Should repair be changed to fix the game economy?

[Rince]

How much a repair kit worth?

 

If you're endgame with a fortress and seized the means of production, nothing.

If you're facing the Blood Moon horde, the traps are destroyed, the zombies are banging at the walls and you only remaining gun broke, priceless.

 

For everything else, JoelCard.

[meganoth]

4 hours ago, Rince said:

But... why?

I mean, if they're giving me a job I expect some kind of decent pay.

And no, a stone shovel and a bow are not precisely good reward you bully trader!

 

And for lvl 5 tier ones, no, a full stack of 7.62 is not even worth it. I can spend more cleaning the place! (But of course, I'm not the best sharpshooter in the world... more like a dejected from the Imperial marksmanship Academy).

I don't think the complaints were about 120 bullets for completing a tier5 quest. They were about getting 120 bullets for a tier1 quest.

 

Having a pistol and 120 bullets is a game changer in early game.

Having a pistol and 12 bullets in early game is an emergency fund while you still whack at the zombies with a club.

 

 

[meganoth]

13 minutes ago, Rince said:

How much a repair kit worth?

 

If you're endgame with a fortress and seized the means of production, nothing.

If you're facing the Blood Moon horde, the traps are destroyed, the zombies are banging at the walls and you only remaining gun broke, priceless.

 

For everything else, JoelCard.

Sure, a glass of water in the desert is priceless. But a glass of water in the desert is still priceless when you went past an oasis 10 hours earlier and forgot to fill up.

 

Repair kits are so easy to get that the blame is on you for making them artificially valuable

 

[Psychodabble]

27 minutes ago, Liesel Weppen said:

Every invest-vs-reward is an "economy". How much is a repair kit worth? Basically nothing, because you find tons of them and also can craft them easily, same applies to executing a repair process (because the doing itself is quite pointless). That's economy.

If anything is massively under- or overrated, it's a bad economy.

 

And there are dependencies of that. If repairing wouldn't be that "cheap", it would increase the value of found items. So once you have a found a t3 ak-47 and find another one, there is only few you can do with it. Selling it to the trader probably is done in the most cases. Assuming you are able to craft a higher tier AK, you also might scrap it for parts.

But if repairing wouldn't be that cheap or had other backdraws, there is another valuable option: Keep it as a backup.

Sure, you could call that an economy in the broadest sense of the word, but I'm not sure that nomenclature really helps anyone as most people understand economy as having to do with the exchange of goods and/or services between individuals - in this case game entities whether PC or NPC.

 

I assert that this game does not have an economy as such, because by default settings the supply of every resource is theoretically endless, capped only by time and RNG. This means that on a long enough timeline the demand, and hence the value, for everything drops to zero. You cannot have any kind of meaningful economy in this situation.

 

The solution to that involves item sinks, i.e. consistent, recurring ways to remove items from circulation. The OP pinpoints repair kits as being responsible for keeping items in circulation and suggests their removal or nerfing as a direction for creating an item sink through degradation. What the OP completely ignores is the question of whether this game actually benefits from this kind of "economy".

 

You put forward keeping loot as a backup as a valuable option, but I question the assumption of your premise. As it is now, you keep the best version of a particular item and use it, scrapping or selling all inferior versions. Perhaps in the rare, odd case you would find two versions with stats divergent enough from each other that you would keep both and use them for different purposes. So let's now add this concept of degradation and keeping backups...how does that actually feel to the player when they are forced to go from their high stat item to an inferior version? What is the counterplay to these downgrades over time?

 

In my experience, finding upgrades in the mid-late game is rare. Once you have a blue or purple version of an item it can take weeks to upgrade over it, if ever. If I were not able to keep my best versions of items going indefinitely, this would mean fairly frequent statistical downgrades and less frequent upgrades. That sounds like a bad feeling game, IMO, where you slowly get weaker over time as the game actually gets harder.

