Changes To Farming

[Niil945]

If the returns from farming were excessive I'm good with reducing the rate of return or changing the perk to something else. What I'm not good with is the massive amount of busy work and replanting that needs to be done. My biggest issue is that this is a game where everyone can do everything, just the perks allow people to do things significantly better. This makes it so that making seeds and trying to farm without being fort spec'd and having living off the land is pointless. Seeds aren't common enough to be worth even making farm plots for those not spec'd into fort and there's no reason to turn 5 potatoes into a seed to plant for long term gains at the cost of a meal or two, which is what I would do if I didn't go fort spec before. And if fort spec'd now it's just frustrating. In the current build I just disregard farming entirely as there are many ways to get stable with food as the game progresses, which means I also ignore cooking too. 

[Data]

On 1/18/2022 at 10:45 PM, Data said:

just look at these shrooms!!

 

got 628 shrooms and 34 seeds, ill be planting tits next....wait...tats....pootatoos, probably will have same result

 

my tat farm

 

my yucca

 

 

infact ive stopped planting now, got lots

 

 

Edited January 21, 2022 by Data (see edit history)

[meganoth]

On 1/20/2022 at 4:11 AM, Niil945 said:

If the returns from farming were excessive I'm good with reducing the rate of return or changing the perk to something else. What I'm not good with is the massive amount of busy work and replanting that needs to be done. My biggest issue is that this is a game where everyone can do everything, just the perks allow people to do things significantly better. This makes it so that making seeds and trying to farm without being fort spec'd and having living off the land is pointless. Seeds aren't common enough to be worth even making farm plots for those not spec'd into fort and there's no reason to turn 5 potatoes into a seed to plant for long term gains at the cost of a meal or two, which is what I would do if I didn't go fort spec before. And if fort spec'd now it's just frustrating. In the current build I just disregard farming entirely as there are many ways to get stable with food as the game progresses, which means I also ignore cooking too. 

 

You are forgetting that there is a middle way, just spend 1 point into LotL and you have a sustainable farm and converting crops to seeds gives a positive return. Just with more work per average crop return. I don't like the busy work either, but you miss out all the shades of grey between your black-and-white analysis

 

Yes, seeds are not found in masses, but common enough that a SP player not speccing into LotL might operate maybe 3-5 plots just from found seeds and seeds that gave back a seed again. I wouldn't call that a farm and there is the question if that return is worth hauling back the seeds. But when your only other food is basic meat and cans then yes, that sounds like it might be worth it to get some steak and potato meals inbetween

 

 

 

 

[meganoth]

On 1/19/2022 at 11:20 PM, DaChibii said:

...

 

But farming is only part of the real issue. It's ultimately about balancing the food/sustenance system. Early game, a player burns through food because they're doing stamina intensive tasks, inefficient at stamina use, and don't have abundance of stored food to deal with high burst of stamina burning. Acquiring food can be difficult since it's either RNG looting of food, annoying hunting of rabbits and chickens, or potentially deadly hunting of bears, wolves, cougars, and boars (are deers still in the game? I forget). Goldenrod Tea is now worthless since a player no longer need a cooking pot to make boiled water, and nothing else really gives a player dysentery. But Red Tea is more useful since it's reduces the overall cost of all that early stamina consumption. And early food recipes never feel worth it (ie. why bother crafting those inefficient recipes when they can buy/loot canned food). Bacon and Eggs remain the best early game food, and with the farming changes probably the mid-game since it's a simple dish (2 ingredients, one that easily found everywhere - eggs, and the other meat is relatively common but easy to get by midgame). But the second level of cooking... practically worthless since they balanced around the old abundant farm goods. Which means a player just waits until to Cooking 3 for the superior canned recipes to make reliable mid to end game sustenance.

 

(I shortened your wall-of-text post as I'm only replying to this part).

 

In my experience with the new game bacon and eggs are quite expensive and I want to have alternatives as fast as possible. Because meat is the really cheap resource here, but eggs need much driving around for very low yield. And bacon and eggs need 2 eggs per meal.

 

In my current games I usually get a lot of meat just by killing animals, but I always have much less eggs. In numbers: I usually have at least a stack of 100 meat around and I feel lucky if I have 6 eggs. Since all recipes need 5 meat, that stack is really only 20 servings of meat, sure, but 20 to 3 still means that eggs is the scarce resource here. Finding eggs seems to depend on visiting lots of different chunks to find unlooted nests while questing keeps you going into the town you are in which has all the already looted nests.

 

Now sure, while you have nothing better, bacon&eggs is better than just boiled meat, but as soon as I find various crops and a few food recipes (or someone perks heavily into master chef) then the eggs make it possible to produce pies which represent the middle class of foods and need blueberries and pumpkin which otherwise would have not much use.

 

Your mileage may vary, play styles do differ. And above account points to a different problem of the current RWG balance, that the wilderness areas have too few POIs to make you venture into the wild, something that I hope gets rectified by TFP eventually

 

 

 

[Niil945]

1 minute ago, meganoth said:

 

You are forgetting that there is a middle way, just spend 1 point into LotL and you have a sustainable farm and converting crops to seeds gives a positive return. Just with more work per average crop return. I don't like the busy work either, but you miss out all the shades of grey between your black-and-white analysis

 

Yes, seeds are not found in masses, but common enough that a SP player not speccing into LotL might operate maybe 3-5 plots just from found seeds and seeds that gave back a seed again. I wouldn't call that a farm and there is the question if that return is worth hauling back the seeds. But when your only other food is basic meat and cans then yes, that sounds like it might be worth it to get some steak and potato meals inbetween

 

 

 

 

That wasn't a black and white analysis. I'm not talking about possibilities from one end to the other or at one end of the spectrum and the other, I'm talking about my opinion and how I play. What I find worth the investment both in game in resources/time and personally my time and fun. Reframing it and dismissing it is a little silly.

 

To the latter portion of your post, there's far, far too many things you're glossing over in that hypothetical. You need to find the right amount of specific seeds (multiple random events here that I haven't had happen in any of my playthroughs solo in any alpha let alone this one with increased drop rates), hope those seeds give you back seeds because they yield only 1 crop at 0 LotL (again random) and the meals typically require more than 1 of multiple crops, and the recipe for the exact corresponding meal (another random that's contingent on the previous random seeds acquired) to get what, 50 food once in a blue moon? That's just compounding random events numerous times over. It's far easier, presuming one gets a meal recipe in loot or random trader recipe sales, to target specific POI farms to hunt down components to make a meal. They've added quite a few farms on the edges of most towns in the RWG maps I've played on in A20. Or just go after airdrops. Or do a buried supplies quest as they have a high probability of food (my experience here, not sure on the actual numbers). Or just hit up vending machines and traders with dukes. Or get a tier completion and take a food crate. There are far more productive ways to get food if that's the issue. 

 

That said, I don't think it's a bad thing that people don't have to rely on farming and/or cooking for food. I can say that in the past I used farming with and without points and now, as the skill currently stands, I won't in either case. This is a thread talking about changes to farming and I'm providing my feedback. Nothing more or less.

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, Niil945 said:

That wasn't a black and white analysis. I'm not talking about possibilities from one end to the other or at one end of the spectrum and the other, I'm talking about my opinion and how I play. What I find worth the investment both in game in resources/time and personally my time and fun. Reframing it and dismissing it is a little silly.

 

I did not dismiss it. I argued for a way I didn't see evaluated in your first post (whether you knew it or not seemed not evident from that post).  Also you made your conclusion on partly wrong facts (see below), so I think my comments are justified.

 

1 hour ago, Niil945 said:

 

To the latter portion of your post, there's far, far too many things you're glossing over in that hypothetical. You need to find the right amount of specific seeds (multiple random events here that I haven't had happen in any of my playthroughs solo in any alpha let alone this one with increased drop rates), hope those seeds give you back seeds because they yield only 1 crop at 0 LotL (again random)

 

Correction. It is 2 crops at 0 LotL. Together with the potential seed return that gives back ultimately 3 crops on average per seed at LotL0

 

1 hour ago, Niil945 said:

and the meals typically require more than 1 of multiple crops,

 

Not quite. Lets look at the list of all all meals giving back more than 40 food:

 

Blueberry pie needs 5 blueberries but only 1 from all other crops and ingredients. Pumpkin pie needs 2 pumpkins but 1 from all other crops. Chillidog needs 1 of each ingredient (except meat which needs the usual 5). 

 

FishTacos need 2 corn besides the can of salmon, GumboStew, Spaghetti and Shepards Pie needs one of each crops, and 3 animal fat. Tunafishgravytoast needs 2 corn and 3 animal fat and 1 of all other crops

 

Cham Showder,  Steak and Potatoe, Hobo stew, vegetable stew and meat stew all require 2 of potatoe and corn.

 

So it is 5 to 8 which isn't what I would call typical.

 

1 hour ago, Niil945 said:

and the recipe for the exact corresponding meal (another random that's contingent on the previous random seeds acquired) to get what, 50 food once in a blue moon? That's just compounding random events numerous times over.

 

But it works. I have only tested with LotL 1 but I got enough seeds and recipes in my SP as well as in my MP game to get a useful food production going in a timeframe I also got other skills working better (i.e. in the same way I got better and better vehicles and my weaponry moved from hardly adequate to "I feel confident going in there" my food production also improved step by step)

 

1 hour ago, Niil945 said:

It's far easier, presuming one gets a meal recipe in loot or random trader recipe sales, to target specific POI farms to hunt down components to make a meal. They've added quite a few farms on the edges of most towns in the RWG maps I've played on in A20. Or just go after airdrops. Or do a buried supplies quest as they have a high probability of food (my experience here, not sure on the actual numbers). Or just hit up vending machines and traders with dukes. Or get a tier completion and take a food crate. There are far more productive ways to get food if that's the issue. 

 

On that I partly agree. Potatoes and corn are really easy to get from farms, but that also makes the 5 meals above that all need 2 of potato and corn viable again without a big farm, provided you can produce the rest of the ingredients (with a farm, as pumpkins, blueberries and mushrooms are not so easy to be found)

 

Now all the other food sources you list I use in my SP game as well, but I don't see that they are particularily more efficient than a small farm. For example in the time I drive off to an airdrop I can easily replant and airdrops can drop all sorts of supply boxes, a food box is only one possibility among many. Buying food costs you money which (for most players I assume) is scarce until end-game. At least I still find stuff I would like to buy in mid-game and often don't have the money.

 

1 hour ago, Niil945 said:

 

That said, I don't think it's a bad thing that people don't have to rely on farming and/or cooking for food. I can say that in the past I used farming with and without points and now, as the skill currently stands, I won't in either case. This is a thread talking about changes to farming and I'm providing my feedback. Nothing more or less.

 

 

Edited January 21, 2022 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Niil945]

Don't want to have a quote wall so if you're not sure what I'm responding to ask and I'll happily clarify.

 

Interesting, okay so wild and poi crops still yield 1 but plots specifically yield 2. Cool, I was mistaken on that point. It's better than 1, but doesn't change my view on the subject or any of the points I made.

 

For the list of foods over 40, you started this tangent by specifically mentioning steak and potatoes. Walking it back to lower quality foods with less ingredients doesn't change or address the point I was making. It was that that's a hell of a lot of RNG in the hopes of generating 50 food (or less if you go with other foods) if the stars align when food is hard to get in the hypothetical you proposed for someone not building into LotL. For this you still need to find 2 different seeds and a specific meal recipe. That's 3 different instances of RNG to jump through (instead of 4, which doesn't substantially change anything) and it gives you a single 50 food. Odds are not in your favor that it will result in 2 additional seeds to make another one. It's simply an unrealistic hypothetical scenario early on when it actually matters. And when it doesn't matter, well, it doesn't matter. If you want to invest points into it to make it more effective that's no different than any other skill that is leveled up.

