m also hoping the fun pimps separate resources into different biomes"

That's how it used to be, but I dont think we are going back to that.

[th3s0n1c]

5 hours ago, RipClaw said:

The loot system is not yet in its final form. For A20 it is planned that there will be POIs with better loot but they are more difficult. Then you can get your gun on day 1 but you have to take a risk.

 

Is it really a risk, tho? Bedroll outside the POI, die and try again. Unless you do "dead is dead" or "lose backpack on death", it becomes just a game of perseverance  - and that's if you dont take cheesing to main loot into consideration.

[Maxley]

21 minutes ago, th3s0n1c said:

I like this idea.. it makes perfect sense and its a fixable throwback to how A16 used to be without getting too complicated or boring.

I'd even add to the suggestions by saying: lvl 1 guns we find early could already be broken or nearly broken.

I was thinking that too about finding partially damaged weapons/tools, but I thought that might be considered taking it too far. But I think its a good idea too allow for further fine tuning of weapon loot balance.

9 minutes ago, th3s0n1c said:

Is it really a risk, tho? Bedroll outside the POI, die and try again. Unless you do "dead is dead" or "lose backpack on death", it becomes just a game of perseverance  - and that's if you dont take cheesing to main loot into consideration.

Yeah I think if you're not playing dead is dead or drop all on death, there's not much impact of dying in pursuit of the sweet high tier gear. The main factor I guess would be time lost. Ultimately, everything can be accomplished with time in the game. I guess they could just really ramp the difficulty up a lot so even a veteran player would have a hard time getting the loot in high tier POI in the early game.

As for cheesing it and just nerd polling or digging down to where the treasure is, the solution could be dispersing the loot throughout the POI. Instead of 1 big pile of treasure at the end, make it so there's 3 or 4 small piles throughout the POI.

[RipClaw]

10 hours ago, th3s0n1c said:

Is it really a risk, tho? Bedroll outside the POI, die and try again. Unless you do "dead is dead" or "lose backpack on death", it becomes just a game of perseverance  - and that's if you dont take cheesing to main loot into consideration.

If you don't care about the death in the game everything is very easy. 

Even the strongest horde is then no longer a problem. Just undress and put your complete inventory in a chest, stand on the street and let the horde kill you. Horde done.

I actually assumed that players, even if they are not playing dead is dead, don't want to die. I don't play dead is dead but I still don't take death lightly.

 

[Solomon]

11 hours ago, th3s0n1c said:

Is it really a risk, tho? Bedroll outside the POI, die and try again. Unless you do "dead is dead" or "lose backpack on death", it becomes just a game of perseverance  - and that's if you dont take cheesing to main loot into consideration.

Yep, death especially early game where the newbie coat saves your xp doesnt matter.

 

I firmly believe that the fix we need is essentially nothing but just more items ingame, for an example 100 weapon items with 1 per loot room that means you will collect them all in 100 attempts not counting possible repetititon.

We are at approx 60 items what can be used as weapons and a bunch of them are tools (16) what are not really useable as they are so we are at 46 weapons total. If you find only 1 per lootroom thats 46 rooms at shortest.

 

Now because theres an avarage 3 weapons per loot room my first example finishes looting weapons in 34 tries while the current experience one would finish in 16 tries. The current system is basically set up to slow down the gameplay because the zombie design is kind of asking for you to have guns to fight the masses and if you find them early you are finished.

 

Ideally having guns should not make melee a secondary weapon choice and having guns should not mean that the dead is now only dangerous when coming en-masse.

[FranticDan]

I've made a mod that addresses many progression issues and balancing.
Food, Ammo, Loot quantity, Mining, Economy, Slower leveling and Gamestage increase. Even repair kits are harder to craft, requiring oil and mechanical part.

It doesn't address finding a gun earlier (unless you're lucky with the trader) but it helps balance everything else in line with finding a gun and helps stop you from becoming a powerhouse by the day 14 horde.
You'll work hard towards getting your farm up and running to progress from canned food age to high tier cooked meal age.
Grinding base building resources and mining are slowed down by 2/3s.