 

I think the repair mechanic as it exists is perfectly adequate. It's not super engaging, but it does feed a gameplay loop that feels good. You hunt new items to improve on the ones you have, rarely finding them, but when you do it feels nice. The rest of the time you are collecting vendor fodder which increase your liquid wealth, also lending a feeling of progression. If you find enough of these redundant items, you build up a nice cash reserve which can be used to fill in any supply gaps you may have. As your reserve grows, you are motivated to explore farther to find more traders and add them to your rotation, checking them for useful items every time they refresh their stock.

 

In absence of a true endgame, this works pretty well for now, IMO. I don't see how adding "feels bad" mechanics for the sake of an imaginary "economy" improves the game.

16 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Sure, a glass of water in the desert is priceless. But a glass of water in the desert is still priceless when you went past an oasis 10 hours earlier and forgot to fill up.

 

Repair kits are so easy to get that the blame is on you for making them artificially valuable

 

I honestly don't understand what you are trying to say here.

[meganoth]

7 minutes ago, Psychodabble said:

Sure, you could call that an economy in the broadest sense of the word, but I'm not sure that nomenclature really helps anyone as most people understand economy as having to do with the exchange of goods and/or services between individuals - in this case game entities whether PC or NPC.

 

I assert that this game does not have an economy as such, because by default settings the supply of every resource is theoretically endless, capped only by time and RNG. This means that on a long enough timeline the demand, and hence the value, for everything drops to zero. You cannot have any kind of meaningful economy in this situation.

 

The solution to that involves item sinks, i.e. consistent, recurring ways to remove items from circulation. The OP pinpoints repair kits as being responsible for keeping items in circulation and suggests their removal or nerfing as a direction for creating an item sink through degradation. What the OP completely ignores is the question of whether this game actually benefits from this kind of "economy".

 

You put forward keeping loot as a backup as a valuable option, but I question the assumption of your premise. As it is now, you keep the best version of a particular item and use it, scrapping or selling all inferior versions. Perhaps in the rare, odd case you would find two versions with stats divergent enough from each other that you would keep both and use them for different purposes. So let's now add this concept of degradation and keeping backups...how does that actually feel to the player when they are forced to go from their high stat item to an inferior version? What is the counterplay to these downgrades over time?

 

In my experience, finding upgrades in the mid-late game is rare. Once you have a blue or purple version of an item it can take weeks to upgrade over it, if ever. If I were not able to keep my best versions of items going indefinitely, this would mean fairly frequent statistical downgrades and less frequent upgrades. That sounds like a bad feeling game, IMO, where you slowly get weaker over time as the game actually gets harder.

 

I think the repair mechanic as it exists is perfectly adequate. It's not super engaging, but it does feed a gameplay loop that feels good. You hunt new items to improve on the ones you have, rarely finding them, but when you do it feels nice. The rest of the time you are collecting vendor fodder which increase your liquid wealth, also lending a feeling of progression. If you find enough of these redundant items, you build up a nice cash reserve which can be used to fill in any supply gaps you may have. As your reserve grows, you are motivated to explore farther to find more traders and add them to your rotation, checking them for useful items every time they refresh their stock.

Usually the difference between a tier 5 rifle and its substitute are so miniscule that they don't matter. When the substitute does 70 instead of 72 damage per shot, it is negligible and you don't get weaker over time. You constantly find more tier 5 rifles and soon you are at 72 again.

The only real drawback of this scheme is that you would have to swap mods too often.

 

7 minutes ago, Psychodabble said:

In absence of a true endgame, this works pretty well for now, IMO. I don't see how adding "feels bad" mechanics for the sake of an imaginary "economy" improves the game.

I honestly don't understand what you are trying to say here.

 

Rince gave us a situation where repair kits are super valuable. But it wasn't because they really were valuable through circumstances outside of the control of the player. It was simply because the player did not buy or craft them.

Yes, you can starve near a supermarket if you don't buy any food in there.

 

 

[Liesel Weppen]

14 minutes ago, Psychodabble said:

So let's now add this concept of degradation and keeping backups...how does that actually feel to the player when they are forced to go from their high stat item to an inferior version? What is the counterplay to these downgrades over time?

