Is the skill system due for an overhaul? A discussion on its strengths, weaknesses, how it can be improved (and whether the devs are planning to do it?)

[GlyphGryph]

In a game with a world that's been steadily improving, and lot of fun things to do, the skill system is beginning to stick out as being... well, not up to the quality standards I see represented in the rest of the game. I know it's already been overhauled to get where are, and hopefully that was a change for the better, but it still seems to have some serious issues.

 

Some of the skills are useless, or nearly so (looking at you, Infiltrator). Some of them are incredibly good, to the point where it's hard to justify spending points in the "okay" skills (see Better Barter, Daring Adventurer). Some of them teach you recipes, allowing you to jump ahead in the game at the cost of skill points, which feels good (Engineering, Grease Monkey) - others are pretty much worthless until you find the right skill books or items, practically locking them off from using them until you get lucky, making your investment in them feel like a complete waste (for example, Penetrator). A third group is good until you get certain items, after which it becomes a waste of points (Pack Mule being the most obvious)

 

Overall, it feels like it really needs some substantial changes to "feel" good, some of them tied to changes in other systems (clubs with no skill seem to outperform a machete with maxxed out knife skill, which makes it hard to justify spending points on knives, for example)

[Ramethzer0]

I think you're missing a few of key things about character building here, and that's YMMV, buyer's remorse, and play style.

 

First of all (counting myself here) there are people that have a high skill on certain types of weapon use in the melee category.  I feel often that clubs are just OP because they have the best of all worlds, meanwhile Knives feel a little behind.  But, I don't have to do much thinking with clubs because they do so much knockdown, whereas a Knife I have to be very skilled to get as many decaps as I can get.  I find myself fighting often better with a knife, and often will use it unperked because I have a looong history of using it.  Clubbing someone doesn't nearly as much require the that because no matter what, you're gunna end up with a decap or AT LEAST a knockdown of some sort.  Chain and weighted mods make that distinction even moreso.   That's just the difference between the two.  I feel way more confident because I adapted to get better with knives, as opposed to the club which is a very easy weapon to crutch on.   But then, I feel the animation of machetes is a downgrade because I'm so used to being more precise with the knife.

 

Rolling over to other skills you mention like Penetrator - I am currently running a fully perked Infiltrator with sniper rifles and the reason why people don't particularly care for it is because you can't use it 100% effectively 100% of the time.  If you're not lining up your shots then OFC it feels useless comparatively.   If you're using a rifle to breach a building, then its a sincere case of using the lesser effective tool for the wrong job.   You can use shotguns unperked to a greater effectiveness than a Rifle for a breaching action.  Therefore, saying Penetrator is the problem seems a little like throwing the blame for going for the poorer choice.   Lining up your shots w/ penetrator is really powerful, but lining up those shots requires a lot of area and base building knowledge.  If you're not taking advantage of your lines of sight, then you're not using rifle as effectively as it was coded in to be.

 

Pack mule is a choice, and not a necessary one - most people understand this already when they have a certain level of skill in inventory management.  I never perk into it anymore because its often way simpler and more effective to leave drop chests about.  Furthermore, when you get a vehicle, then the worries are even less so if you have taken advantage of drop chests.   Pack Mule, like some other skills that can be superceded with armour and weapon mods are an option, not a must.  But, they certainly do help people whom are on earlier stages of gameplay, or people who haven't chosen to be better inventory managers.

 

I think you're looking at skills too thinly, and not as a whole package.  There's something there for everyone, and that includes people who don't play like you do.

And that's how we lead into the last portion - buyer remorse and play style.

 

Because if you're good at your chosen play style, or can adapt to several different kinds - this puts you ahead of the curve compared to others who enjoy sticking to just one.  There's no remorse if you pick perks according to the effectiveness that includes your playstyle, where as you'll be full of buyers remorse if you are perking into something that isn't fully supported by your play style.   Example of this is playing with turrrets but perking (using your example) infiltrator.   I don't see those perks as being particularly useful if the real power behind INT based combat is Area Denial. 