 

I specifically mentioned no LotL in relation to other skills because I don't usually spec into it at all in my SP games. I only do it if no one wants to go fort in our MP games. Before in SP it was a slow burn. If I found seeds or wild plants, I could convert a bunch of corn or mushrooms or whatever into a seed (presuming I found the recipe) and plant plots. Or if I needed it now I could cook something (again presuming I had the recipes). It was a choice, slow sustained food generation or immediate food need. In the long term this would yield some food income. It wasn't extreme by any means and certainly wasn't enough to survive entirely off of. It required finding recipes but it felt useful and was (imo) fun to do. The longer it went the better off I was with my farm and it was another night activity early game that felt productive. Nowhere near as good as a fort build spec'd heavily into LotL but it felt worth the effort relative to the time I was investing. All of that changed with the changes to farming.

 

If you enjoy the tedium/grind of constantly replanting and recrafting seeds good for you. I'm not a fan of it. I've had to listen to our farmer in MP complain about harvesting 5 plants and getting no seeds repeatedly now. The actual impact was she spends a little longer on farming every couple of in-game days, she dislikes the changes and I get the pleasure of hearing her complain whenever she farms, our food supply took a little longer to get going, we have a bigger farm than before, but in the end we still have an entire box of cooked foods stacked. I'm on my 3rd solo game in A20 where I keep seeds and see if I can get anything worth planting but I've never, so far, gotten a recipe and a set of seeds that go with it before food was trivial to acquire from other sources.

 

I don't even care if the yields are reduced, but the way they did it makes it not enjoyable. I try to be super efficient in survival games and there's no reason to gamble time and resources on a food source that won't give comparable returns for the effort/time/resources invested. Particularly so with the increased drain on food and water. Those who go 1 or more points are clearly going to have a different experience, but I didn't see anything imbalanced or overpowered about 0 LotL before. If the problem was that the increased yield was too much reduce it in a way that doesn't introduce grind, tedium, or RNG into the mix. Having enough food in the game isn't something that can be left to RNG. It's not like loot RNG where when something drops it's a bonus. A food source isn't something to gamble on as it can be detrimental to every aspect of gameplay if a player doesn't stay on top of it, which means it's not a bonus when players get a seed. It's a let down when they don't. And that's disregarding the added tedium of constant replanting that didn't exist before. I'd much rather they go back to 1, 2 (1 LotL), or 3 (3 LotL) and double the growing duration if they wanted to decrease the yields rather than have to craft and replant. As it stands I don't see a reason at 0 to bother with seeds or crops or cooking at all right now. If you disagree, cool. You don't need to defend against people who have different opinions on the matter.

[Boidster]

26 minutes ago, Niil945 said:

I don't usually spec into it at all in my SP games. I only do it if no one wants to go fort in our MP games.

 

Part of the response here is that you don't need to "spec into" fort. Just take LotL 1, which requires zero investment into fortitude, and boom you have the ability to - on average - create a self-sustaining farm. It won't be as fool-proof as it might at LotL 2 or 3, but it's enough to be successful while you spec into other attributes.

 

On 1/19/2022 at 4:20 PM, DaChibii said:

Day length matters since plant growth is based on days, but longer days mean more stamina usage between those days.

 

This is not correct. Growth stages are set in real-time minutes. By default a plant will grow every 63 minutes. See blocks.xml, "cropsGrowingMaster".

[Niil945]

2 minutes ago, Boidster said:

Part of the response here is that you don't need to "spec into" fort. Just take LotL 1, which requires zero investment into fortitude, and boom you have the ability to - on average - create a self-sustaining farm. It won't be as fool-proof as it might at LotL 2 or 3, but it's enough to be successful while you spec into other attributes.

That's not a response to anything. It's just a handwave that doesn't substantially address anything I wrote. Listen, I get some people are going to be fine with this system and like it. Cool. I'm not going to ride people for having a different opinion. If you have fun with the new system, awesome. More power to you. Previously I used it to supplement my food sources. The current iteration I won't and I've explained in detail why. I have alternative methods to use to meet my food needs. I don't think any point should be required in any attribute, regardless of what it is and I'm happy that I'm not forced to spend 1 point in LotL. Discussing the why or how or our thought processes and comparing the different ways we view things is good conversation. I'm down for that. If you do things different and want to discuss or if you like certain aspects of the new system versus the old one, share your thoughts. We can chat about it. We don't have to agree to understand each other's perspective and that would be productive conversation. But this @%$#ing contest of 'your opinion is wrong' is just a tad ignorant. White knighting the changes isn't necessary and it's certainly not going to change the minds of people who don't like this iteration of farming.

[meganoth]

2 hours ago, Niil945 said:

Don't want to have a quote wall so if you're not sure what I'm responding to ask and I'll happily clarify.

 

Interesting, okay so wild and poi crops still yield 1 but plots specifically yield 2. Cool, I was mistaken on that point. It's better than 1, but doesn't change my view on the subject or any of the points I made.

 

For the list of foods over 40, you started this tangent by specifically mentioning steak and potatoes.

 

I was mentioning steak and potatos just as an example. My fault.

 

2 hours ago, Niil945 said:

Walking it back to lower quality foods with less ingredients doesn't change or address the point I was making. It was that that's a hell of a lot of RNG in the hopes of generating 50 food (or less if you go with other foods) if the stars align when food is hard to get in the hypothetical you proposed for someone not building into LotL. For this you still need to find 2 different seeds and a specific meal recipe. That's 3 different instances of RNG to jump through (instead of 4, which doesn't substantially change anything) and it gives you a single 50 food. Odds are not in your favor that it will result in 2 additional seeds to make another one. It's simply an unrealistic hypothetical scenario early on when it actually matters. And when it doesn't matter, well, it doesn't matter. If you want to invest points into it to make it more effective that's no different than any other skill that is leveled up.

 

Early on there is no alternative to buying cans and eating low quality food, cooked meat and the occassional bacon&eggs. This was true in previous alphas and is true any which way you play in A20. The objective is to get to some better state.

 

A single 50 food? You find seeds and find or can buy crops all the time. So you might have found the pumpkin pie recipe and suddenly the pumpkins you grew are worth a lot more, 1.5 pies per seed on average to be exact.

 

Now you can't hope to find a specific food recipe if you don't go into Master Chef, but you sure as hell find some random recipes early on and chances are good that you will get some food out of it.

 

2 hours ago, Niil945 said:

 

I specifically mentioned no LotL in relation to other skills because I don't usually spec into it at all in my SP games. I only do it if no one wants to go fort in our MP games. Before in SP it was a slow burn. If I found seeds or wild plants, I could convert a bunch of corn or mushrooms or whatever into a seed (presuming I found the recipe) and plant plots. Or if I needed it now I could cook something (again presuming I had the recipes). It was a choice, slow sustained food generation or immediate food need. In the long term this would yield some food income. It wasn't extreme by any means and certainly wasn't enough to survive entirely off of. It required finding recipes but it felt useful and was (imo) fun to do. The longer it went the better off I was with my farm and it was another night activity early game that felt productive. Nowhere near as good as a fort build spec'd heavily into LotL but it felt worth the effort relative to the time I was investing. All of that changed with the changes to farming.

 

If you enjoy the tedium/grind of constantly replanting and recrafting seeds good for you.

 

I don't. This is another point where I agreed with you, even in my first reply. I also made the suggestion multiple times that seeds you get back should stay in the earth saving half the replanting work on average.

 

And I don't like all the busy work that is necessary to recraft the seeds, but see no alternative for that.

 

2 hours ago, Niil945 said:

I'm not a fan of it. I've had to listen to our farmer in MP complain about harvesting 5 plants and getting no seeds repeatedly now. The actual impact was she spends a little longer on farming every couple of in-game days, she dislikes the changes and I get the pleasure of hearing her complain whenever she farms, our food supply took a little longer to get going, we have a bigger farm than before, but in the end we still have an entire box of cooked foods stacked. I'm on my 3rd solo game in A20 where I keep seeds and see if I can get anything worth planting but I've never, so far, gotten a recipe and a set of seeds that go with it before food was trivial to acquire from other sources.

 

Ok, as I never played with LotL0 in A20 this is useful information for me too. It sure is possible that they nerfed the unspecced farming so much that it lost its use. I personally have always put one point in LotL, just like I always put a point in SexRex and Adventurer.

 

2 hours ago, Niil945 said:

 

I don't even care if the yields are reduced, but the way they did it makes it not enjoyable. I try to be super efficient in survival games and there's no reason to gamble time and resources on a food source that won't give comparable returns for the effort/time/resources invested. Particularly so with the increased drain on food and water. Those who go 1 or more points are clearly going to have a different experience, but I didn't see anything imbalanced or overpowered about 0 LotL before. If the problem was that the increased yield was too much reduce it in a way that doesn't introduce grind, tedium, or RNG into the mix. Having enough food in the game isn't something that can be left to RNG. It's not like loot RNG where when something drops it's a bonus. A food source isn't something to gamble on as it can be detrimental to every aspect of gameplay if a player doesn't stay on top of it, which means it's not a bonus when players get a seed.

 

Now here I have to disagree for multiple reasons:

 

1) This is a survival game and it is not unusual for survival game to throw random problems at you. Random dog hordes surprising you, trap floors, in A21 probably random vehicle failures (if you drive off-road).

 

2) Secondly you have all the means to compensate for the RNG result. Get a bad farming result and you can A) buy all food in the vending machine B) get a buried supplies quest, C) raid kitchens D) buy overprized trader food E) search for an unlooted farm or select a quest for one.

 

2 hours ago, Niil945 said:

It's a let down when they don't. And that's disregarding the added tedium of constant replanting that didn't exist before. I'd much rather they go back to 1, 2 (1 LotL), or 3 (3 LotL) and double the growing duration if they wanted to decrease the yields rather than have to craft and replant. As it stands I don't see a reason at 0 to bother with seeds or crops or cooking at all right now. If you disagree, cool. You don't need to defend against people who have different opinions on the matter.

 

I can post my opinion and comment on other opinions just like you can. No need to be so aggressive.

 

Not sure, maybe me saying something about "black-and-white analysis" is angering you? If so, sorry about that, I may be color blind to some of my sentences having a negative or judgemental subtone.

 

 

Edited January 21, 2022 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Niil945]

33 minutes ago, meganoth said:

 

I was mentioning steak and potatos just as an example. My fault.

No fault, just clarification. I was responding to the hypothetical you used. Then you responded to my reply to that specific hypothetical with broader discussion as an argument. The shift in context changes my response. In general my point, when applied broadly, is that it's not reliable that you're going to find seeds, and the specific recipes for those seeds, in order to supply any meaningfully reliable amount of food at a point when food is scarce. But what's hypothetically possible doesn't really matter because people tend to use best case scenario for their own argument. I'm on a new playthrough. Day 4 atm. I've found one seed, pumpkin. I also found a bacon and eggs recipe. Not sure if I'm lucky or if that seems to consistently drop because I've had it in all 3 of my A20 starts within the first few days. I completed daring adventurer before I turned in so I got both a bicycle and a food kit which gave me 10 steak and potato meals. I'm sitting on just under 6k dukes and I bought a pipe machine gun because I've had no luck finding any gun thus far in this playthrough so there's another ~800 dukes. I've purchased a handful of drinks from the vending machines. I've seen no food recipes on 3 different traders thus far. I've only checked one post inventory update on day 4. No changes to loot drops from default settings. I've taken one buried supplies quest which gave me a bunch of drink. This isn't any different than my other 2 starts in A20 food-wise but I know it easily becomes a problem early game so I plan accordingly. If I had spent time trying to build a farm, prioritzed the materials to make the plots, and pick a spot to setup at to build the plots I'd be in much worse shape. 