They have to decide when they use the better ones and when the lower quality/stats ones. E.g. you might not degrade you best weapon while doing quests, but keep it for the bloodmoon. Or keep an item instead of selling it. The "counterplay" is thinking about what to use when under which circumstances.

Being able to craft good quality items becomes more important, because you probably may be able to craft a NEW T5 item if you current one breaks. Currently once you found a T6, crafting is completely obsolete.

As i already suggested earlier: There might be different repairs. There could be various scenarios. Maybe (simple) repair kits are as they are now, but applies a huge durability loss. There might be an improved repair kit, that costs a lot more to craft but repairs with far less durability loss. And maybe on the workstation you can repair (still requiring a simple repair kit or some of the specific parts) even without loss (but not restoring already lost durability). That brings up several options how to handle it.

You tend to plan your repairs at home on the workstation, because you don't want durability loss. If an item runs out of durability during a quest (because quest is very long, e.g. one of the skyscrapers or you simply forgot to repair at home) you have to decide if you use a simple repair kit and accept huge permanent durability loss, or maybe you have invested far more ressources in the improved repair kits and repair with less loss, or maybe you try finishing the mission without this item and repair it afterwards at home without any loss? Or maybe you don't care for durability loss, because you have 5 backups anyway at home?

Same during bloodmoon. Use repair kits with loss? Having a workbench near your defending position for lossless repairs? Or even carry more weapons of the same type and don't repair during BM at all, but switch weapons?

 

Currently its very simple: Take the best item you have and a stack of repair kits, sell everything else. Done.

Ressources just pile up, because there is no further use for them anymore and there is absolutely no ressource sink.

 

There should be a valuable cost of use. Not just a simple and cheap repair kit just requiring one forged iron and one duct tape.

 

14 minutes ago, Psychodabble said:

I honestly don't understand what you are trying to say here.

I hope that makes you understand better what my "target" is.

[Psychodabble]

10 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Usually the difference between a tier 5 rifle and its substitute are so miniscule that they don't matter. When the substitute does 70 instead of 72 damage per shot, it is negligible and you don't get weaker over time. You constantly find more tier 5 rifles and soon you are at 72 again.

The only real drawback of this scheme is that you would have to swap mods too often.

 

 

Rince gave us a situation where repair kits are super valuable. But it wasn't because they really were valuable through circumstances outside of the control of the player. It was simply because the player did not buy or craft them.

Yes, you can starve near a supermarket if you don't buy any food in there.

 

 

You are correct that items of similar quality perform so similarly as to be indistinguishable from one another in practical use cases. That, however, is not the issue...the issue is player feeling. When it comes to player feeling there is a clear preference for improvement in any game that uses items and item statistics. As soon as numbers get involved humans, and by extension gamers, want to see to those numbers go up over time. As soon as we get the sense that our numbers are stagnating or that there is no chance to improve them, the fun factor diminishes.

 

Let's assume that you are correct in your example that you will return to 72 damage from 70 in relatively short order. How does that feel? Not like progression, because you've now spent X amount of time/effort just to get back to where you already were. That's the opposite of fun, IMO. Fun comes from feeling like you are getting better and moving ahead, not treading water. Even if that feeling is illusory because the actual difference in numbers is miniscule, that doesn't change the impact of the feeling on your gameplay experience.

 

I would rather keep hunting in the hope of finding upgrades rather than praying I've stockpiled enough backups to avoid losing ground. Maybe that's just me, but I don't think it is.

3 minutes ago, Liesel Weppen said:

They have to decide when they use the better ones and when the lower quality/stats ones. E.g. you might not degrade you best weapon while doing quests, but keep it for the bloodmoon. Or keep an item instead of selling it. The "counterplay" is thinking about what to use when under which circumstances.

Being able to craft good quality items becomes more important, because you probably may be able to craft a NEW T5 item if you current one breaks. Currently once you found a T6, crafting is completely obsolete.

