Building gives way too much EXP

[davdes]

I find that building in general gives way too much experience points compared to killing zombies. For instance, upgrading a cement block from a frame gives you 480 exp, as much as a zombie kill. My friend and I did a test just to proove the ridiculeness of this, and we found out that we we leveling way faster to only set tons of frames and upgrading them into cement without any specific purpose than going for missions and killing. In this test we only leveled from upgrading cement blocks; no need to kill zombies or do missions. Conclusion: it is killing the purpose of the zombie killing game if you exploit that thing in the game by being selective on what you do in terms of exp gains focused. Now could you please reduce the experience gain from upgrading stuff like that, split 70% at least of the ammount gained.

[Psychodabble]

It's meant to be balanced since the game is not only about killing zombies.

 

If you find aimless upgrading to be fun and rewarding gameplay, do it. It's not an exploit...just a painfully boring way to play, IMO.

 

Also a warning: if you level up purely through building and don't upgrade your gear your gamestage will outpace your combat ability and you'll find it difficult to go back to adventuring.

[Maharin]

Considering the time it can take to make cement, I don't think it's that big of a deal.

[Tahaan]

I also feel it is too much.  Sure it should be some xp but perhaps it needs it 20% nerf.

 

On the other hand as the cook and farmer on my server for 8 people when I pick up all the planted crops I earn about 4k XP.  It hardly changes the XP bar and I can do it only every 3 in-game days.  Then I get no XP for cooking the food from it and nothing for giving it to people in the party either.  I have the same nr of kills as people with double or even tripple my level on this server.

[Solomon]

4 hours ago, Tahaan said:

I also feel it is too much.  Sure it should be some xp but perhaps it needs it 20% nerf.

 

On the other hand as the cook and farmer on my server for 8 people when I pick up all the planted crops I earn about 4k XP.  It hardly changes the XP bar and I can do it only every 3 in-game days.  Then I get no XP for cooking the food from it and nothing for giving it to people in the party either.  I have the same nr of kills as people with double or even tripple my level on this server.

Thats because neither farming/cooking is meant to be main gameplay feature.

 

Its building and killing, so by default these are the most rewarding aspects.

[Tahaan]

5 minutes ago, Solomon said:

Thats because neither farming/cooking is meant to be main gameplay feature.

 

Its building and killing, so by default these are the most rewarding aspects.

I don't buy this.  Firstly building gives zero XP, and secondly Crafting is an important part of this game.  Cooking is just crafting of food items.

 

Killing gives XP.

Building gives XP.

Destroying / harvesting gives XP.

Healing gives XP.

Selling to trader gives XP.

Looting gives XP.

Reading a schematic gives XP.

Crafting does not give XP.

Building does NOT give XP.

Upgrading blocks gives XP.

Mining can be seen as either destroying or harvesting, but it also gives XP.

 

So why not crafting?

 

[Liesel Weppen]

3 minutes ago, Tahaan said:

So why not crafting?

Probably a technical problem.

Most crafting stuff is not crafted by the player himself, but it is crafted in a campfire, workstation, chemstation, etc.

Now you should only credit XP once the crafting is finished, but i guess the game doesn't track who set the orders and when the crafting finished, it doesn't know which player has to get the XP.

 

Imagine ordering cement in the cement mixer. It's not uncommon that we have a queue length of days. That one that started the process would gain little XP for every single cement the is crafted. So if you log in several days later, you probably might just wonder why you get +16XP every 30 seconds.

 

The other possible explanation: Because it's not you doing the job, but the workbench (or whatever).

 

And it could be abused to farm XP even easier than just upgrading blocks without any sense. Just spamcraft wood frames as an XP machine.

[Solomon]

12 minutes ago, Tahaan said:

I don't buy this.  Firstly building gives zero XP, and secondly Crafting is an important part of this game.  Cooking is just crafting of food items.

 

Killing gives XP.

Building gives XP.

Destroying / harvesting gives XP.

Healing gives XP.

Selling to trader gives XP.

Looting gives XP.

Reading a schematic gives XP.

Crafting does not give XP.

Building does NOT give XP.

Upgrading blocks gives XP.

Mining can be seen as either destroying or harvesting, but it also gives XP.

 

So why not crafting?

 

As liesel said its gonna be some tech limit from the time we ditched the learn by action system.

[Tahaan]

56 minutes ago, Solomon said:

As liesel said its gonna be some tech limit from the time we ditched the learn by action system.