 

49 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Early on there is no alternative to buying cans and eating low quality food, cooked meat and the occassional bacon&eggs. This was true in previous alphas and is true any which way you play in A20. The objective is to get to some better state.

 

It's far easier to trader hop and spend some dukes on food than it is to get a farm up and functional now so that it's a reliable and stable source of food. Not to say it can't be done, but that comes with some serious early game downsides too. The biggest being locking the player down somewhere. The plots can be dug up and even get the seeds back, but farming the plot materials, dedicating space to carry them around, and setting up shop somewhere for at least 2 days cramps how I typically start the game. I roam until I find a place I like and that could be close or very far. Setting up a farm is committing to sticking around a region of the map for at least 2 days while stocking up on potentially useless materials until one gets recipes meals to use it.

58 minutes ago, meganoth said:

This is another point where I agreed with you, even in my first reply.

Apologies must have glossed that over. And I like to complain  it would be better if the seeds that we get back were just auto planted, or a better way to view it is some plants die off, others don't. That would at least minimize the replanting efforts.

 

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

Ok, as I never played with LotL0 in A20 this is useful information for me too. It sure is possible that they nerfed the unspecced farming so much that it lost its use. I personally have always put one point in LotL, just like I always put a point in SexRex and Adventurer.

I tend to focus builds and my preferred build is Intelligence. Once I get what I want from that I tend to go into Agility. Depends what I'm doing on any particular playthrough but I don't mix and match. I know that may not be the common way people do it, but I prefer to peak in the attributes I'm focusing on asap. Maybe I'll try a more generalist build the next time through. The biggest reason I started building this way was the loss of T6 crafting actually. I like to craft stuff and I feel like I need to spike the attribute as high as possible  as quickly as possible so that I can craft weapons/armor/tools before I start getting them from mission rewards or as drops. There's a very narrow window in the game where crafting things is meaningful and I wish it wasn't that way. Otherwise I can spend time and effort farming for materials and buying low quality of whatever I'm trying to build off the trader for parts only to get a T6 one as a reward which invalidates all my efforts to try to craft something.

 

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

Now here I have to disagree for multiple reasons:

Nah, you misunderstood me. I don't mean that randomness is a bad thing. Just that when it comes to life and death type scenarios in games, I won't gamble on something that is going to eat up a lot of my time and short me when I can invest the same time on something that's a sure thing and accomplish other goals at the same time (completing trader tiers, finding other loot, gaining levels, etc.). Even if the payoff when it does work out is better. I'm playing with feral sense all the time right now and doing a permadeath for fun solo. I can't gamble on hopefully having the food I need. If I was doing a typical game and was starving, no biggie, just die and work off the xp death. But I generally try to have a backup plan or two. I plan things out well in advance. The previous iteration of farming was a backup plan to supplement my food requirement that while low was stable. Right now I see it was not worth the time because it's so flakey. I can't even rely on it as a backup plan anymore.

 

 

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

I can post my opinion and comment on other opinions just like you can. No need to be so aggressive.

Sure you can. But there's a difference between having a dialogue and trying to drown out different opinions with white knighting. I read you as more on the latter end of the spectrum initially because of the way you seemed to dismiss my opinion but clearly that was in error. Text tone is such a easy thing to misinterpret based on our own experiences and how we perceive someone is writing something. Though there are instances here where that happened, see 'put one point in lotl', your posts however are more nuanced and clearly demonstrate you're trying to understand my point of view. I appreciate it and apologize for presuming your tone.

 

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

Not sure, maybe me saying something about "black-and-white analysis" is angering you? If so, sorry about that, I may be color blind to some of my sentences having a negative or judgemental subtone.

 

Yes and no. Not angry. I'm pretty blunt and logical in nature so I can see how that's read as being angry. It simply didn't make sense in context of what I wrote. I took that response as being intentionally dismissive when it was just a misunderstanding of my perspective that I think has been cleared up by now. I know it's a topic that probably has some pretty heated opinions, I've watched a few videos of people discussing the changes, some more hyperbolic than others, but I just intended to drop my feedback here and go. In actuality I was just killing a little time while cowering in the top floor of a barn nursing a broken arm and an infection while dehydrated at around 1am with a wandering horde outside. I had just killed a feral soldier that found me while I was on route to a tier 1 quest on foot with no firearms on day 2, I survived using fort bites and a 3 pipe baton while dancing back and forth over a fence sparring with it. Great way to start a permadeath run. I wrote it while constantly watching to see if anything was coming up the ladder to the second floor and didn't intend my response to come off harsh. 

[meganoth]

17 hours ago, Niil945 said:

No fault, just clarification. I was responding to the hypothetical you used. Then you responded to my reply to that specific hypothetical with broader discussion as an argument. The shift in context changes my response. In general my point, when applied broadly, is that it's not reliable that you're going to find seeds, and the specific recipes for those seeds, in order to supply any meaningfully reliable amount of food at a point when food is scarce. But what's hypothetically possible doesn't really matter because people tend to use best case scenario for their own argument. I'm on a new playthrough. Day 4 atm. I've found one seed, pumpkin. I also found a bacon and eggs recipe. Not sure if I'm lucky or if that seems to consistently drop because I've had it in all 3 of my A20 starts within the first few days. I completed daring adventurer before I turned in so I got both a bicycle and a food kit which gave me 10 steak and potato meals. I'm sitting on just under 6k dukes and I bought a pipe machine gun because I've had no luck finding any gun thus far in this playthrough so there's another ~800 dukes. I've purchased a handful of drinks from the vending machines. I've seen no food recipes on 3 different traders thus far. I've only checked one post inventory update on day 4. No changes to loot drops from default settings. I've taken one buried supplies quest which gave me a bunch of drink. This isn't any different than my other 2 starts in A20 food-wise but I know it easily becomes a problem early game so I plan accordingly. If I had spent time trying to build a farm, prioritzed the materials to make the plots, and pick a spot to setup at to build the plots I'd be in much worse shape. 

 

In my SP games I usually don't see any change in food production in the first week and I find maybe a handful of food/seed recipes which would produce not much synergy on average.This is why I usually also buy a point in master chef to have bacon&eggs and the tea recipes reliably from day 1.

 

I would estimate I see the first improvements in week 2, i.e. more and more recipes drop and I can produce some advanced dishes myself. But this is still a time where any food supplement is valuable, so 3 pies produced thanks to a farm would be a difference in comfort.

In SP I advance relatively slow, I'm on day 50, level ~45, and still drive around with minibike, as I didn't find the last missing motorbike part.

 

In my case I don't see any time investment to start a farm in the first days since I am stationary. I need exactly one slot in my inventory for the rotting flesh I automatically get by killing the usual stuff and looting, plus a slot for the occasional seed I find.

On nights where I can't go out much yet I easily have lots of spare time to build some farm plot and place them down anywhere. I don't get useful stuff from my plots yet, but I also have just a handful of plots that take maybe 1-2 minutes real-time every 3 hours real-time which otherwise would be wasted as I don't need and don't want the stamina waste to dig in the night (yet).

 

Much depends on the attribute I specialize into, but generally night time is a lot "cheaper" than day time as I don't want to have stress all the time and rush through the game. Whether I think a bit longer on what to do with a perk point, check if I have a free mod slot to fill or harvest 10 plots, that is not that much of a difference.

 

17 hours ago, Niil945 said:

It's far easier to trader hop and spend some dukes on food than it is to get a farm up and functional now so that it's a reliable and stable source of food. Not to say it can't be done, but that comes with some serious early game downsides too. The biggest being locking the player down somewhere. The plots can be dug up and even get the seeds back, but farming the plot materials, dedicating space to carry them around, and setting up shop somewhere for at least 2 days cramps how I typically start the game. I roam until I find a place I like and that could be close or very far. Setting up a farm is committing to sticking around a region of the map for at least 2 days while stocking up on potentially useless materials until one gets recipes meals to use it.

 

And here is the dividing line I think. Since you play a nomad in the first days you have different requirements. For me any town with a trader works as first base. In MP we tend to leave the first town after about 2 weeks and relocate to a better place, in SP I usually just build sub-bases at interesting far-away locations and regularily return to that first base.

 

For you a (stationary) farm immediately clashes with your play style. I probably would ignore farming as well since inventory space is premium for a nomad (par-time or not). But since I am stationary I can just place down storage chests on the streets of my "home town" and don't even need to prioritze what to keep.

 

17 hours ago, Niil945 said:

Apologies must have glossed that over. And I like to complain  it would be better if the seeds that we get back were just auto planted, or a better way to view it is some plants die off, others don't. That would at least minimize the replanting efforts.

 

I tend to focus builds and my preferred build is Intelligence. Once I get what I want from that I tend to go into Agility. Depends what I'm doing on any particular playthrough but I don't mix and match. I know that may not be the common way people do it, but I prefer to peak in the attributes I'm focusing on asap. Maybe I'll try a more generalist build the next time through. The biggest reason I started building this way was the loss of T6 crafting actually. I like to craft stuff and I feel like I need to spike the attribute as high as possible  as quickly as possible so that I can craft weapons/armor/tools before I start getting them from mission rewards or as drops. There's a very narrow window in the game where crafting things is meaningful and I wish it wasn't that way. Otherwise I can spend time and effort farming for materials and buying low quality of whatever I'm trying to build off the trader for parts only to get a T6 one as a reward which invalidates all my efforts to try to craft something.

 

INT build together with the OP traders ( I have been complaining about OP traders since A16 😉 ) is an excellent alternative to farming/mining/any production. One has the money to just buy all the food and still have ample money left, while for non-INT players buying food from the trader is expensive.

 

By the way, I don't consider it really a generalist build if I put maybe 4-8 points into perks of other attributes. If you melee for example, one point in Sexrex is giving you at least as much as a point into the melee perk itself. But that depends on viewpoint, the first point of all perks could be viewed as the generalist skillset as it is free for all.

 

I assume you know that quality 6 is supposed to be the placeholder for legendary weapons? I don't see it wrong that there is a top class of stuff that is not craftable, but currently quality 6 drops too often and most importantly has not the distinctive feel of being legendary. I really really hope that TFP still gets around to implementing *real* legendary weapons and armor.

 

17 hours ago, Niil945 said:

 

Nah, you misunderstood me. I don't mean that randomness is a bad thing. Just that when it comes to life and death type scenarios in games, I won't gamble on something that is going to eat up a lot of my time and short me when I can invest the same time on something that's a sure thing and accomplish other goals at the same time (completing trader tiers, finding other loot, gaining levels, etc.). Even if the payoff when it does work out is better. I'm playing with feral sense all the time right now and doing a permadeath for fun solo. I can't gamble on hopefully having the food I need.

 

This is also why you like crafting more than looting for getting your weapons and why you like INT. Both mean dependable non-random results, sure things. Even though you might like the randomness of the game you want to conquer that randomness, make yourself independant of it.