No more mining oil shale for a single night and having all the gas and oil you'll need for weeks to come.

I'll still tweaking and adding things as I play, I like the idea of needing items parts for repairing specific gear!

[Solomon]

Just a question but why not just remove repair packs altogether?

 

Like what are you exactly repairing in a hammer? You either replace the head or the handle.

 

If everything is repairable throught parts and materials it would drastically scale down the power increase we get throught levels.

[Maxley]

19 hours ago, th3s0n1c said:

"A while ago I had an idea for oil shake deposits where instead of directly mining it, you would have to either create or restore an oil rig on the oil shake deposit. The oil rig would generate a certain amount of oil per day so that you can’t just have infinite supplies after a couple of day’s mining it. "

Could work for SP, but would be terrible for PvP MP... or maybe.. it would actually become a Point Of Interest people would fight for.. who knows?

 

" I’m also hoping the fun pimps separate resources into different biomes"

That's how it used to be, but I dont think we are going back to that.

Yeah it might be bad for PvP. Or the might like it. There would be more than a handful throughout the map, with a higher concentration in the desert. Players would have to get them in working order with lots of resources before they start to function. On a PvP server there would probably be someone sitting there in a bush 24/7 with there sniper rifle aimed at an oil rig waiting for people to come get gas or crude oil or whatever it produces.

I read Madmole say that he wanted to do something like this. He was talking about it a few months back.

 

7 hours ago, FranticDan said:

I've made a mod that addresses many progression issues and balancing.
Food, Ammo, Loot quantity, Mining, Economy, Slower leveling and Gamestage increase. Even repair kits are harder to craft, requiring oil and mechanical part.

It doesn't address finding a gun earlier (unless you're lucky with the trader) but it helps balance everything else in line with finding a gun and helps stop you from becoming a powerhouse by the day 14 horde.
You'll work hard towards getting your farm up and running to progress from canned food age to high tier cooked meal age.
Grinding base building resources and mining are slowed down by 2/3s.

No more mining oil shale for a single night and having all the gas and oil you'll need for weeks to come.

I'll still tweaking and adding things as I play, I like the idea of needing items parts for repairing specific gear!

Do you like how your balance changes play so far? I definitely think oil shale deposits are very OP. I like the process of becoming self sufficient with farming, what did you change about it? Yeah you should try the item parts for repairing method and see how it goes.

 

56 minutes ago, Solomon said:

Just a question but why not just remove repair packs altogether?

 

Like what are you exactly repairing in a hammer? You either replace the head or the handle.

 

If everything is repairable throught parts and materials it would drastically scale down the power increase we get throught levels.

I think repair kits could be removed altogether. I think it should specific materials and parts to repair tools and weapons. Since there are no claw hammer parts I would say they should be repairable with just forged iron and duct tape. But for pistols, use pistol parts and duct tape. I think keep using duct tape in repair recipes so that it still has an important use in all stages of the game. Yeah it would slow you down a bit and make you more happy when u find weapons parts or whole weapons.

[FranticDan]

7 minutes ago, Maxley said:

Do you like how your balance changes play so far? I definitely think oil shale deposits are very OP. I like the process of becoming self sufficient with farming, what did you change about it? Yeah you should try the item parts for repairing method and see how it goes.

With the games I've played so far, I am quite enjoying myself with the slower progression. In a normal game I usually have everything I'd ever need by day ~50. 
I nerfed oil shale by approximately 87% when combined with the mining harvest and the amount of oil and gas you get when crafting from the shale you mine. So it'll take about 8 times longer to get that huge amount of oil and gas.

With farming, I increased the rotting flesh cost of the farm plots, and the farming perk doesn't increase your crop yield anymore, also crops take twice as long to grow. So you won't have endless food by the end of week 2, it's a more gradual progression now slowly expanding your farm size. I also rebalanced the recipe costs and resources from animals, so you won't have rows of raw meat sitting in storage.