I still don't buy it.  All the devs need to do is add the "who crafted the item" property to the task.  Currently as it stands when an item is crafted, it is added to the output.  Run an extra process at this time to give XP based on the "who crafted this" property.

[RipClaw]

1 hour ago, Tahaan said:

So why not crafting?

Crafting used to give you XP. This resulted in standing in front of the workbench or the chemistry station all night to level skills. That was at the time when learning by doing was still a thing.

[Tahaan]

21 minutes ago, RipClaw said:

Crafting used to give you XP. This resulted in standing in front of the workbench or the chemistry station all night to level skills. That was at the time when learning by doing was still a thing.

 

I only started playing after LBD siezed to be a thing.  I've often see people lament about the loss but obviously I don't have this issue.

 

It does raise the question "should the game control how you can gain XP" and "Is it the responsiblity of TFP to prevent people from killing their own fun" and all that jazz.

 

But I get it.  Kinda.  You'd still need to obtain the raw resources though.

[Liesel Weppen]

10 minutes ago, Tahaan said:

It does raise the question "should the game control how you can gain XP" and "Is it the responsiblity of TFP to prevent people from killing their own fun" and all that jazz.

There are other things depending that have also changed. E.g. spamcrafting would also exploit the new progression system. And then people probably wonder why the game becomes tough, because they don't realize, they increased their pure level to fast.

 

Ruining their own fun is also not completely the point. With the old LBD-versions nights have been much more dangerous because of other mechanics. So in early game you stood in your (almost) safe cabin and just waited for the night to end. There was basically nothing meaningfoll you could do. But just standing there for 15min (with default 60min-days) is also no fun, so most people did the only meaningfull thing they could: Spamcrafting.

 

10 minutes ago, Tahaan said:

But I get it.  Kinda.  You'd still need to obtain the raw resources though.

That's why you spamcraft the cheapest thing that is available. Crafting wodden clubs e.g. increased the quality for clubs and just required one wood. So a common task for day 1 was to get like 300-500 wood just for being able to spamcraft the whole night.

And even if you had no ressources, you ran in circles to improve your athletic skill (didn't give XP but increased the skill).

 

[Solomon]

31 minutes ago, Liesel Weppen said:

There are other things depending that have also changed. E.g. spamcrafting would also exploit the new progression system. And then people probably wonder why the game becomes tough, because they don't realize, they increased their pure level to fast.

 

Ruining their own fun is also not completely the point. With the old LBD-versions nights have been much more dangerous because of other mechanics. So in early game you stood in your (almost) safe cabin and just waited for the night to end. There was basically nothing meaningfoll you could do. But just standing there for 15min (with default 60min-days) is also no fun, so most people did the only meaningfull thing they could: Spamcrafting.

 

That's why you spamcraft the cheapest thing that is available. Crafting wodden clubs e.g. increased the quality for clubs and just required one wood. So a common task for day 1 was to get like 300-500 wood just for being able to spamcraft the whole night.

And even if you had no ressources, you ran in circles to improve your athletic skill (didn't give XP but increased the skill).

 

LBD could have been fixed, in fact it could have been fixed in a way what still allows you somekind of leveling when you spamcraft.

 

Heres the idea:

 

We first get a combat tab for any combat related thing after that we get a building tab for every building/crafting related. Perks for extras still exist for everything what doesnt make sense to be put up in that two.

 

Spamcrafting will only raise your crafting skills in that specific item and in nothing else. If you craft 200 stone axes that means you will be able to make high grade stone axes personalized for your liking but thats it. It wont ever increase your crafting skill in hammers, clubs, guns, whatever else, only stone axes.

 

For example lets take the intellect tab:

 

 

Electrocutioner perk now does 2 things: It passively adds to your combat proefficiency with Stun Batons and to your crafting ability for them while also unlocking extra effects what cant be learned like longer stun, faster charge and soo on.

 

Turret Syndrome as the above adds to the combat and crafting ability you gain from using the said items. It governs also various extra effects.

 

Better barter, adventurer, charisma, physician all stay as perks.

 

Advanced engineering, grease and science passively add to many crafting abilities while unlock certain items. 

 

 

In short the goal would be a hybrid system where LBD governs what, how much and in what quality a player can craft, how good they are with their weapons while the perk system governs special "upgrades" to various aspects of the game.

 

[Psychodabble]

1 hour ago, Solomon said:

LBD could have been fixed, in fact it could have been fixed in a way what still allows you somekind of leveling when you spamcraft.