 

I on the other hand try to adapt to whatever happens. Just somewhat different ways to play the same game. I don't think feral sense has something to do with this, I play with it on as well.

 

17 hours ago, Niil945 said:

If I was doing a typical game and was starving, no biggie, just die and work off the xp death. But I generally try to have a backup plan or two. I plan things out well in advance. The previous iteration of farming was a backup plan to supplement my food requirement that while low was stable. Right now I see it was not worth the time because it's so flakey. I can't even rely on it as a backup plan anymore.

 

Most players (including me) don't see dying as a solution to anything even when they are not playing strict permadeath. It may be a rather common practice, but it is on the same level as save-scumming with RPGs or using creative menue. But it also isn't necessary if one isn't playing a difficulty level too high.

 

As I view it I "bet" on different ways to get food and stuff. If some don't work out I can always expend time or money to get substitute food more reliably. I usually don't buy food from the trader for example, but that food is still there if looting or the farm don't get me enough food. As a last resort I can always just drive around into a new area or to the snow biome to hunt meat or get a buried supplies quest, it costs me valuable time. There is always a backup plan available, I can still use all the (dependable) ways of procuring food that you can use.

 

I have never starved (in vanilla at least) and will never starve, just like you. If my bets work out I may save time compared to you while if my bets don't work out I may waste time compared to you.

 

17 hours ago, Niil945 said:

Sure you can. But there's a difference between having a dialogue and trying to drown out different opinions with white knighting. I read you as more on the latter end of the spectrum initially because of the way you seemed to dismiss my opinion but clearly that was in error. Text tone is such a easy thing to misinterpret based on our own experiences and how we perceive someone is writing something. Though there are instances here where that happened, see 'put one point in lotl', your posts however are more nuanced and clearly demonstrate you're trying to understand my point of view. I appreciate it and apologize for presuming your tone.

 

 

Yes and no. Not angry. I'm pretty blunt and logical in nature so I can see how that's read as being angry. It simply didn't make sense in context of what I wrote. I took that response as being intentionally dismissive when it was just a misunderstanding of my perspective that I think has been cleared up by now. I know it's a topic that probably has some pretty heated opinions, I've watched a few videos of people discussing the changes, some more hyperbolic than others, but I just intended to drop my feedback here and go. In actuality I was just killing a little time while cowering in the top floor of a barn nursing a broken arm and an infection while dehydrated at around 1am with a wandering horde outside. I had just killed a feral soldier that found me while I was on route to a tier 1 quest on foot with no firearms on day 2, I survived using fort bites and a 3 pipe baton while dancing back and forth over a fence sparring with it. Great way to start a permadeath run. I wrote it while constantly watching to see if anything was coming up the ladder to the second floor and didn't intend my response to come off harsh. 

 

 

Edited January 22, 2022 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Niil945]

2 hours ago, meganoth said:

I would estimate I see the first improvements in week 2, i.e. more and more recipes drop and I can produce some advanced dishes myself. But this is still a time where any food supplement is valuable, so 3 pies produced thanks to a farm would be a difference in comfort.

 

By 2 weeks in I typically have enough stockpiled canned goods and things I've gotten from the trader that it's not a big deal. Before I could justify it because even if I couldn't use it now, I could stockpile the seeds and eventually build a farm that would produce slowly. I'd put those returns away and eventually get recipes to use them on while I expand my farm. The most crucial point for food is early on, far before farms start producing anyways. Even under the old system they just eased the survival aspect the further along we are. I don't really see a difference between clicking a lot eating tons of canned low quality food and constantly replanting so I can then cook stuff and then eat once or twice. The buffs aren't that good from higher quality food. 

 

2 hours ago, meganoth said:

For you a (stationary) farm immediately clashes with your play style. I probably would ignore farming as well since inventory space is premium for a nomad (par-time or not). But since I am stationary I can just place down storage chests on the streets of my "home town" and don't even need to prioritze what to keep.

 

Yep that's one of the biggest things. I like to find quest and hole up until I get some basics but I travel relatively light as I'm only keeping stuff I plan to either use in short order (materials for repair kits and foodstuff, etc.) or materials to make benches that I can then stash in my bike and take with me.

 

2 hours ago, meganoth said:

INT build together with the OP traders ( I have been complaining about OP traders since A16 😉 ) is an excellent alternative to farming/mining/any production. One has the money to just buy all the food and still have ample money left, while for non-INT players buying food from the trader is expensive.

 

I don't think the traders are OP. And I don't think it's hard to get dukes on any spec. I don't take INT because of the extra dukes, it's 20% more for rewards, not double or triple. A secondary reason I take INT is because, sorta as we previously discussed, I like having options for trader rewards to offset the randomness. Getting to pick 2 is very nice, but for the most part I just sell the rewards and then buy what I need or stockpile dukes for when they do have something. I do this regardless of what spec I am and while INT does it a little better I've done it on other specs and circumvented the need to farm too. I have to do a non-INT run post A20 to see with the trader prices going up but I don't think that will impact things substantially. Regardless of which spec one plays to do this effectively one has to prioritize running trader quests and have the free inventory to haul everything back that's worth selling rather than picking up everything to store for use at home base. The primary reason I go INT is when I want to build a base where traps handle the bulk of the killing and I need engineering to do it and get any xp from it.

 

2 hours ago, meganoth said:

I assume you know that quality 6 is supposed to be the placeholder for legendary weapons? I don't see it wrong that there is a top class of stuff that is not craftable, but currently quality 6 drops too often and most importantly has not the distinctive feel of being legendary. I really really hope that TFP still gets around to implementing *real* legendary weapons and armor.

 

I'm aware, though it's been like this a long time now. And the top tier of stuff being not craftable is an issue in my mind when there are so many things in the game dedicated to crafting. If T6 is going to be replaced with legendary gear, that legendary gear has to be ultra rare in my mind to not invalidate crafting. And by ultra rare I do mean ultra rare. Maybe seeing one or two in a 50 day playthrough. As it stands I can guarantee that with enough time, POI loot, and trader rewards for T5 quests that I can get geared up with everything quality 6. Hell the trader right now gives boxes with full sets of armor that most of the pieces have been quality 6 for the tier 5 completion bonus. I can count on two hands the number of times I crafted anything with parts since they changed things. And 5 of those things were drones in a recent MP playthrough that once I crafted I respec'd back out of (partly because turrets are buggy and falling into the floor).

 

2 hours ago, meganoth said:

I don't think feral sense has something to do with this, I play with it on as well.

 

I said that not to brag, but to imply that everything takes longer, particularly early on, as I'm killing anything that investigates while I do trader quests. While it speeds up leveling, it slows down everything else at the start and results in more melee combat, which means needing more food and drink.

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, Niil945 said:

 

By 2 weeks in I typically have enough stockpiled canned goods and things I've gotten from the trader that it's not a big deal. Before I could justify it because even if I couldn't use it now, I could stockpile the seeds and eventually build a farm that would produce slowly. I'd put those returns away and eventually get recipes to use them on while I expand my farm. The most crucial point for food is early on, far before farms start producing anyways. Even under the old system they just eased the survival aspect the further along we are. I don't really see a difference between clicking a lot eating tons of canned low quality food and constantly replanting so I can then cook stuff and then eat once or twice. The buffs aren't that good from higher quality food. 

 

Ok, I assume with "2 weeks in" you are talking about the end of week 2, I was talking about the whole second week where a lot of stuff usually happens. I don't remember well enough to make a useful statement about the situation on day 14, but I would guess by that time I would have already cooked some stuff with the help of the farm. 

 

There is not much difference between eating tons of canned low quality food and better food, but procuring it takes time as well as operating a farm, you might just not see that time being used because it is evenly distributed over each day.

 

There are multiple ways for almost anything in the game. I see it as positive that you can survive as well with canned food and some hunting, or maybe even without any hunting but with canned food and visiting multiple traders regularily to buy food from them.

 

1 hour ago, Niil945 said:

Yep that's one of the biggest things. I like to find quest and hole up until I get some basics but I travel relatively light as I'm only keeping stuff I plan to either use in short order (materials for repair kits and foodstuff, etc.) or materials to make benches that I can then stash in my bike and take with me.

 

 

I don't think the traders are OP. And I don't think it's hard to get dukes on any spec. I don't take INT because of the extra dukes, it's 20% more for rewards, not double or triple.

 

Ah, I'm not even talking about daring, I'm talking about better barter.

The trader gives a 25% bonus on what you sell him and sells for 25% less at better barter 5, making it a 50% bonus for any money you get by selling things at the trader. Only with coins you find in loot your bonus is only 25%

 

The main advantage of daring is more choice at all levels and even a double choice at 5. And in A20 rewards are quite a bit ahead of anything you loot, at least in the beginning, and the rest you can easily buy at the trader. Int is definitely OP in that regard.

 

If you know what is worth a lot you can make a lot of money even without barter. If you spam quests you can also make a lot of money. But better barter and some daring make that trivial.

 

1 hour ago, Niil945 said:

A secondary reason I take INT is because, sorta as we previously discussed, I like having options for trader rewards to offset the randomness.

 

Correct. Only that the randomness of looting is also a nerf compared to the ability to buy just the thing you need. This is offset by the fact that the trader takes your money for it but looting is free. Unless you swim in money, when that happens the trader becomes simply OP.

 

Looting, crafting and trading are all sources for the same stuff, but currently crafting and looting are behind trading for almost everything, at least that is my impression.

 

1 hour ago, Niil945 said:

Getting to pick 2 is very nice, but for the most part I just sell the rewards and then buy what I need or stockpile dukes for when they do have something. I do this regardless of what spec I am and while INT does it a little better I've done it on other specs and circumvented the need to farm too. I have to do a non-INT run post A20 to see with the trader prices going up but I don't think that will impact things substantially. Regardless of which spec one plays to do this effectively one has to prioritize running trader quests and have the free inventory to haul everything back that's worth selling rather than picking up everything to store for use at home base. The primary reason I go INT is when I want to build a base where traps handle the bulk of the killing and I need engineering to do it and get any xp from it.

 

 

I'm aware, though it's been like this a long time now. And the top tier of stuff being not craftable is an issue in my mind when there are so many things in the game dedicated to crafting. If T6 is going to be replaced with legendary gear, that legendary gear has to be ultra rare in my mind to not invalidate crafting. And by ultra rare I do mean ultra rare. Maybe seeing one or two in a 50 day playthrough. As it stands I can guarantee that with enough time, POI loot, and trader rewards for T5 quests that I can get geared up with everything quality 6. Hell the trader right now gives boxes with full sets of armor that most of the pieces have been quality 6 for the tier 5 completion bonus. I can count on two hands the number of times I crafted anything with parts since they changed things. And 5 of those things were drones in a recent MP playthrough that once I crafted I respec'd back out of (partly because turrets are buggy and falling into the floor).

 

 

I said that not to brag, but to imply that everything takes longer, particularly early on, as I'm killing anything that investigates while I do trader quests. While it speeds up leveling, it slows down everything else at the start and results in more melee combat, which means needing more food and drink.

 

Didn't assume that, but assumed to mean it as a possible difference to my game. And permadeath is actually a difference, feral sense not. Only that I don't think starving is a possibility if you play correctly as there are just so many possible sources.

 

[Niil945]

38 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Ok, I assume with "2 weeks in" you are talking about the end of week 2, I was talking about the whole second week where a lot of stuff usually happens. I don't remember well enough to make a useful statement about the situation on day 14, but I would guess by that time I would have already cooked some stuff with the help of the farm. 

