Should repair be changed to fix the game economy?

[Kalen]

3 minutes ago, Psychodabble said:

Yeah, this is a fundamental difference of opinion...I think a good tower defense/survival game should have a difficulty plateau where you are well enough established that you can shrug off the typical threats and go picking larger fights. The only problem this game has right now is that there are no larger fights to pick yet. My current habit is to start making the Blood Moon more and more frequent as the game goes on.

Thats basically the same thing I said (or at least what I meant).  The challenge should keep increasing, you should never be comfortable.   Now maybe bandits will fill that role, we'll see.  

 

I don't want the game to be punishing, as you stated.... but I do want it to not get boring as it does once you're firmly established.   In my last play through, I got to about day 100... I had hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammo, my base could take on any horde with minimal damage, more food and repair kits than I would ever need.   It was boring.   Sure, I could've modded things, but I'd prefer the base game kept anyone from getting bored.

[Psychodabble]

2 minutes ago, Kalen said:

Thats basically the same thing I said (or at least what I meant).  The challenge should keep increasing, you should never be comfortable.   Now maybe bandits will fill that role, we'll see.  

 

I don't want the game to be punishing, as you stated.... but I do want it to not get boring as it does once you're firmly established.   In my last play through, I got to about day 100... I had hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammo, my base could take on any horde with minimal damage, more food and repair kits than I would ever need.   It was boring.   Sure, I could've modded things, but I'd prefer the base game kept anyone from getting bored.

But there's a really significant difference between what I'm saying and what you're saying. I'm explicitly disagreeing with the "never comfortable" idea...I think you should be able to earn a certain amount of comfort in the late game...there should be a point where what the game normal throws at you can be handled with a very minimum of effort, BUT there are larger challenges that you actively seek out...whether that means venturing into a dungeon or summoning ever greater hordes to attack your base...who knows? But the important thing is that you bring that increased challenge on yourself, it doesn't hunt you down.

[Kalen]

1 minute ago, Psychodabble said:

But there's a really significant difference between what I'm saying and what you're saying. I'm explicitly disagreeing with the "never comfortable" idea...I think you should be able to earn a certain amount of comfort in the late game...there should be a point where what the game normal throws at you can be handled with a very minimum of effort, BUT there are larger challenges that you actively seek out...whether that means venturing into a dungeon or summoning ever greater hordes to attack your base...who knows? But the important thing is that you bring that increased challenge on yourself, it doesn't hunt you down.

Gotcha.... yeah, I dont agree with that.  But to be fair, I don't really feel very strongly against it either.

[RipClaw]

9 hours ago, Kalen said:

I'm curious what you're doing in your game?   You say you don't want item degradation so you can focus on other things, but you just said you don't have to repair and you don't have to hunt for food.... so what is it you are focused on, if you don't mind me asking?

At the moment I am planning a new horde base and I also have to build a crafting base because I have neglected that and still live in a POI.

This is the freedom the game gives me. A freedom you would never give to players if you where in charge.

 

[Kalen]

1 hour ago, RipClaw said:

A freedom you would never give to players if you where in charge.

Please... beyond what we've discussed you have no idea what I would give players if I were in charge.   Lets not make baseless assumptions.   

[Solomon]

1 hour ago, RipClaw said:

At the moment I am planning a new horde base and I also have to build a crafting base because I have neglected that and still live in a POI.

This is the freedom the game gives me. A freedom you would never give to players if you where in charge.

 

3 minutes ago, Kalen said:

Please... beyond what we've discussed you have no idea what I would give players if I were in charge.   Lets not make baseless assumptions.   

Guys you are getting awfully derailed, please stay on topic.

 

There are tons of ways to balance around repair even without going for degradation or breaking items, lets focus on those.

 

[Rince]

Yeah, just make the repair kits less abundant. No more stacks of 25 in a lucky crate.

And we can call a day.

 

No need to overthink this kind of thing.

 

There's better ways to have a challenge that adding busywork.

When bandits arrive we could have a new chain of mission. Imagine assaulting bandit strongholds. Or defeating ambushes. Something like the hunting killers of the Legion in Fallout NV?

And maybe something involving the zombie plague, maybe some shady organization is creating BIO weapons and we must infiltrate their complex and find some super mutant zombie. (Yeah, the fault of this is the POI with the secret lab below, it makes my imagination soar).

[RestInPieces]

In a sense, it's the underground safety discussion all over again. If choices carry no weight, neither does the thing we call "freedom". 

 

In the case of repair, imo, there are just so many design shenanigans and lack of structure (including its connection to the other game systems, or ...again, lack thereof), to even make it worth discussing about thoroughly, especially when most of the posts do not go any deeper than "it would suck losing my weapon etc".

 

First of all it seems utterly, mind-blowingly absurd to me that a sandbox game, the gameloop of which depends on crafting and looting, doesn't have an item sink. And won't even bother elaborating as to why, have done so many times in the past and I would like to believe that this, at least, is self-explanatory.