As i already suggested earlier: There might be different repairs. There could be various scenarios. Maybe (simple) repair kits are as they are now, but applies a huge durability loss. There might be an improved repair kit, that costs a lot more to craft but repairs with far less durability loss. And maybe on the workstation you can repair (still requiring a simple repair kit or some of the specific parts) even without loss (but not restoring already lost durability). That brings up several options how to handle it.

You tend to plan your repairs at home on the workstation, because you don't want durability loss. If an item runs out of durability during a quest (because quest is very long, e.g. one of the skyscrapers or you simply forgot to repair at home) you have to decide if you use a simple repair kit and accept huge permanent durability loss, or maybe you have invested far more ressources in the improved repair kits and repair with less loss, or maybe you try finishing the mission without this item and repair it afterwards at home without any loss? Or maybe you don't care for durability loss, because you have 5 backups anyway at home?

Same during bloodmoon. Use repair kits with loss? Having a workbench near your defending position for lossless repairs? Or even carry more weapons of the same type and don't repair during BM at all, but switch weapons?

 

Currently its very simple: Take the best item you have and a stack of repair kits, sell everything else. Done.

Ressources just pile up, because there is no further use for them anymore and there is absolutely no ressource sink.

 

There should be a valuable cost of use. Not just a simple and cheap repair kit just requiring one forged iron and one duct tape.

 

I hope that makes you understand better what my "target" is.

I would support something like this that deepens the repair mechanic without making degradation inevitable. If there is some way of extending an item's lifespan indefinitely that just requires more resources than currently, that would be fine. I actually like the idea as you described it here...repair options rather than just removed or vastly more expensive and futile repair.

[Liesel Weppen]

1 minute ago, Psychodabble said:

Let's assume that you are correct in your example that you will return to 72 damage from 70 in relatively short order. How does that feel? Not like progression, because you've now spent X amount of time/effort just to get back to where you already were.

You should realize that your good 72 damage weapon is a progression, but not lasting forever. Yes, if it breaks and you haven't found a better one yet, it is a downgrade. Assume this happend and you find another one with 72 damage. You are happy again. Currently you don't bother, because you already have the same.

And since you can craft items (and still intentionally not able to craft T6), there is a limit for the downgrade, because downgrade only to the worst item you are able to craft by yourself.

Trader offers will also become more valuable. You already have a damage 72 item, Now the trader offers another 72 damage item. Do you care for this offer? Even if you have stacks of dukes? No, because it is no improvement and your current item is forever. If your current item doesn't last forever, you might be interested in this offer anyway.

 

 

7 minutes ago, Psychodabble said:

I would support something like this that deepens the repair mechanic without making degradation inevitable. If there is some way of extending an item's lifespan indefinitely that just requires more resources than currently, that would be fine. I actually like the idea as you described it here...repair options rather than just removed or vastly more expensive and futile repair.

At least ALL MY posts, are not heading for "just make it more expensive" but for "make it valuable with decissions need to be taken".

Just making it more expensive isn't worth anything, there you are absolutely right.

[Psychodabble]

4 minutes ago, Liesel Weppen said:

You should realize that your good 72 damage weapon is a progression, but not lasting forever. Yes, if it breaks and you haven't found a better one yet, it is a downgrade. Assume this happend and you find another one with 72 damage. You are happy again. Currently you don't bother, because you already have the same.

And since you can craft items (and still intentionally not able to craft T6), there is a limit for the downgrade, because downgrade only to the worst item you are able to craft by yourself.

Trader offers will also become more valuable. You already have a damage 72 item, Now the trader offers another 72 damage item. Do you care for this offer? Even if you have stacks of dukes? No, because it is no improvement and your current item is forever. If your current item doesn't last forever, you might be interested in this offer anyway.

 

 

I just don't see this as adding value to the gameplay loop. Downgrades feel bad, especially when there is no counterplay. If the counterplay is just spending more to maintain the same level...meh. It would be okay because the player accumulates so much over a playthrough, but it doesn't really add anything. Changing your perspective to consider all upgrades as temporary doesn't change that feeling, because you know the game is progressively getting harder...every day you survive and kill and gain levels the game is getting harder...if your items don't keep up with that curve...it just feels bad.