 

Heres the idea:

 

We first get a combat tab for any combat related thing after that we get a building tab for every building/crafting related. Perks for extras still exist for everything what doesnt make sense to be put up in that two.

 

Spamcrafting will only raise your crafting skills in that specific item and in nothing else. If you craft 200 stone axes that means you will be able to make high grade stone axes personalized for your liking but thats it. It wont ever increase your crafting skill in hammers, clubs, guns, whatever else, only stone axes.

 

For example lets take the intellect tab:

 

 

Electrocutioner perk now does 2 things: It passively adds to your combat proefficiency with Stun Batons and to your crafting ability for them while also unlocking extra effects what cant be learned like longer stun, faster charge and soo on.

 

Turret Syndrome as the above adds to the combat and crafting ability you gain from using the said items. It governs also various extra effects.

 

Better barter, adventurer, charisma, physician all stay as perks.

 

Advanced engineering, grease and science passively add to many crafting abilities while unlock certain items. 

 

 

In short the goal would be a hybrid system where LBD governs what, how much and in what quality a player can craft, how good they are with their weapons while the perk system governs special "upgrades" to various aspects of the game.

 

The horse is SO dead, bro.

 

No matter how good the idea is, they don't want it. There's just no point in even discussing stuff like this outside of the modding forum. I'm a fan of LBD, by the way.

[Rince]

Yeah, LBD is dead and buried. And chopped to pieces. And burn.

So, not reanimating.

 

And regarding OP, building is fine. If you get all the resources and spend the time building, you deserve the exp.

[davdes]

My friend and I are late in the game, gear is kind of maxed out and we've got tons of ressources ahead. He's leveling now faster as he's only building stuff and I've got hard time to catch him up in levels since I'm only doing missions and killings. So what's the point now? Should I stop and only build stuff to catch him up since missions and killing gain slower experience than only building.

 

In a varied leveling-styles given map, I still believe building-exp should be nerfed a bit compared to killing zombies.

[RipClaw]

As far as I know the XP you get from upgrading blocks are not shared. But the XP you get for killing zombies are shared among members of a party.

The easiest solution would probably be not to share the XP. Then you get more XP for killing zombies. Or you build and he does all the killing for a while.

 

[Roland]

12 hours ago, davdes said:

I find that building in general gives way too much experience points compared to killing zombies. For instance, upgrading a cement block from a frame gives you 480 exp, as much as a zombie kill. My friend and I did a test just to proove the ridiculeness of this, and we found out that we we leveling way faster to only set tons of frames and upgrading them into cement without any specific purpose than going for missions and killing. In this test we only leveled from upgrading cement blocks; no need to kill zombies or do missions. Conclusion: it is killing the purpose of the zombie killing game if you exploit that thing in the game by being selective on what you do in terms of exp gains focused. Now could you please reduce the experience gain from upgrading stuff like that, split 70% at least of the ammount gained.

Next Stop on our Speed Running Players Tour: "Why does the game FORCE us to aimlessly place blocks and upgraded them? Why do the devs make us play this way?!?"

5 hours ago, Liesel Weppen said:

And even if you had no ressources, you ran in circles to improve your athletic skill

...set up a macro to have your avatar run in circles while you AFK to watch an episode of Parks and Rec...

uh huh..

6 hours ago, RipClaw said:

Crafting used to give you XP. This resulted in standing in front of the workbench or the chemistry station all night to level skills. That was at the time when learning by doing was still a thing.

Even more recently than that. In A17 you got diminishing XP returns for crafting the same item. Actually, I didn't realize that was removed. Now I want to go on and see but I can't atm...

[RestInPieces]

6 hours ago, Tahaan said:

"Is it the responsiblity of TFP to prevent people from killing their own fun" and all that jazz.

It certainly is! Preventing people from ruining their own fun is a huge part of game design! 

 

I'd wager that barely anyone does this particular thing though. It's too much of a hassle - while with spamcrafting you could just press a click, set a queue, craft it with your psychic powers, and afterwards press another click set a queue to deconstruct and get most of your resources back, leveling to the max using dirt-cheap materials.

 

Jee, I wonder what went wrong with that system.

3 hours ago, Rince said:

Yeah, LBD is dead and buried. And chopped to pieces. And burn.

LBD is an idea, and ideas are bulletproof! And fireproof etc.

[Roland]

1 hour ago, davdes said:

My friend and I are late in the game, gear is kind of maxed out and we've got tons of ressources ahead. He's leveling now faster as he's only building stuff and I've got hard time to catch him up in levels since I'm only doing missions and killings. So what's the point now? Should I stop and only build stuff to catch him up since missions and killing gain slower experience than only building.