 

Secondly, the problem with repair in the first place, is that all it is, is "busywork". No matter your loot settings, in a world that "everything is, more or less, anywhere", it just requires a fixed amount of grind of overabundant resources, to get A and B put them in an automatic crafting station, wait, then combine them with C and move them to another automatic station crafting station, wait, so you can combine them with... etc etc. Unsurprisingly, this is seen as busywork, simply because that's all it is, after isolating what the player actually does in all of this, and wanting more of it would be preposterous. 

 

How many times have you asked yourselves, for example, "should I use this cloth for bandages or repair kits", or "should I use this water for glue or keep stock for drinking". Personally none, using harder than default settings, 20-30m days and more often than not, ~20% loot. And my playtime amounts to less than 500h since 2013. For me the game is nearly devoid of such kinds of questions, which are usually expected to be the crux of the gameplay in a survival/x/x game. And the game still somehow manages to become exhausting from the aforementioned process (described in the paragraph above)! Of course to be fair, throughout the alphas, a lot of things have improved in this regard, especially since A17 - not to say that others haven't degraded as well. 

 

On top of this, the UI/interface exacerbates this busywork. For example, @Solomon's A solution looks way better if we had a modern crafting system where you can supply them with extra-stacking inventory of the corresponding materials they use, similarly to how the forge already works, or if they were able to draw from other inventories. Then again, recipes don't have to be complex or have a load of stuff, as long as the materials in them carry some kind of importance. And when it comes to inventory management, I've played games with way more restricting carry loads and stacks but much less annoying inventory management.

 

But anyway, it is above our paygrade to bother finding solutions - especially when TFP don't see a problem in this. Best thing I can hope for personally, is to revisit the game when it goes gold and stable and decide whether it will be worth to start working on a mod for it.  

[Psychodabble]

56 minutes ago, RestInPieces said:

In a sense, it's the underground safety discussion all over again. If choices carry no weight, neither does the thing we call "freedom". 

 

In the case of repair, imo, there are just so many design shenanigans and lack of structure (including its connection to the other game systems, or ...again, lack thereof), to even make it worth discussing about thoroughly, especially when most of the posts do not go any deeper than "it would suck losing my weapon etc".

 

First of all it seems utterly, mind-blowingly absurd to me that a sandbox game, the gameloop of which depends on crafting and looting, doesn't have an item sink. And won't even bother elaborating as to why, have done so many times in the past and I would like to believe that this, at least, is self-explanatory.

 

Secondly, the problem with repair in the first place, is that all it is, is "busywork". No matter your loot settings, in a world that "everything is, more or less, anywhere", it just requires a fixed amount of grind of overabundant resources, to get A and B put them in an automatic crafting station, wait, then combine them with C and move them to another automatic station crafting station, wait, so you can combine them with... etc etc. Unsurprisingly, this is seen as busywork, simply because that's all it is, after isolating what the player actually does in all of this, and wanting more of it would be preposterous. 

 

How many times have you asked yourselves, for example, "should I use this cloth for bandages or repair kits", or "should I use this water for glue or keep stock for drinking". Personally none, using harder than default settings, 20-30m days and more often than not, ~20% loot. And my playtime amounts to less than 500h since 2013. For me the game is nearly devoid of such kinds of questions, which are usually expected to be the crux of the gameplay in a survival/x/x game. And the game still somehow manages to become exhausting from the aforementioned process (described in the paragraph above)! Of course to be fair, throughout the alphas, a lot of things have improved in this regard, especially since A17 - not to say that others haven't degraded as well. 

 

On top of this, the UI/interface exacerbates this busywork. For example, @Solomon's A solution looks way better if we had a modern crafting system where you can supply them with extra-stacking inventory of the corresponding materials they use, similarly to how the forge already works, or if they were able to draw from other inventories. Then again, recipes don't have to be complex or have a load of stuff, as long as the materials in them carry some kind of importance. And when it comes to inventory management, I've played games with way more restricting carry loads and stacks but much less annoying inventory management.

 

But anyway, it is above our paygrade to bother finding solutions - especially when TFP don't see a problem in this. Best thing I can hope for personally, is to revisit the game when it goes gold and stable and decide whether it will be worth to start working on a mod for it.  

I think this is a little overly dramatic. Repair is not in a great place now, but it's fine. If the Pimps don't touch it before release, it'll be just another system that functions adequately and has a ton of unrealized potential.

 

If they do want to improve it, something like liesel weapon's suggestion is a clear improvement with no real downside...no additional "busywork", just some choices about how you maintain your gear. Even if the Pimps are not interested in a system like that, I'm sure some modder or another will be, so it will be addressed - either officially or unofficially - and failing that it will just be...OK.

[RestInPieces]

19 minutes ago, Psychodabble said:

I think this is a little overly dramatic. Repair is not in a great place now, but it's fine. If the Pimps don't touch it before release, it'll be just another system that functions adequately and has a ton of unrealized potential.

 

If they do want to improve it, something like liesel weapon's suggestion is a clear improvement with no real downside...no additional "busywork", just some choices about how you maintain your gear. Even if the Pimps are not interested in a system like that, I'm sure some modder or another will be, so it will be addressed - either officially or unofficially - and failing that it will just be...OK.

No, nothing is ok! The game is doomed I tell you!!