[Liesel Weppen]

1 minute ago, Psychodabble said:

I just don't see this as adding value to the gameplay loop.

Decission taking is the added value!

 

1 minute ago, Psychodabble said:

Downgrades feel bad, especially when there is no counterplay.

The counterplay is that it needs more preparation.

 

1 minute ago, Psychodabble said:

Changing your perspective to consider all upgrades as temporary doesn't change that feeling, because you know the game is progressively getting harder...

And that's why you should be required to plan ahead. With your supplies, with your backup weapons and so on.
And as i said, there is an option to keep an item usable forever. But not under every circumstance and also with low ressource requirements. So situations may happen where you have to circumvent a durability loss or even take it. Especially if you didn't prepare well.

[Psychodabble]

To be perfectly clear: I support deepening the repair mechanic in a way that adds meaningful choice and improves the gameplay loop. I do not support changing the repair mechanic to "fix" an imaginary "economy". This is why I have answered "NO" to the OP's poll question.

[Liesel Weppen]

2 minutes ago, Psychodabble said:

I do not support changing the repair mechanic to "fix" an imaginary "economy".

A change like i explained, would fix the "economy" (at least improve it).

 

But you are right, changing it just for changing it in whatever way is pointless.

[meganoth]

4 minutes ago, Psychodabble said:

You are correct that items of similar quality perform so similarly as to be indistinguishable from one another in practical use cases. That, however, is not the issue...the issue is player feeling. When it comes to player feeling there is a clear preference for improvement in any game that uses items and item statistics. As soon as numbers get involved humans, and by extension gamers, want to see to those numbers go up over time. As soon as we get the sense that our numbers are stagnating or that there is no chance to improve them, the fun factor diminishes.

 

Let's assume that you are correct in your example that you will return to 72 damage from 70 in relatively short order. How does that feel? Not like progression, because you've now spent X amount of time/effort just to get back to where you already were. That's the opposite of fun, IMO. Fun comes from feeling like you are getting better and moving ahead, not treading water. Even if that feeling is illusory because the actual difference in numbers is miniscule, that doesn't change the impact of the feeling on your gameplay experience.

 

I would rather keep hunting in the hope of finding upgrades rather than praying I've stockpiled enough backups to avoid losing ground. Maybe that's just me, but I don't think it is.

There is not much leeway for improvement here. If the gun with 72 damage is in your hand (and assuming it is already the top weapon you found/crafted from a bunch of them) there is no or nearly no improvement anymore to be had in this tier. You are stagnating already.

 

If you have to go back to a damage 70 weapon, the next 71 or 72 is a lucky find again. And it is the motivation to produce some more tier 5 guns from the otherwise useless weapon parts in the hope of getting another 71 or 72.

 

But I'm sort of practical, I don't get emotional with guns. Possibly lots of other players are different here.

 

[Psychodabble]

10 minutes ago, meganoth said:

There is not much leeway for improvement here. If the gun with 72 damage is in your hand (and assuming it is already the top weapon you found/crafted from a bunch of them) there is no or nearly no improvement anymore to be had in this tier. You are stagnating already.

 

If you have to go back to a damage 70 weapon, the next 71 or 72 is a lucky find again. And it is the motivation to produce some more tier 5 guns from the otherwise useless weapon parts in the hope of getting another 71 or 72.

 

But I'm sort of practical, I don't get emotional with guns. Possibly lots of other players are different here.

 

I have some serious issues with the way the stat ranges are currently configured, but that's a topic for another thread...

 

I hope my larger point is clear that perpetual advancement or at least the feeling of a chance at advancement is key to preserving and promoting player motivation. This applies to every item in the game and regardless of how emotional people get about digital items.

[Rince]

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

I don't think the complaints were about 120 bullets for completing a tier5 quest. They were about getting 120 bullets for a tier1 quest.