 

So it's night day 13 on my current playthrough. I made the initial campfire for the starter quests, left it there, and then haven't made one since. I haven't cooked anything at all. I have 234 water and 85 food (in the desert mostly atm so storing excess drink), I'm at 90 food and 96 water personally. I've found one pumpkin seed, one corn seed. From looting I have 19 cornmeal, 6 sham sandwiches and vitamins if I need it, 13 eggs, 125 meat, 9 goldenrod, 4 blueberries, 14 fat. I do have the bacon and eggs recipe. I also have an unopened farm kit from a supply drop. I haven't made any special attempts to hunt for food. I simply hit up the vending machine at the trader I'm working while I scout for a base, take quests in the distant area I want to explore, hit the vending machine once a day and buy out the food and drinks offered. Most of what I eat comes from finding things while doing quests. I avoid using things that reduce water unless I absolutely have to. This playthrough isn't vastly different from my other playthroughs from before A20 (aside from not finding a gun and buying one on day 3 which isn't really meaningful in this discussion), regardless of the spec. The first week is the biggest problem with food and drink and building up a stockpile for dry spells. 

 

For some reason I thought vending machine restock was on the same schedule as the trader, perhaps a change since the last I played in early A19? It's less food and more of the new candy but since it restocks every day it seems like more is available over time than what I was able to get before.

 

59 minutes ago, meganoth said:

The main advantage of daring is more choice at all levels and even a double choice at 5. And in A20 rewards are quite a bit ahead of anything you loot, at least in the beginning, and the rest you can easily buy at the trader. Int is definitely OP in that regard.

 

Honestly I think you're hyperbolizing the bonus of Better Barter. It's 25% at max which requires 10 int. Cigar is 10%. The new candy is 20%. Awesome Sauce is another 20% I think. Magnum book gives 5% I believe. It's not 50%. It's a 25% discount on buying and a 25% bonus on selling. You can't just add them together as that's not how it works. I don't even level it up until I need the extra stash for the solar cells. I'm sitting on 13k dukes and I've spent a good bit already on minibike handlebars and motorcycle chassis. Daring Adventurer is much stronger early game. I'm midway through tier 4 completion though so I've run a lot of quests. The extra reward is great, but the bulk of the rewards aren't something I need and they just get sold for 600-800 dukes right now. Having extra options is what makes it good but with the variance in rewards even with Daring Adventurer there are only 3 pieces of gear that I use that I've gotten from it. Everything else is from POI lootrooms.

 

The bulk of my money comes from quest completions and from throwing excess mods into weapons I don't need, repairing them, and selling them. That's something any spec can do. Yes INT gets more, but not enough that I'd be broke if I was playing a different spec. I'd still have excess dukes, just not as much.

 

And while it's strong, it's something everyone can do, INT just does it a little better, but it's not without its downsides. The trader goods are random. There's no guarantee a trader is going to have food or meds or the weapon or tool one needs. I could easily spend all day riding around to different traders and not find what I'm looking for. I don't bother doing that even now as it's not worth it. If I'm scouting an area and I find a trader I mark which one it is on the map, check his/her goods to see if there's anything I need, and head out. Late game I tend to do that when I have a gyro and I'm trying to finish book series on refresh day but otherwise I don't as it's much easier to hit up a bunch of different traders but with a minibike or even a motorcycle it's not a productive use of my time.

 

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

Looting, crafting and trading are all sources for the same stuff, but currently crafting and looting are behind trading for almost everything, at least that is my impression.

 

Trading definitely has it's uses, but traders don't seem to offer much quality 6 loot anymore as a stock item. The best they do is fill in the gaps while getting established, maybe give that crucible or beaker early on when you need it, and then they have the Better Barter secret stash for solar late game. The quest rewards can net good stuff but I've had better luck with T4 POI lootrooms. They're quick to run and I can easily knock 3 or more out in a day pending how far they are from the trader. Ammo is falling out of the sky right now faster than I can use it so that's not something I care about and T5's just give very little loot and massive amounts of ammo that I already don't need. Crafting is (imo) in the worst position of the lot. I very rarely use the parts to craft anything.

 

That said, we're waaaay off topic here. I would just like farming to have a purpose at 0 points in LotL and the old iteration was perfect. Not a huge supplement to food but it felt worth it to me to utilize the seeds and I didn't see it as wasted loot. I understand that at max LotL it trivialized group food needs once a farm was built up, but that inevitably happens anyways. If they felt like it should require more work, add in irrigation, add in fertilizer, drop the yield back, increase recipe costs. There are a lot of things they could have done and they went with the most gimmicky, grindy, mechanical method of 'fixing' it that also made it worthless at 0 points. I'd love to have to design the base around irrigation or fertilization (Ark has similar requirements) as I tend to do the building in most of the games my group plays together. I don't know, just I don't find the current iteration fun or even useful at 0, the people I play with don't like it that actually do the farming with max LotL, and the end result functionally is the same (we're still overflowing with food after the farm is large enough, it's just larger now than it used to be). 

[meganoth]

14 hours ago, Niil945 said:

 

So it's night day 13 on my current playthrough. I made the initial campfire for the starter quests, left it there, and then haven't made one since. I haven't cooked anything at all. I have 234 water and 85 food (in the desert mostly atm so storing excess drink), I'm at 90 food and 96 water personally. I've found one pumpkin seed, one corn seed. From looting I have 19 cornmeal, 6 sham sandwiches and vitamins if I need it, 13 eggs, 125 meat, 9 goldenrod, 4 blueberries, 14 fat. I do have the bacon and eggs recipe. I also have an unopened farm kit from a supply drop. I haven't made any special attempts to hunt for food. I simply hit up the vending machine at the trader I'm working while I scout for a base, take quests in the distant area I want to explore, hit the vending machine once a day and buy out the food and drinks offered. Most of what I eat comes from finding things while doing quests. I avoid using things that reduce water unless I absolutely have to. This playthrough isn't vastly different from my other playthroughs from before A20 (aside from not finding a gun and buying one on day 3 which isn't really meaningful in this discussion), regardless of the spec. The first week is the biggest problem with food and drink and building up a stockpile for dry spells. 

 

For some reason I thought vending machine restock was on the same schedule as the trader, perhaps a change since the last I played in early A19? It's less food and more of the new candy but since it restocks every day it seems like more is available over time than what I was able to get before.

 

I remember restock to be daily for a looong time. I also found a reddit post from 2 years ago saying the same.

 

14 hours ago, Niil945 said:

Honestly I think you're hyperbolizing the bonus of Better Barter. It's 25% at max which requires 10 int. Cigar is 10%. The new candy is 20%. Awesome Sauce is another 20% I think. Magnum book gives 5% I believe. It's not 50%. It's a 25% discount on buying and a 25% bonus on selling. You can't just add them together as that's not how it works. I don't even level it up until I need the extra stash for the solar cells. I'm sitting on 13k dukes and I've spent a good bit already on minibike handlebars and motorcycle chassis. Daring Adventurer is much stronger early game. I'm midway through tier 4 completion though so I've run a lot of quests. The extra reward is great, but the bulk of the rewards aren't something I need and they just get sold for 600-800 dukes right now. Having extra options is what makes it good but with the variance in rewards even with Daring Adventurer there are only 3 pieces of gear that I use that I've gotten from it. Everything else is from POI lootrooms.

 

Yes, you can't just add the bonuses together if you want exact numbers. The resulting number is somewhat higher.

 

Lets run through an example: At BB 0 you find 10 scrap guns worth 100 at the trader and want to buy a big stack of parts the trader sells for 10 a piece. So you get 1000 coins and buy 100 parts from it.

 

Now assume you have BB 5, therefore your scrap guns are all worth 125 and you get 1250 from it. The trader sells you parts for 7.5 a piece. So you get 1250 / 7.5 = 166.666 parts.

 

The effective bonus of BB 5 is 166%

 

 

About Daring being stronger, that may be. You need to achieve a high quest count per day, say 3-4 quests every day from day 1. Then this game just waves the white flag and declares defeat 😉.

 

But novice players seldomly achieve that, they will die, they will get dozens of infections, they will starve and often the first horde night will kill them. The next playthrough will be better but they will still complain about food being scarce and die from infections or a surprise zombie horde and do 1-2 quests per day max. Vanilla is for novice players.

 

Could do TFP more for experienced players? Yes, sure. Making higher difficulties change more than the HP and damage of zombies would achieve much, but one thing TFP can never change. Experienced players will know exactly what to expect in POIs, they know most POIs (and possible traps in them) from the get go and because of that can easily rush through POI quests where a novice player has to be careful, get hit multiple times, get an infection and needs to hunt for honey instead of doing 3 quests per day.

 

 

14 hours ago, Niil945 said:

The bulk of my money comes from quest completions and from throwing excess mods into weapons I don't need, repairing them, and selling them. That's something any spec can do. Yes INT gets more, but not enough that I'd be broke if I was playing a different spec. I'd still have excess dukes, just not as much.

 

No question about that. The vanilla game is too easy for experienced players. But my point is that we are talking about a comparison of attributes now, and super easy is still better than easy.

 

14 hours ago, Niil945 said:

And while it's strong, it's something everyone can do, INT just does it a little better, but it's not without its downsides. The trader goods are random. There's no guarantee a trader is going to have food or meds or the weapon or tool one needs.

 

There is no guarantee, yes, but it still reduces randomness and allows you to get the important things faster on average. For example food in the vending machines is random as well but since you can expect new stuff every day there is not much difference to a fixed inventory, you easily reach the high numbers where statistics predicts that you almost certainly will be very near to the average over time.

 

14 hours ago, Niil945 said:

I could easily spend all day riding around to different traders and not find what I'm looking for. I don't bother doing that even now as it's not worth it. If I'm scouting an area and I find a trader I mark which one it is on the map, check his/her goods to see if there's anything I need, and head out. Late game I tend to do that when I have a gyro and I'm trying to finish book series on refresh day but otherwise I don't as it's much easier to hit up a bunch of different traders but with a minibike or even a motorcycle it's not a productive use of my time.

 

 

Trading definitely has it's uses, but traders don't seem to offer much quality 6 loot anymore as a stock item. The best they do is fill in the gaps while getting established, maybe give that crucible or beaker early on when you need it, and then they have the Better Barter secret stash for solar late game. The quest rewards can net good stuff but I've had better luck with T4 POI lootrooms. They're quick to run and I can easily knock 3 or more out in a day pending how far they are from the trader. Ammo is falling out of the sky right now faster than I can use it so that's not something I care about and T5's just give very little loot and massive amounts of ammo that I already don't need. Crafting is (imo) in the worst position of the lot. I very rarely use the parts to craft anything.

 

I'm not sure about this, but I think traders do not sell quality 6 tier3 stuff at all (at least it would fit with quality6 being "legendary". But for me this hunt for q6 items is something for completionists just like getting the books complete, in actual gameplay the difference between having quality5 stuff and quality6 stuff is very small. At the time you hunt for it the game is already done and you are OP against anything thrown at you in POIs, even in the wasteland. The only small danger is lurking in the attrition game of the horde night.

 

This game was always about the journey to reach this point where you are OP and the trader speeds up this journey massively and makes it easier through the quests and his inventory. All that can be had by non-INT players as well, sure, but IMHO the trader (including the quest he gives out) is THE fast-track, the better you can use it the faster you are.