The latest change I've made was reduce the quantity of resources and ammo the traders sell, why harvest, mine and craft your own things when you can just buy it. (This change isn't public yet) Will be changing repairs next since I got that idea now.

All in all, I feel my mod is great for those who enjoy vanilla but find that everything is handed to them on a silver platter. Now you have to actually work for your resources.

[Raveman1000]

On 10/23/2020 at 8:32 PM, Maxley said:

I propose a middle ground solution.

 

This is a lot of changes just to satisfy your need to get a gun in the first week. I think the increased in poi game stage based on the poi expected difficulty from A20 will be good enough to increase the excitement of maybe getting a gun early. 

 

But I think the way things are right now is still good enough. Getting a high enough game stage to get guns in loot is fast enough. And if you're in a hurry try your luck at the traders, spec in bartering or just craft the gun yourself.

On 10/23/2020 at 8:32 PM, Maxley said:

2.) Repair Cost- Repair kits are the solution to almost everything, which is a problem. Repair kits can be made with duct tape, cloth, and forged iron which are all easily obtainable, even in the early game. If weapons required their respective parts to be repaired, then there would be a limit to the usability of a higher than blunderbuss weapon in the early game. So, even if you find an AK47 in the early game, you would only be able to use if for so long before it broke. When it breaks you would need to find machine gun parts if you wanted to repair it.

 

Repair cost is fine and simple the way it is now. Your solution is to allow to find guns in chest and tie the repairs to the parts, why not just use the parts to craft the gun?

[Kalen]

18 minutes ago, Raveman1000 said:

why not just use the parts to craft the gun

Because once you get a Q6 gun the parts just collect dust.   Needing parts for repairs makes guns a little harder to maintain early game... and gives you a reason to keep parts mid to late game instead of selling them all to a trader.

 

[Maxley]

28 minutes ago, Raveman1000 said:

This is a lot of changes just to satisfy your need to get a gun in the first week. I think the increased in poi game stage based on the poi expected difficulty from A20 will be good enough to increase the excitement of maybe getting a gun early. 

 

But I think the way things are right now is still good enough. Getting a high enough game stage to get guns in loot is fast enough. And if you're in a hurry try your luck at the traders, spec in bartering or just craft the gun yourself.

Repair cost is fine and simple the way it is now. Your solution is to allow to find guns in chest and tie the repairs to the parts, why not just use the parts to craft the gun?

The way it works right now is not good game design. People purposefully delay opening chests and shipping crates because they know if they open them at like level 20 or under they're only going to get a stone axe and a blunderbuss.

Its the biggest complaint that most people have with A19. Every time I watch someone on youtube try A19 they always comment on how every loot chest just contains stone tier tools/weapons.

Its not complicated at all to change this. Its just a change in loot chance percentages with different rates depending on the type of container. And while they are at it, if they could make certain container types like weapons bags and guns safes spawn less often but make them contain a higher chance of better loot, that would be even better.

I want above stone tier weapons/tools to still be rare in the early game and limited in their usability by making them expensive to maintain.

7 minutes ago, Kalen said:

Because once you get a Q6 gun the parts just collect dust.   Needing parts for repairs makes guns a little harder to maintain early game... and gives you a reason to keep parts mid to late game instead of selling them all to a trader.

Yes thank you. Its not a hard change to implement, modders could probably do it easily, but this the kind of change that belongs in the main game. How often do you get excited to find tool or weapon parts when looting?

[RipClaw]

1 hour ago, Maxley said:

Yes thank you. Its not a hard change to implement, modders could probably do it easily, but this the kind of change that belongs in the main game. How often do you get excited to find tool or weapon parts when looting?

Using parts for repair would be extremely annoying.

 

I would have to carry 3 or 4 different types of parts to repair my equipment in the field. During the horde I use 3 different types of firearms. At least 2 of them I have to repair several times during the horde.

 

[Maxley]

5 minutes ago, RipClaw said:

Using parts for repair would be extremely annoying.