 

Having a pistol and 120 bullets is a game changer in early game.

Having a pistol and 12 bullets in early game is an emergency fund while you still whack at the zombies with a club.

 

 

By the way, I want to complain that the Tier V rewards are pretty lackluster regarding the amount of work.

But I think that there was a tweak incoming for that, or I was imagining things again, which is always a possibility.

 

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

Sure, a glass of water in the desert is priceless. But a glass of water in the desert is still priceless when you went past an oasis 10 hours earlier and forgot to fill up.

 

Repair kits are so easy to get that the blame is on you for making them artificially valuable

 

Being a moron is an integral part of the gameplay of the game for me!

What's the fun of playing perfectly? (Not as if I could, but still!)

 

And I don't like the idea of losing things, I mean, if I finally get a good weapon, and it's gonna break what's the point of hunting nice things.

It's like the wellness, I got so feed up of that that I just didn't care anymore and treated the bottom cap as the normal.

[meganoth]

28 minutes ago, Rince said:

By the way, I want to complain that the Tier V rewards are pretty lackluster regarding the amount of work.

But I think that there was a tweak incoming for that, or I was imagining things again, which is always a possibility.

 

Being a moron is an integral part of the gameplay of the game for me!

What's the fun of playing perfectly? (Not as if I could, but still!)

 

And I don't like the idea of losing things, I mean, if I finally get a good weapon, and it's gonna break what's the point of hunting nice things.

It's like the wellness, I got so feed up of that that I just didn't care anymore and treated the bottom cap as the normal.

That is one way to see it.

I like to find nice things like Grandpa's Moonshine or a plate of spaghetti even though they "break" immediately when I use them.  A good weapon is a good weapon whether I have it only for a week or forever.

 

Lets not forget that at a normal progression it would go somewhere like this: You might find your first quality 3 weapon on day 13. But the chance for q3 weapons is constantly growing (before and after day 13) so the next q3 weapon you might find at day 16 besides lots of q2 weapons. At that time your current q3 weapon will be at half durability and you will be happy that you found a substitute already. Or you have bad luck and by day 19 the q3 is no use anymore and you have to use a q2 weapon. But now the chance to find a q3 are even better and inevitably you will find another one and you will be happy about finding it. Well maybe you would not, but I would be happy about finding a q3 again. 😉

 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Psychodabble said:

I have some serious issues with the way the stat ranges are currently configured, but that's a topic for another thread...

 

I hope my larger point is clear that perpetual advancement or at least the feeling of a chance at advancement is key to preserving and promoting player motivation. This applies to every item in the game and regardless of how emotional people get about digital items.

But why is there no feeling that you can advance anymore? Nobody said anything about removing better weapon qualities. If there are still better weapons than yours they would still be in an alternate game with degradation.

 

If you have a good quality 5 weapon in your hand and whether it degrades or not, there is still a q6 weapon in the game you could find.  

 

[RipClaw]

45 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Well maybe you would not, but I would be happy about finding a q3 again.

And before that you will be frustrated and angry that you lost your Q3 gun and have to use the Q2 which has one modslot less.

 

[Liesel Weppen]

10 minutes ago, RipClaw said:

And before that you will be frustrated and angry that you lost your Q3 gun and have to use the Q2 which has one modslot less.

Just if you didn't care for it NOT to become unusable. If it is worth keeping it and you don't have any suitable replacment for ist, you should care for THAT.

You will not loose it by accident suddenly. It degrades slowly with the repairs (if you don't repair it without loss with the required effort) . It's your DECISSION how to handle it. If you don't care and throw just cheap repair kits onto it until you can't use it anymore, it's YOUR fault.

 

For god's sake, is it really that hard to understand?

[Psychodabble]

16 minutes ago, Liesel Weppen said:

For god's sake, is it really that hard to understand?

I don't think everybody is reacting to your suggestions...some are surely reacting to the OP.

[Kalen]

23 minutes ago, RipClaw said:

And before that you will be frustrated and angry that you lost your Q3 gun and have to use the Q2 which has one modslot less.