Edited January 10, 2022 by Ramethzer0 (see edit history)

[Viktoriusiii]

Prefix:

TFPs have said again and again since the very early types they don't care about balancing (okay to be fair focusing on developing the game rather than focusing on balancing on features that might not be around in the end is usually a good thing... just not if this short period goes on for over 8 years 😕 )

 

So since this is a balancing issue and different people say different things (like my previous poster saying that clubs are best, when on high difficulties I play on the machete is without a doubt the 1st place. Not even close. And the stun baton closely behind (moving up there once you knock every Z down with the mod)

 

 

 

But since we are on the topic, I will give my opinion on what needs to change:

Perkrequirements. Good lord I hate level gating, but this is a close second. It is the epitomy of "we don't want you to have this too soon, but we didn't know how to make it happen, so go out there and level". In an RPG (which this is NOT, but won't open that can of worms again) this can work. In a sandbox, it just feels cheap.

 

Since they dislike LBD, maybe they can do it by setting requirements that are independent of levels:
"kill 500 zombies with a club" for "pummel Pete 4" 

"knock down 100 zombies with turrets" to unlock the scrap turrets

or or or.

Make it INTERESTING and not dependent on levels. This means you need to chose what path to go.

And not having a motorbike because you want to get a farm going... feels bad.

While TECHNICIALLY it doesn't matter if you are farming xp or doing a "challenge", you are working towards a specific goal and need to do various things.

While XP is so general... it feels ike it comes out of nothing. And you still need to grind the xp... you can just chose to build 5000 wooden blocks to get better at fighting.

 

And now that I write this I realize that I could have saved my breath because this is probably just seen as "LBD-light", so no point.

I just dislike that it is not a perk tree. Just a random assortment of buffs basically. Either completely broken, or borderline useless (or early useful late useless or other way round)

[Krougal]

15 minutes ago, Viktoriusiii said:

Since they dislike LBD, maybe they can do it by setting requirements that are independent of levels:
"kill 500 zombies with a club" for "pummel Pete 4" 

"knock down 100 zombies with turrets" to unlock the scrap turrets

or or or.

Make it INTERESTING and not dependent on levels. This means you need to chose what path to go.

 

Honestly while I hate the whole levels and skills thing in general, to me this seems better than what we have now.

I didn't like the old LBD because it was more like LBSpamming, but this at least while very gamey seems to fit the current direction of the game (because this has become a very gamey game and less a sandbox). Sure it will still likely turn into LBS.

 

It does highlight what was really wrong with that system though (which could have been fixed too); because it still had xp and levels. So you could spam out stone axes and use that XP to learn other things.

 

Of course we are just   here.

[GlyphGryph]

What is "LBD"?

 

6 hours ago, Ramethzer0 said:

Rolling over to other skills you mention like Penetrator - I am currently running a fully perked Infiltrator with sniper rifles and the reason why people don't particularly care for it is because you can't use it 100% effectively 100% of the time.  If you're not lining up your shots then OFC it feels useless comparatively.   If you're using a rifle to breach a building, then its a sincere case of using the lesser effective tool for the wrong job.   You can use shotguns unperked to a greater effectiveness than a Rifle for a breaching action.  Therefore, saying Penetrator is the problem seems a little like throwing the blame for going for the poorer choice.   Lining up your shots w/ penetrator is really powerful, but lining up those shots requires a lot of area and base building knowledge.  If you're not taking advantage of your lines of sight, then you're not using rifle as effectively as it was coded in to be.

 

I just want to be clear - I didn't say Penetrator was bad, I actually think its exceptionally good, I said it was gated by things the player had no control over and without those things it did nothing, which is frustrating - specifically, finding the AP ammo crafting book, or finding enough AP ammo in stores (which I've found to be exceptionally rare unless, again, you've taken many levels of Better Barter, which makes it fairly common and is, I suppose, something the player has control of... but when the answer to every question about how to reliably make something work is "Take Better Barter", I think that's a problem). I had a previous game where I'd gotten to lv50 without any sign of the book, and having specced very heavily into Perception it was... it wasn't a good feeling that my only source of ammo was the occasional handful of bullets I could find from the trader, and even they were a once in a blue-blooded moon kind of deal.

Edited January 7, 2022 by GlyphGryph (see edit history)

[Krougal]

9 minutes ago, GlyphGryph said:

What is "LBD"?