 

14 hours ago, Niil945 said:

 

That said, we're waaaay off topic here. I would just like farming to have a purpose at 0 points in LotL and the old iteration was perfect. Not a huge supplement to food but it felt worth it to me to utilize the seeds and I didn't see it as wasted loot. I understand that at max LotL it trivialized group food needs once a farm was built up, but that inevitably happens anyways. If they felt like it should require more work, add in irrigation, add in fertilizer, drop the yield back, increase recipe costs. There are a lot of things they could have done and they went with the most gimmicky, grindy, mechanical method of 'fixing' it that also made it worthless at 0 points. I'd love to have to design the base around irrigation or fertilization (Ark has similar requirements) as I tend to do the building in most of the games my group plays together. I don't know, just I don't find the current iteration fun or even useful at 0, the people I play with don't like it that actually do the farming with max LotL, and the end result functionally is the same (we're still overflowing with food after the farm is large enough, it's just larger now than it used to be). 

 

I definitely see your point about LotL0. Though TFP will probably look at the experience of novice players to see whether they get any use from it. And TFP may be of the opinion that it should be exactly that way, that farming without points into the perk IS nearly or completely useless.

 

 

[Niil945]

4 hours ago, meganoth said:

I remember restock to be daily for a looong time. I also found a reddit post from 2 years ago saying the same.

 

I swear back in ~A17 I had a base in a POI that had a vending machine and I was checking it for refresh every 3 days. Then again it's been quite a while and memory has a way of distorting over time. Or quite possibly I was wrong back then too and it was refreshing every game day lol.

 

4 hours ago, meganoth said:

The effective bonus of BB 5 is 166%

 

That's just playing games with numbers. Not all dukes come from selling items. Those specific dukes were generated and then used at a higher effectiveness than dukes from other sources. I do data analysis for a living and I can twist and spin numbers to look any way I want, that doesn't substantially mean anything but the numbers look more impressive if you buy into the initial argument (i.e it's overpowered,  and I don't). It's intentionally deceptive though, as you know not all dukes are generated that way and you're giving the maximum effectiveness in a slice of use cases and then trying to cite that as if it means anything out of context of the rest of the picture. I spent more than a few years arguing with people about the presentation of data as my job legally required I provide accurate and complete data free of bias when the people who presented that data to legislature wanted to put a particular spin put on it. I've seen about every way people can possibly argue to spin data to support their argument and the justifications for doing so. That's what you're doing here. It's a 25% bonus on selling and buying. Most people (I hope) will recognize that sometimes those values will compound, but you can't reasonably quote any effectiveness as it's highly dependent upon how a given player generates dukes, variables with the game that can and do change, and how a player spends those dukes (i.e. there have been more than a few alphas where I used dukes for brass because we needed it for ammo crafting). And trying to cherry pick such an example just demonstrates how far you have to and are willing to reach to 'win' an argument. I get you don't like traders, such a bias was obvious when you said something about being on a crusade against op traders since A16. I can respect that different view, but don't let your opinion prevent you from having an intellectually honest debate about something. The above quoted value isn't.

 

4 hours ago, meganoth said:

I definitely see your point about LotL0. Though TFP will probably look at the experience of novice players to see whether they get any use from it. And TFP may be of the opinion that it should be exactly that way, that farming without points into the perk IS nearly or completely useless.

 

Very possible. I'd prefer otherwise as it's inconsistent with every other skill in the game. i.e. it's not futile mining without Miner 69'er and Motherlode. It's not futile scavenging without points in Salvage Operation. You don't have any issues using a workbench if you're not an engineer presuming (exactly like LotL) that you have the requisite recipes. But as mentioned, there are alternatives. As it stands I'll just avoid it and cooking entirely and be fine. Though I reserve the right to complain about it

[SenpaiThatIngnoresYou]

I think they have gone about farming the wrong way.  On one hand having to make a large plot makes sense, as it would take a decent chunk of land to feed yourself in a bad situation. However, this is a zombie game, so the farms should have some sort of zombie problem. 

 

I propose making fat zombies attracted to farm plots, either that or making rabbits eat crops. On one hand you are forced to do rooftop gardens, but on the other hand it makes things interesting as you have to be checking on the farm from time to time. 

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, Niil945 said:

 

I swear back in ~A17 I had a base in a POI that had a vending machine and I was checking it for refresh every 3 days. Then again it's been quite a while and memory has a way of distorting over time. Or quite possibly I was wrong back then too and it was refreshing every game day lol.

 

 

That's just playing games with numbers. Not all dukes come from selling items.

 

Which is something I already mentioned though I only listed found coins and forgot about the quest reward money. I quote: "Only with coins you find in loot your bonus is only 25%".

 

But that you immediately accuse me of dishonesty instead of just pointing to any possible mistake I may have made is disappointing.

 

In detail:  The only coins you get by any other way are A) coins in loot which I would estimate to be less than 5% of all the coins you get. And B) quest rewards, which depending on how many quest one does is 50% to maybe even 2/3rds of income (asked a friend and his estimation was 2/3rd, mine would be 50%). But if you have points in Daring as well (what I would expect from an INT player) you nearly get the same bonus for that income source as the income from better barter.

 

I don't think this is playing with numbers. A game is a very controlled environment and one can actually get some accurate numbers or ranges if one is careful. I stand by that (approximate) 50% bonus for an INT player, naturally it will be somewhat different for any specific player. We could do an indepth analysis with error ranges and all, but I doubt we will get much below that value.

 

The only question is the interpretation of that number, i.e. how much that bonus does matter in actual gameplay, for example it is surely possible that it doesn't matter how much money you make above some basic amount that allows you to get the important stuff. And naturally you only get that bonus fully perked in two perks so in early game you will have a lesser bonus,

 

1 hour ago, Niil945 said:

Those specific dukes were generated and then used at a higher effectiveness than dukes from other sources. I do data analysis for a living and I can twist and spin numbers to look any way I want, that doesn't substantially mean anything but the numbers look more impressive if you buy into the initial argument (i.e it's overpowered,  and I don't). It's intentionally deceptive though, as you know not all dukes are generated that way and you're giving the maximum effectiveness in a slice of use cases and then trying to cite that as if it means anything out of context of the rest of the picture.

 

There is nothing deceptive about it, if you do data analysis you know that the numbers are facts (though some estimates with lower or upper limits), it is the interpretation that is subjective and can be unintentionally wrong or intentionally misleading. So ""thanks"" for immediately implying the worst.

 

The interpretation that the trader is OP is just my subjective view and interpretation, but actually not that important to the farming subject. 

 

1 hour ago, Niil945 said:

I spent more than a few years arguing with people about the presentation of data as my job legally required I provide accurate and complete data free of bias when the people who presented that data to legislature wanted to put a particular spin put on it. I've seen about every way people can possibly argue to spin data to support their argument and the justifications for doing so. That's what you're doing here. It's a 25% bonus on selling and buying. Most people (I hope) will recognize that sometimes those values will compound, but you can't reasonably quote any effectiveness as it's highly dependent upon how a given player generates dukes, variables with the game that can and do change, and how a player spends those dukes (i.e. there have been more than a few alphas where I used dukes for brass because we needed it for ammo crafting). And trying to cherry pick such an example just demonstrates how far you have to and are willing to reach to 'win' an argument. I get you don't like traders, such a bias was obvious when you said something about being on a crusade against op traders since A16.

 

I have said: " I have been complaining about OP traders since A16 😉", nothing more, nothing less. Not a crusade at all, unless any long standing opinion is automatically a crusade.

 

1 hour ago, Niil945 said:

I can respect that different view, but don't let your opinion prevent you from having an intellectually honest debate about something. The above quoted value isn't.

 

Very possible. I'd prefer otherwise as it's inconsistent with every other skill in the game. i.e. it's not futile mining without Miner 69'er and Motherlode. It's not futile scavenging without points in Salvage Operation. You don't have any issues using a workbench if you're not an engineer presuming (exactly like LotL) that you have the requisite recipes. But as mentioned, there are alternatives. As it stands I'll just avoid it and cooking entirely and be fine. Though I reserve the right to complain about it

 

Edited January 23, 2022 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Roland]

On 1/21/2022 at 8:40 AM, Niil945 said:

I try to be super efficient in survival games and there's no reason to gamble time and resources on a food source that won't give comparable returns for the effort/time/resources invested.

 

I think this is the honest reason the new farming isn't going to gel with some players and there is not going to be any way to convince them otherwise through math or by talking averages. Min/Max playstyles rely on deterministic results. A gamble that results in a loss is going to feel like a lot of wasted time and effort and for the player who get's their Wheatleygasm from being efficient, a random failure is going to feel completely wrong and horrifying to them. The old farming was completely reliable and deterministic and so could easily be min/maxed. But the current model has too many random factors and too many parts that require active babysitting to be able to reliably and rapidly power through to self sustainable farm status.

 

The old farming with its auto replanting was a min/maxer's wet dream because you can't get any more efficient than auto regrow with zero effort needed. So even with the chance of getting to a self sustainable farm under the new system, the fact that it doesn't automatically regrow itself without effort is already a huge backward step for fans of efficiency. 

 

What is interesting is that survival games rely on nondeterministic results because as soon as a player can completely 100% plan for and control all outcomes it is no longer survival. What makes a game survival is having unexpected and uncontrollable elements and forces trying to kill the player and the player adapts and adjusts and survives. But then it becomes impossible to be completely efficient-- at least in hindsight as downturns in fortune or random factors can mean that some player choices turned out to be futile or less effective than they were planned to be. 100% efficiency almost demands a game almost on rails so that plans and strategies always work out. 100% Survival almost demands a game completely dictated by random factors. Somewhere in between TFP must create a perfect storm...

[Niil945]

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

But that you immediately accuse me of dishonesty instead of just pointing to any possible mistake I may have made is disappointing.

 

I'll explain my rationale. I believe you're aware that regardless of what the results are, 25% bonus to selling and buying is the same outcome as the one you describe which shows the maximum impact in limited circumstances. Yet you've consistently made an attempt to play up the effect and do so using bigger numbers. First by simply adding the bonuses together, which is not how it works in any scenario, and then by using a very specific example which is how it works but isn't the complete picture nor is it a picture of the bulk of duke generation and usage. You also glossed over that anyone can get an additional ~45% (5 magnum, 10 cigar, 20 awesome sauce, 10 candy) which is an even bigger bonus than the one provided by the perk at a 21 point investment into INT,. Though the conversation has threads all over the place so I don't see this as intentional, but it's a factor that matters that you haven't commented about. From our conversation I got the impression you're a bright enough person to understand the distinction between the framing. You cited a cherry picked example to make your opinion seem more valid. Which said example still just equates to 25% more from buying and selling. It's no different than talking about a perk which increases a loot item from 1 to 2 and talking about it being overpowered because it's a 100% increase in loot. They're both the same but describing it the latter way using a bigger number sounds more more potent than just saying 'it's an +1 loot of x item'. It's framing not unbiased data even if it is mathematically accurate. You have a bias that you haven't been shy about and it shows in how you describe the perk. Some would view that as just good arguing but it's word/number play. I explained I've worked in data a long time and have had held a position where I was legally responsible for ensuring that I was providing unbiased and complete data. Any perceived misrepresentation could be construed as criminal because the data I worked with was utilized to ascertain funding on a state level. I don't doubt I'm much more strict in how I view this than others because I've had to be. There are levels of dishonesty and we're talking about game mechanics here, and while it's not some horrendous sin to slant discourse in such a way that promotes your opinion as the right one. It's trying to win a debate by making the issue seem bigger than it actually is by intentionally using larger numbers and reframing (i.e. 'effective') . It's dishonest in the same way marketing often is which isn't a horrendous thing by any means, but it's still not intellectually honest discourse. Let me make my point another way. When I stated the numbers off the perk and explained my point of view, why did you feel the need to explain to me the 'effective' value as if using that number changed anything? We both know the answer to that.