Sure would....

I get frustrated and angry when I get infected from the first zombie that hits me.

I get frustrated and angry when a structure I'm building collapses

I get frustrated and angry when I die

 

Are you suggesting we should get rid of anything that makes someone frustrated and angry?   I can understand someone not liking item degradation, but using a reason of "it makes players frustrated" isn't a great argument against it.

 

Item degradation adds difficult choices to the game and increases the value of crafting.   These are both, in my opinion, excellent reasons to include it.

[Psychodabble]

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

 

But why is there no feeling that you can advance anymore? Nobody said anything about removing better weapon qualities. If there are still better weapons than yours they would still be in an alternate game with degradation.

 

If you have a good quality 5 weapon in your hand and whether it degrades or not, there is still a q6 weapon in the game you could find.  

 

Not sure when I ever specified blue weapons...

 

This is about all items, all the time. Even when  the player is decked out in purple gear, the game should create motivation to get out and get more...to get the best possible versions of their chosen gear set...to get perfect rolls on all gear...to grind away at this game without an endgame.

 

That perfect gear becomes a tangible advantage, no matter how tiny, that the player can justify pursuing. If those perfectly rolled pieces can't be preserved in perfect form indefinitely, they become collectors' items instead of practical parts of the game because nobody would actually USE their perfectly rolled items. If you find something amazing, you should be able to keep it, IMO...if the cost for that is higher than it currently is, that's totally fine, but the possibility would have to exist.

[Kalen]

9 minutes ago, Psychodabble said:

nobody would actually USE their perfectly rolled items

Huh?   I would.   We had degradation in the game before and no one made that argument that I ever saw.  

[Psychodabble]

10 minutes ago, Kalen said:

Sure would....

I get frustrated and angry when I get infected from the first zombie that hits me. 

I get frustrated and angry when a structure I'm building collapses 

I get frustrated and angry when I die 

 

Are you suggesting we should get rid of anything that makes someone frustrated and angry?   I can understand someone not liking item degradation, but using a reason of "it makes players frustrated" isn't a great argument against it.

 

Item degradation adds difficult choices to the game and increases the value of crafting.   These are both, in my opinion, excellent reasons to include it.

You seem to be missing the counterplay aspect.

 

1) If the first zombie that hits you infects you that's actually super unlucky and might screw up your start, but there are two obvious counter plays: don't get hit until you have been playing a bit and had a chance to get some honey or dedicate your time to finding honey/antibiotics after you got hit.

 

2) The clear counterplay is to plan your structure better and make better use of scaffolding.

 

3) The counterplay is don't die. Dying means you failed to survive. There are probably multiple reasons why you died to learn from. This is especially important to dead is dead players like me. 

 

What's the counterplay to degradation? If there isn't one, that feels bad in a different way than those other examples. You're losing out not by your own fault but by bad RNG. RNG should be there to add variety, not determine your fate.

 

I don't know if increasing the value of crafting is what the Pimps have in mind. They took away T6 crafting as a deliberate move to decrease the value of crafting relative to looting.

1 minute ago, Kalen said:

Huh?   I would.   We had degradation in the game before and no one made that argument that I ever saw.  

When did we have degradation?

[Kalen]

4 minutes ago, Psychodabble said:

I don't know if increasing the value of crafting is what the Pimps have in mind. They took away T6 crafting as a deliberate move to decrease the value of crafting relative to looting.

They don't.... Joel has already stated that item degradation is not coming back.  

 

5 minutes ago, Psychodabble said:

When did we have degradation?

I forget how far back it goes, but it was removed in A17, I believe

[Psychodabble]

1 minute ago, Kalen said:

They don't.... Joel has already stated that item degradation is not coming back.  

 

I forget how far back it goes, but it was removed in A17, I believe

I don't remember that...

 

A16 definitely had zero degradation at max skill.

 

When was workbench combining removed? Because that was another way to maintain zero degradation.

 

I don't remember a time when this game ever had degradation without a way to avoid it indefinitely.