 

 

I just want to be clear - I didn't say Penetrator was bad, I actually think its exceptionally good, I said it was gated by things the player had no control over and without those things it did nothing, which is frustrating - specifically, finding the AP ammo crafting book, or finding enough AP ammo in stores (which I've found to be exceptionally rare unless, again, you've taken many levels of Better Barter, which makes it fairly common and is, I suppose, something the player has control of... but when the answer to every question about how to reliably make something work is "Take Better Barter", I think that's a problem). I had a previous game where I'd gotten to lv50 without any sign of the book, and having specced very heavily into Perception (and Agility) it was... it wasn't a good feeling that my only source of ammo was the occasional handful of bullets I could find from the trader, and even they were a once in a blue-blooded moon kind of deal.

Learn By Doing. A16 you got better at skills by performing them. Oh, we had actual skills instead of the perks we have now.

Its detractors refer to it as Learn By Spamming, because you could spam crafting stone axes or other cheap @%$#, running and jumping everywhere, etc (IIRC we had an athletics skill back then). Besides getting better at that skill you also still got generic XP for generic levels (like we have now) so that added extra cheesiness.

 

I honestly don't really think any of the perks are bad, just some are not as good as others. If you made level...I want to say 273 you can buy all the skills but who the hell wants to grind that much?

Edited January 7, 2022 by Krougal (see edit history)

[GlyphGryph]

I'd like to see the argument that Infiltrator is not bad.

[Krougal]

24 minutes ago, GlyphGryph said:

I'd like to see the argument that Infiltrator is not bad.

Errr....Ahhh...Uhmmm...

Yeah, ok, infiltrator does suck pretty bad. Even the 3rd level is not worth the points, doubly so when the book to take no damage isn't that hard to get, and while I haven't tested it extensively, 50% damage from a mine is still probably lethal.

ok...I honestly don't think MOST of the perks are bad...

 

 

[Boidster]

2 hours ago, GlyphGryph said:

I didn't say Penetrator was bad, I actually think its exceptionally good, I said it was gated by things the player had no control over and without those things it did nothing, which is frustrating - specifically, finding the AP ammo crafting book, or finding enough AP ammo in stores

 

A tangent: Penetrator also applies to Iron and Steel arrows and crossbow bolts.

[John Black]

Firstly, I’m a strong proponent of LBD and absolutely hate the dumb down global XP for all systems. That being said, I also detest spam crafting. I think a hybrid system would work well where you can get better with a 9mm by using it and still have to XP grid for those spamable skills. You can even be more creative and limit spam crafting by only allowing limited XP towards the next level from crafting and the rest from repairing. Doable, sure, but I’m not holding my breath for this in any game in today’s day and age.

 

Secondly, there should be more skill trees. Having a specific weapon/tool/ability locked in a single tree is frustrating and I’m still confused if this is targeted towards single player or cooperative.

[Viktoriusiii]

Ignore an old mans rambling on LBD. Just letting out some steam.

Spoiler

38 minutes ago, John Black said:

That being said, I also detest spam crafting.

Great. Nobody does. I got great news: Spamcrafting was an issue of bad implementation, not of LBD

 

39 minutes ago, John Black said:

I think a hybrid system would work well where you can get better with a 9mm by using it and still have to XP grid for those spamable skills. You can even be more creative and limit spam crafting by only allowing limited XP towards the next level from crafting and the rest from repairing. Doable, sure, but I’m not holding my breath for this in any game in today’s day and age.

Soooo... A16 then? :'D

 

[Krougal]

38 minutes ago, John Black said:

Firstly, I’m a strong proponent of LBD and absolutely hate the dumb down global XP for all systems. That being said, I also detest spam crafting. I think a hybrid system would work well where you can get better with a 9mm by using it and still have to XP grid for those spamable skills. You can even be more creative and limit spam crafting by only allowing limited XP towards the next level from crafting and the rest from repairing. Doable, sure, but I’m not holding my breath for this in any game in today’s day and age.

 

Secondly, there should be more skill trees. Having a specific weapon/tool/ability locked in a single tree is frustrating and I’m still confused if this is targeted towards single player or cooperative.

No, this was exactly what we had in A16. Granted they could have polished it and made it better but they just ditched it.

 

As for your second point, It's hard to say. Multi-player they send mixed messages. There's been a lot of complaining lately about it not being geared for MP and they even admit it isn't their priority. The netcode sucks. OTOH the current perk trees are clearly biased towards MP. It was much easier to be a 1 man band back with the old skill system.

 

1 hour ago, Boidster said:

 

A tangent: Penetrator also applies to Iron and Steel arrows and crossbow bolts.