 

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

There is nothing deceptive about it, if you do data analysis you know that the numbers are facts (though some estimates with lower or upper limits), it is the interpretation that is subjective and can be unintentionally wrong or intentionally misleading. So ""thanks"" for immediately implying the worst.

 

You and I are simply not going to agree on this point.

 

That said, we have different views on the impact of those perks. It's not unexpected that you would try to frame it in a way that implies it needs nerfed. I've shared that I think it's strong and what I think is strong about it. But I will say here, I don't think those perks are any stronger than perks in the other trees. Each one is good. I like that they each have different strengths and weaknesses and different styles. I've done builds using INT and without Daring Adventurer and Better Barter and the interesting thing to me is the things you say are too powerful for INT aren't vastly different from my experiences with other builds. I've even stated several times the things that I think are powerful about it and the things I like about it often times aren't what you think is too strong, or at least you haven't really made an issue out of the things I think are actually the strengths of the perks. To me that's indicative that (and I believe you said this already, though the conversation has gone on a while and I'm not 100% sure) that your issue is with traders themselves. INT seems to just exacerbate the issue you have as the build leans into the trader as a strength. I see it as an offset for the build in the sense that it's painful to try to mine, gather wood, salvage, anything that uses stamina. Early game INT can supplement it's poor gathering by buying items (a random assortment) from traders with the extra dukes it gets. It's nowhere near as effective as actually going into a gathering skill but it's more broadly applicable since the trader stock is all over the place. If we're going to have that discussion about how good extra dukes are, we need to talk about the other specs and how they can utilize the trader too. Both STR and PER builds can just farm materials in excess and sell to the trader what they don't need in addition to loot vendoring. Everyone can load mods into items for a large increase in sale price and both of those other specs are in a much better position to do so as they gather materials far easier. FORT and AGI don't have as much a of luxury there as they're slightly selfish specs, FORT with just farming but a lot of tankiness perks and AGI with the stealth and no gathering perks but both of those specs have other advantages that leads to less resource consumption due to the builds. Mid/late game the disparity vanishes as people cross spec as needed or for people who just pick up whatever benefits them from the get go instead of going deep into a tree they can mix and match as they choose.

 

If we were to talk about things I think are broken with Better Barter, it's how the Secret Stash works. The levels that get the extra stash aren't actually "extra" at all. They're entirely separate stashes. If you wear Nerdy Glasses and look at the stash, buy what you want, then take off the glasses and look at it again, if the INT loss deactivates a level of the perk that gives access to a bonus level of the stash it gives you an entirely different stash completely. This means that people who use it can actually have access to 2 completely different stashes on each and every trader. It's not a trick that I use until late game when I'm trying to complete superfluous book sets, but it's a trick that can be extremely valuable early game that I think is just gaming the system. That is broken.

 

2 hours ago, meganoth said:

I have said: " I have been complaining about OP traders since A16 😉", nothing more, nothing less. Not a crusade at all, unless any long standing opinion is automatically a crusade.

 

See, you take offense when I hyperbolize something too. But I apologize, I didn't look back at the post and see the exact wording you used when I wrote that and if that description is excessive I wasn't attempting to put words in your mouth.

 

1 hour ago, Roland said:

for the player who get's their Wheatleygasm from being efficient, a random failure is going to feel completely wrong and horrifying to them.

 

Not wrong or horrifying at all. It's fine if that's the route they decide to go as there are alternatives. Everyone makes a choice about whether a given risk, time, and/or effort is worth the reward. The current system is too much grind and too flakey on the rewards to be worth the investment to me. It's not any more complicated than that. There's no Wheatleygasm to speak of. It's literally a decision between "pray for uncontrollable drops, if I get them then invest time, maybe get the result I want that also dead ends my food source if I don't get enough seeds to keep it going while questing/farming" and "feed self while questing and buy from vending machines/trader" I choose the latter. If this was like Ark or ONI or another game with farming where I could actively try to get a certain farm setup by acquiring seeds and planting them but I have no options in that regard in this game. They've done a better job at making certain farm POI's common so specific things are easier to acquire, but they also made it unsustainable at 0 LotL so it's better to just cook those rather than use them as seeds. For max LotL and in between, I'm okay with not getting all the seeds back (if they stayed planted). But it's like they implemented in a way that maximizes the amount of busywork just for the sake of making people spend monotonous time doing it. I'd rather they require fertilizer or irrigation and build systems that require maintenance than just staring at my backpack crafting seeds and replanting them constantly. It's the way that maintenance happens rather than that there is maintenance. It's simply not fun to me.

 

2 hours ago, Roland said:

The old farming with its auto replanting was a min/maxer's wet dream because you can't get any more efficient than auto regrow with zero effort needed. So even with the chance of getting to a self sustainable farm under the new system, the fact that it doesn't automatically regrow itself without effort is already a huge backward step for fans of efficiency. 

 

While I can't speak for others, that's simply not what I have an issue with nor what I liked about the old system. I liked it because, and I've said this a few times, everyone can do everything in this system just some builds are vastly better at whatever it is. At 0 before I got a farm going slowly, it never became something that was my sole source of food. But it was a supplemental source that built up over time and as I acquired seeds and recipes. Most of my food came from collecting things and cooking them once I acquired the recipes from drops or just eating canned/vending machine/trader food. Converting to seeds now at 0 is just a bad choice where before it was one that mattered. Plant and get a slow but stable food supply later to supplement or use the crops in recipes for an immediate meal. A seed now is less valuable food wise than they used to be since odds are I'm only going to get ~3 corn or potatoes or whatever out of it where before it meant 1 crop every other game day as long as it didn't get destroyed. That made for some interesting choices and meant it had more value in the long haul. And then there's the maintenance they implemented. They could have gone a lot of different ways here but they went a method that was mechanical and grindy. We could have to weed our crop plots, or water them, or apply fertilizer. Instead it's converting food that's, at least early game, in demand back into seeds and then clicking to place it. Over and over and over and over again.

 

 

1 hour ago, Roland said:

What is interesting is that survival games rely on nondeterministic results because as soon as a player can completely 100% plan for and control all outcomes it is no longer survival. What makes a game survival is having unexpected and uncontrollable elements and forces trying to kill the player and the player adapts and adjusts and survives. But then it becomes impossible to be completely efficient-- at least in hindsight as downturns in fortune or random factors can mean that some player choices turned out to be futile or less effective than they were planned to be. 100% efficiency almost demands a game almost on rails so that plans and strategies always work out. 100% Survival almost demands a game completely dictated by random factors. Somewhere in between TFP must create a perfect storm...

 

Eh, you and I have very different views of what makes a survival game a survival game. Every survival game people start off scrambling. Hunger, thirst, bad weather, injuries, hostile creatures, everything is a threat or a problem. As the game progresses those things become less of a factor. Eventually the stress shifts from "find food and drink" to "kill the big bad" or "do the quest" or "progress the story" and those initial threats of simple basic survival needs are effectively a non-factor. It's a progression that happens over time. There's no game where players don't have the tools to overcome randomness in regards to survival aspects as they play that I can think of. It doesn't matter if it's Rimworld, ONI, Ark, Rust, Conan Exiles, The Forest, Subnautica, this, or any other survival game. The basics as a challenge always phase out in favor of other factors. The challenge to get to a stable point in survival games is what I like about them and why I keep playing them and replaying them. The fun comes from being unable to control those things to overcoming and trivializing those challenges for me. Once I hit an effective peak of power in whatever game it is, I have all the stuff, beat all the bosses, did all the dungeons, whatever, and things are no longer challenging I tend to get bored and then I start over. Each time I refine my gameplay so that I can do everything better, and by better I mean in a way that allows me to maximize the time doing things I find entertaining while minimizing the time I spend doing things I don't. In 7d2d it's leveling up, getting better gear, clearing POI's, trying different builds and combinations along the way. I haven't seen or played a survival game where you both start and end the game struggling with the basics like getting food and drink. Even now, the changes to farming didn't introduce nondeterministic results the players can't plan for and the end result is exactly the same as what it was before for someone who specs into LotL, overflowing food coffers. While randomness is a factor, I certainly don't think that 100% survival demands a game completely dictated by random factors is true at all. It requires challenge and juggling competing needs, and the exact nature of those challenges can be caused by randomness (i.e. getting infected on day 1 in 7d2d, a blight on crops in Rimworld when food is low, a sandstorm when adventuring early game away from base in Conan Exiles, etc.).

[Roland]

7 minutes ago, Niil945 said:

Eh, you and I have very different views of what makes a survival game a survival game. Every survival game people start off scrambling. Hunger, thirst, bad weather, injuries, hostile creatures, everything is a threat or a problem. As the game progresses those things become less of a factor. Eventually the stress shifts from "find food and drink" to "kill the big bad" or "do the quest" or "progress the story" and those initial threats of simple basic survival needs are effectively a non-factor. It's a progression that happens over time. There's no game where players don't have the tools to overcome randomness in regards to survival aspects as they play that I can think of. It doesn't matter if it's Rimworld, ONI, Ark, Rust, Conan Exiles, The Forest, Subnautica, this, or any other survival game. The basics as a challenge always phase out in favor of other factors. The challenge to get to a stable point in survival games is what I like about them and why I keep playing them and replaying them. The fun comes from being unable to control those things to overcoming and trivializing those challenges for me. Once I hit an effective peak of power in whatever game it is, I have all the stuff, beat all the bosses, did all the dungeons, whatever, and things are no longer challenging I tend to get bored and then I start over. Each time I refine my gameplay so that I can do everything better, and by better I mean in a way that allows me to maximize the time doing things I find entertaining while minimizing the time I spend doing things I don't. In 7d2d it's leveling up, getting better gear, clearing POI's, trying different builds and combinations along the way. I haven't seen or played a survival game where you both start and end the game struggling with the basics like getting food and drink. Even now, the changes to farming didn't introduce nondeterministic results the players can't plan for and the end result is exactly the same as what it was before for someone who specs into LotL, overflowing food coffers. While randomness is a factor, I certainly don't think that 100% survival demands a game completely dictated by random factors is true at all. It requires challenge and juggling competing needs, and the exact nature of those challenges can be caused by randomness (i.e. getting infected on day 1 in 7d2d, a blight on crops in Rimworld when food is low, a sandstorm when adventuring early game away from base in Conan Exiles, etc.).

 

I don't think our views are that different. I completely agree that survival games should have a beginning middle and end that have a progression where the player begins weak and vulnerable to those random factors and eventually reach a point where they are no longer affected by them because of the gear they have found and the skills they have developed over time. I never said that players can't find or develop tools to mitigate the random effects-- just that the random effects must be present so that players can't simply predict and automate their actions. Like you described, I too find the fun in overcoming all the challenges and trivializing the threats to the point that I know I am practically unkillable. That is also when I usually decide to start over because, like you, I enjoy the journey and the stuggle to get to the point of having overcome and "winning" the survival aspect of the game.