 

In a varied leveling-styles given map, I still believe building-exp should be nerfed a bit compared to killing zombies.

Why is it important to you to be at the same level? Is that the basis of some agreed upon competition? If you enjoy killing zombies and are doing that because you like it and he is building because he likes that is your enjoyment of your chosen activities tarnished because he is level 140 and you are level 120?

 

It doesn't sound like you two are going at it in PvP gameplay so what does it matter if one of you levels faster. Is the point of the game for you to be the first to level up to the max? Are you guys playing 300 Levels to Max instead of 7 Days to Die?

 

If staying together in levels is so important why not play together in what you do? Build together, explore together, quest together, bloodmoon together. Or....just don't open the page that lets you see your friend's level so you aren't bothered by it.

[Tahaan]

2 minutes ago, Roland said:

Why is it important to you to be at the same level? Is that the basis of some agreed upon competition? If you enjoy killing zombies and are doing that because you like it and he is building because he likes that is your enjoyment of your chosen activities tarnished because he is level 140 and you are level 120?

 

 

Because being a lower GS means you have had fewer skill points to spend.  You're not as efficient at killing zeds when you do want to go run a POI together.  You're at a lower GS so you keep getting lower quality loot.  Being at the same GS not in and of itself a goal, but it affects stuff that you encounter and experience in the game.

 

 

[Psychodabble]

1 hour ago, davdes said:

My friend and I are late in the game, gear is kind of maxed out and we've got tons of ressources ahead. He's leveling now faster as he's only building stuff and I've got hard time to catch him up in levels since I'm only doing missions and killings. So what's the point now? Should I stop and only build stuff to catch him up since missions and killing gain slower experience than only building.

 

In a varied leveling-styles given map, I still believe building-exp should be nerfed a bit compared to killing zombies.

Why do you have to catch up to him? If you're playing together, one player being higher level than the other shouldn't matter a bit.

 

If it's such a big deal for you, why don't you just switch off? He builds for 3 days while you go questing, then you build for 3 days while he goes questing...or, I dunno, maybe spend a few days building together then a few days questing together...

 

There are a lot of solutions to your "problem" (not really a problem) instead of coming in here asking for nerfs.

2 minutes ago, Tahaan said:

 

Because being a lower GS means you have had fewer skill points to spend.  You're not as efficient at killing zeds when you do want to go run a POI together.  You're at a lower GS so you keep getting lower quality loot.  Being at the same GS not in and of itself a goal, but it affects stuff that you encounter and experience in the game.

 

 

Seems trivial. If you're in late game decked out in high tier, high quality gear a few skill points here or there is NOT going to make a difference in your killing efficiency. In fact, I would seriously question how you spent your points if you're that far in the game and don't both have your relevant combat skills maxed out.

 

The GS loot tiers are extremely broad...you're not going to see a significant loot variance unless we're talking about a really huge gap in levels and EVEN IN THAT CASE, if you're level 150 and he's 250, you'll still be able to find the best stuff in the game even if not at exactly the same rate as your friend. ALSO...if you're doing all the looting, what does it matter the alleged quality of his loot that he's not getting while he's leveling super fast by building?

 

I'm sorry to be so brusque, but your problem is really just not a problem.

[RipClaw]

7 minutes ago, Tahaan said:

Because being a lower GS means you have had fewer skill points to spend.  You're not as efficient at killing zeds when you do want to go run a POI together. 

This is not necessarily the case. It depends on how you spend the points. I can be more effective at killing zombies with fewer points if I spend my points just for that.

13 minutes ago, Tahaan said:

You're at a lower GS so you keep getting lower quality loot.

Unless you have points in Lucky Looter while the other player has no points in Lucky Looter.

 

[JCrook1028]

xp for upgrading could be adjusted down a bit imo and be just fine. It really is a bit OP in my world right now. I'm at D59 lvl 118 and doing a massive build and getting 2-3 levels a day just from upgrading rebar. It could use a 20% of so nerf. ymmv ofc.

[Psychodabble]

20 minutes ago, JCrook1028 said:

xp for upgrading could be adjusted down a bit imo and be just fine. It really is a bit OP in my world right now. I'm at D59 lvl 118 and doing a massive build and getting 2-3 levels a day just from upgrading rebar. It could use a 20% of so nerf. ymmv ofc.

And that's exactly why the game isn't balanced around edge cases...how many players engage in giant builds that would allow 2-3 levels per day?