 

I would have to carry 3 or 4 different types of parts to repair my equipment in the field. During the horde I use 3 different types of firearms. At least 2 of them I have to repair several times during the horde.

 

I see your point. An alternative then could be just making repair kits less effective instead of the parts for repair idea. Make it so it takes like 3 or 4 to fully repair a weapon. That way if you find a decent weapon early game like a double barrel shotgun you will have a harder time maintaining it. Late game it wont matter since you can make repair kits by the boat load.

Its kind of sad how worthless parts are. Ive tried many times to make something with them and more than half the time what I make with them has worse stats than what i currently have.

[RipClaw]

33 minutes ago, Maxley said:

I see your point. An alternative then could be just making repair kits less effective instead of the parts for repair idea. Make it so it takes like 3 or 4 to fully repair a weapon.

In fact, this was part of the game at one point. I don't remember if they changed it in A16 or A17 but before that it could cost up to 5 repair kits to repair an high quality item.

37 minutes ago, Maxley said:

That way if you find a decent weapon early game like a double barrel shotgun you will have a harder time maintaining it.

My favorite weapon for the early game is the stone sledgehammer anyway. It is so much more fun to smash zombies in the face than to shoot them. 

51 minutes ago, Maxley said:

Its kind of sad how worthless parts are. Ive tried many times to make something with them and more than half the time what I make with them has worse stats than what i currently have.

My solution is quite simple. I throw the parts in a chest and when the chest is full I sell most of them.
I do not waste my time thinking about it. I prefer to plan and build the next horde base.
 

[Solomon]

1 hour ago, RipClaw said:

Using parts for repair would be extremely annoying.

 

I would have to carry 3 or 4 different types of parts to repair my equipment in the field. During the horde I use 3 different types of firearms. At least 2 of them I have to repair several times during the horde.

 

Okay how about the following?

 

We rework the repair kit into a pseudo-container. You can use if from the inventory and it opens up a menu where you can put in weapon parts to fill it. Each repair with it consumes some items from it, fixing your issue of not being able to carry that much mats while also still making players repair with parts and raw materials.

[RipClaw]

10 hours ago, Solomon said:

Okay how about the following?

 

We rework the repair kit into a pseudo-container. You can use if from the inventory and it opens up a menu where you can put in weapon parts to fill it. Each repair with it consumes some items from it, fixing your issue of not being able to carry that much mats while also still making players repair with parts and raw materials.

This would require additional coding because there, es far as I know, there is no such thing as pseudo-container in the game yet.

 

 

[Solomon]

2 hours ago, RipClaw said:

This would require additional coding because there, es far as I know, there is no such thing as pseudo-container in the game yet.

Hmm, yeah thats true. How about a workaround where the repair kit has durability what you repair with any parts you have?

 

Not sure if thats one too is possible within the current code, but making crafting recipes what replace consume the repair kit itself and some parts could work.

[Rince]

I like the progression system of A19. The more I play, the more I like it.

 

Surely, needs some tweaks, like making the containers in some POI like the shotgun messiah factory or the weapon safes having a bigger chance to have a gun, instead of some primitive bow.

And I think that they already working in that.

 

Regarding the repair kits, I also like how they are now. I remember when they were much harder to craft, that was a big hassle. Having to have indivitual repair kits for each kind of weapon sounds super annoying.

[Raveman1000]

18 hours ago, Kalen said:

Because once you get a Q6 gun the parts just collect dust.   Needing parts for repairs makes guns a little harder to maintain early game... and gives you a reason to keep parts mid to late game instead of selling them all to a trader.

 

Needing parts to repair stuff would be an unnecessary hassle in my opinion. I really like the convenience of the repair kit. Having to go out with parts for your tools, weapons and armors would clutter an already limited inventory space. I know that repairing everything before getting out would be an option, but in a lot of situation you need to repair on the go.

 

While I agree that having stuff to do with parts late game would be nice, I don't think it should done by removing the repair kits.