 

What I was talking about with the farming is not the end but the beginning and middle. The old farming was deterministic from the very beginning--even completely unperked. Once you planted a seed you had a forever food generator. The new farming is more in line with the rest of the game. It is uncertain and the threat of failure is real in the beginning and you have to struggle in order to succeed. There is a real progression where as an unperked character who wants to farm you are completely at the mercy of external random factors. But just like any other survival game such as Rimworld, ONI, Ark, Rust, Conan Exiles, The Forest, Subnautica, this, etc. you are given the tools to overcome those random factors. Those tools are LOTL 1, and 2, and 3 and there is finally a much more survival-like progression to it.

 

The randomness is always there but by time you have LOTL 3 you are impervious to it and all but guaranteed to succeed as a farmer.

 

The true disparity is time. You say "over time" but what does that mean really? Everyone is going to be different but on average min/maxers also tend to like to rush the progression and get to top of whatever ladders they are climbing as close to instantaneous as they can possibly manage it and the longer the "over time" part of it lasts the more inefficient they view the run. Nobody brags about getting their self-sustainable farm going after 3 weeks of game time. No...its more like, "I've got my 50 plot farm ready to harvest before my first blood moon XD I built my farm on the top of my base which is fully upgraded to cement XD!!"

 

So....survival games must have random factors in order to not be predictable and force the player to react and adapt and survive the unforeseeable threats. In the beginning the player is mostly at the mercy of these forces but "over time" gains the skills and tools needed to mitigate those random factors and no longer be affected by them (even though they still exist). The old farming allowed an almost instantaneous transition from beginning to end state in this "progression" whereas the new farming actually does require the "over time" component for that progression to take place.

 

I suspect that even though you say you like to progress over time-- if you are touting the old farm system rather than the new system-- you are much like the speed runner min/maxers who like to measure their time in minutes and seconds rather than hours and days.

 

I enjoy actual progression over a moderate period of time which is why I like the new farming over the old which had basically zero progression to it. How do we know it had zero progression to it? Because most of the complaints are that the new system has ruined farming for unperked players. In other words, those players don't want to have to take time and effort to progress. They want the top position of the farming ladder available to them instantly.

[Niil945]

3 minutes ago, Roland said:

The old farming was deterministic from the very beginning--even completely unperked.

Sure. But it's not that it was deterministic that I liked. It was that it presented real choices that mattered. Take the short term food bump or turn something into a seed for a bigger return over the long haul. And it's not that there's randomness that I dislike. It's the specific manner in which they implemented that randomness and the way to deal with it. It's not active by weeding, irrigating, or fertilizing. It's not something I can engineer around with building that I can invest resources/time into planning and tinkering with designs. It's the least interactive and engaging method of introducing maintenance. 

 

9 minutes ago, Roland said:

Those tools are LOTL 1, and 2, and 3 and there is finally a much more survival-like progression to it.

 

Can we fail when crafting, mining, salvaging if not perked into them? Do we have to put points into those perks to allow us to not fail? If there was some farming book that guaranteed we'd get seeds back from all crops that would at least put it on the same level as the other perks or if they introduced failing in the other systems. The former doesn't make sense in context of the outcome but at least it would make sense with the book system we already have in the game. The latter would just introduce that frustration to every other aspect of the game. It already had survival like progression in that without points in the perk it was 1 crop and 3 when maxed plus the cost of plots which is reduced by maxing the perk out.

 

18 minutes ago, Roland said:

No...its more like, "I've got my 50 plot farm ready to harvest before my first blood moon XD I built my farm on the top of my base which is fully upgraded to cement XD!!"

 

That's not extreme it's just fiction. I'm at day 23 and I've found 2 seeds, 1 pumpkin, 1 corn. And seed drops were increased since A19 from what I read. I don't have the corn or potato seed recipes either. Previously by the time I quit a playthrough where I didn't take LotL I might have a dozen plots. Again, it never ever provided the bulk of my food needs, maybe a quarter at best. Before they increased food/water usage. 

 

26 minutes ago, Roland said:

The old farming allowed an almost instantaneous transition from beginning to end state in this "progression" whereas the new farming actually does require the "over time" component for that progression to take place.

 

That's simply not true. Getting a couple crop plots down over the course of the first 7 days wasn't even close to an end state for eliminating the food constraint and that was before vultures did structure damage. My five person group in A20 got to ~30 plots after about 25 days at which point food becomes trivial. That's with someone spec'd into cooking and another person spec'd into farming. We usually spend the first 2 bloodmoons at a temporary base while we scout the map for a good spot, level up, quest, etc. We're not rushing to make a farm as fast as possible by any means. The biggest delay this time was getting enough seeds or crops to make seeds to get the farm going and excess for times when RNG on seeds was bad. In the meantime we subsist almost entirely off the bacon and eggs recipe. Our cook typically cries a lot during this portion of the game as she has the skills to make lots of things but instead has to spend free time scouring the wilderness for eggs. This last time she asked if there was a mod that allowed us to catch chickens and build a pen for them which made me laugh a lot. 

 

40 minutes ago, Roland said:

I suspect that even though you say you like to progress over time-- if you are touting the old farm system rather than the new system-- you are much like the speed runner min/maxers who like to measure their time in minutes and seconds rather than hours and days.

 

Why do you continue to try to reframe complaints people have with the new system? I have detailed repeatedly what I like and don't like about the system and why, alternatives that still require maintenance but would be gameplay that I would enjoy and you gloss over those responses and try to paint me (and others) as an impatient power gamer. 

 

47 minutes ago, Roland said:

Because most of the complaints are that the new system has ruined farming for unperked players. In other words, those players don't want to have to take time and effort to progress. They want the top position of the farming ladder available to them instantly.

 

This is the type of handwaving response I was talking about above. You clearly aren't interested in actually discussing the matter and just want to beat your chest about how you're a 'real' survival player and people who don't like the change aren't. I preferred the responses based on your opinion and not your ego.

[gurutar]

the old system was very rewarding with no perk investment or effort.

 

the new system rewards additional effort and perk investment. it's better.

[Roland]

16 minutes ago, Niil945 said:

Sure. But it's not that it was deterministic that I liked. It was that it presented real choices that mattered. Take the short term food bump or turn something into a seed for a bigger return over the long haul.

 

I see that choice as having even higher stakes now because of the gamble. Before there was zero risk to turning your crops into seeds because every seed you planted turned into a regrowing sprout. There was zero risk of loss. Now when you are choosing to turn those fruit into seeds the result of that decision is in question and so not at all a given no brainer.

 

Yes, if you were hungry and starving and all you had was that corn the temptation to just eat it vs invest it was a tough choice but now it is even tougher because the deterministic nature of the choice has been replaced with uncertainty on top of the hunger now vs more food later choice.

 

20 minutes ago, Niil945 said:

It's the specific manner in which they implemented that randomness and the way to deal with it. It's not active by weeding, irrigating, or fertilizing. It's not something I can engineer around with building that I can invest resources/time into planning and tinkering with designs. It's the least interactive and engaging method of introducing maintenance. 

 

Yes, they went abstract rather than detailed. I'm with you that I would prefer less abstraction with farming and more concrete actions but farming is not a focus for these devs. They've already stated that they are not going to spend any time creating a deep farming sim-like for this portion of the game. So given that they are keeping things abstract, I still maintain that the A20 abstraction is better for progression and choice than the A19 progression was. When a farming mod comes out that adds depth to this part of the game that TFP feels much more casual about it will be better than either the A19 and A20 abstractions.

 

24 minutes ago, Niil945 said:

Can we fail when crafting, mining, salvaging if not perked into them? Do we have to put points into those perks to allow us to not fail?

 

Yes, in a way. There is no tool required for farming which is why it's hard to see the parallel but put a steel pickaxe or a steel axe in your hand on Day one and start mining and chopping and see how successfully your stamina bar lasts unperked. We DO see very similar complaints about mining and salvaging and harvesting from new players who don't take the right perks and are handed an iron pickaxe too early. "Its completely broken!" they say. "It takes so long to mine having to wait between every other swing for stamina to recover!!" they say.

 

"You need to work your way up the progression with the right perks and get to be a higher level character with higher stamina levels before you can handle an iron or steel pickaxe", we say.

 

As for crafting, that is a different species for sure in this game. 100% failure until you learn the recipe and then it is 100% success and some recipes are deterministically and others are randomly acquired. I agree that crafting doesn't follow the formula.

 

33 minutes ago, Niil945 said:

That's not extreme it's just fiction. I'm at day 23 and I've found 2 seeds, 1 pumpkin, 1 corn. And seed drops were increased since A19 from what I read. I don't have the corn or potato seed recipes either. Previously by the time I quit a playthrough where I didn't take LotL I might have a dozen plots. Again, it never ever provided the bulk of my food needs, maybe a quarter at best. Before they increased food/water usage.

 

Yes, it is fiction for A20. Just slight exaggeration for A19. It is a good reason why A20 is better than A19.

 

34 minutes ago, Niil945 said:

That's simply not true. Getting a couple crop plots down over the course of the first 7 days wasn't even close to an end state for eliminating the food constraint

 

You are correct that it isn't true for having your end state 100 plot farm. That would still take time in A19-- but it was guaranteed and every seed found and planted was instantaneously the end of that individual plot's journey. In A19 you quickly got to the point where you could care less if you found seeds out in the world whereas in A20 you are always glad to find seeds because if you have LOTL 3 you still know that a portion of your crop is going to be converted and the more you find the less you have to convert and the more you have to keep.

 

So while the end of the entire farming game was not within 7 days it was over much sooner (and without any investment needed) than in A20. Not only that but desire to find seeds or receive seeds as a reward ended a lot sooner in A19 than it does in A20. I'm on day 56 in my own game with my family and whenever I announce that I found seeds in a container, the person who primarily tends the farm still cheers. In A19 on Day 56, I doubt I would get a cheer-- more like advice to dump them and keep room in my inventory for things that matter.

 

Finally, let me be clear that I am simply talking about the farming game as a mini progression game unto itself because I think we can both agree that without farming at all we can reach an end state for eliminating food constraint. Getting to a place where food is not a concern is not what I am talking about. I am simply comparing the progression of farming itself.

 

46 minutes ago, Niil945 said:

Why do you continue to try to reframe complaints people have with the new system? I have detailed repeatedly what I like and don't like about the system and why, alternatives that still require maintenance but would be gameplay that I would enjoy and you gloss over those responses and try to paint me (and others) as an impatient power gamer. 

 

It's not just

you. It's six years of reading similar complaints that all seem to have the same root cause. Since you say I have mistaken you then I will take you at your word. I only walked through the door you opened when you admitted to liking to play super-efficiently. That usually carries with it a propensity to rush the progression.

 

51 minutes ago, Niil945 said:

This is the type of handwaving response I was talking about above. You clearly aren't interested in actually discussing the matter and just want to beat your chest about how you're a 'real' survival player and people who don't like the change aren't. I preferred the responses based on your opinion and not your ego.

 

I never claimed to be the real survival player. I'm not the one who referenced all the survival games I've played. I am simply stating that there are those who do not enjoy the new farming and it seems like one commonality between those who hate it is that it can't as easily be rushed because it is no longer deterministic. Most of the solutions that I've read have been to take out the 50% random seed return or have it get phased out as you go up LOTL 1, 2, and 3. I believe that it is because it messes with efficiency playstyles. Maybe I'm wrong but-- and this is the important part-- I would be against any "solution" that would make the farming progression return to a deterministic process. I am for any solution that involves moving away from abstract mechanics-- re-introducing the rake and fertilizer in rewarding ways. 

 

But to try and put farming back to a process that can be rushed easily by speed runners for the sake of being able to speed run the game is not something I'm interested in. No ego here.