Good to know

[John Black]

4 minutes ago, Krougal said:

No, this was exactly what we had in A16. Granted they could have polished it and made it better but they just ditched it.

I stopped at A11 and started up again at A19. What was wrong with the LBD in the context of say pistol skills? So killing a zombie with a pistol will give you some pistol XP.

[Krougal]

1 minute ago, John Black said:

I stopped at A11 and started up again at A19. What was wrong with the LBD in the context of say pistol skills? So killing a zombie with a pistol will give you some pistol XP.

It also gave you XP XP. It had levels and skills. Like Asheron's Call if you remember that ancient MMO.

So your pistol skill went up and you also leveled and could use it on some completely unrelated skill.

Conversely, spam some safe crafting or the like and then level up your combat skills.

Granted some people could care less and some are really bothered by that. So even with the fans of LBD it's still hard to please everyone.

 

Personally I think you need a more complicated system for that too because not all skills are equal. A lot of things are binary; you either know how to do a thing or you don't but you aren't going to get a much different result from the next guy. Then there is diminishing returns because there is a world of difference between never having done "thing" to having done "thing" but then the differences between level of skill in someone who has done it 10x or 100x doesn't amount to much.

 

But then like @Viktoriusiii I am just another old man rambling.

[Roland]

39 minutes ago, Krougal said:

There's been a lot of complaining lately about it not being geared for MP and they even admit it isn't their priority.

 

To clarify: greater than 8 players multiplayer is not their priority. 2-8 player multiplayer is very much something they prioritize and think about and develop to and in all of my 4-player games with my family on our private server we've had a great experience. Please be clear that when you just say "MP" you are talking about 30 players or more on the same server. There is more than just that kind of MP and TFP does have MP gameplay prioritized for up to 8 players at once.

[John Black]

@Krougal - Thanks for the A16 update and yeah, a more complex system would be what’s needed to get it to work. Nothing more satisfying than seeing that 0.001XP ticking over. Anyways, this old man will keep on hoping for something better than what we have currently, but he’ll not be holding his breath.

[Pernicious]

2 hours ago, John Black said:

I stopped at A11 and started up again at A19. What was wrong with the LBD in the context of say pistol skills? So killing a zombie with a pistol will give you some pistol XP.

 

Tangent, but your post was what gave me the idea... you know, it would be funny if this forum has a "search by latest Alpha version  feature".

 

So you know, when they chang the skilling system, we can go back to see what people thought of the old system when it first came out. Get rid of learn by doing? Go back and see the feedback when learn by doing first came out. 

 

I think it'd be very illustrative. 

[Roland]

22 minutes ago, Pernicious said:

 

Tangent, but your post was what gave me the idea... you know, it would be funny if this forum has a "search by latest Alpha version  feature".

 

So you know, when they chang the skilling system, we can go back to see what people thought of the old system when it first came out. Get rid of learn by doing? Go back and see the feedback when learn by doing first came out. 

 

I think it'd be very illustrative. 

 

There was no one alpha when LBD came out. It was a process of development that evolved over several alphas. For example, in Alpha 11 there were no skills at all. There was only quality of tools and weapons and as you crafted them they increased in quality with a plus or minus 50 modifier to keep things somewhat variable. That was it. Then in Alpha 12 - 16 there were alterations and additions made. In some alphas you got xp for killing zombies and then they removed that and then brought it back. They tried a few iterations of crafting to get better at crafting (spam crafting) all the way to Alpha 15 when they changed it to only working in a workstation so people were babysitting their workstations and then A16 they removed spam crafting for higher quality completely but still had LBD for a number of skills. After all this experimentation from A11 to A16 with various forms and hybrids of LBD they decided to go with the more Fallout-esque system we have now.

 

A14 was probably the pinnacle of LBD crafting for better quality tools before it started diminishing and A16 the pinnacle of LBD skills before it was dropped but there really isn't one Alpha you can point to and say "This is where they turned LBD on"

 

To be honest, the chatter back then was much like it is now. People unhappy with whatever the current system was would come and post and those who liked it would defend it. There has never been 100% consensus by the player base of everyone being happy with the system. When Alpha 11 hit and tools and weapons had quality that was dependent upon how many times you crafted that tool it significantly changed the way the game was played by many people. So we had a lot of people who enjoyed the grind of making 100 stone axes and we had a lot of people who hated it but did it anyway. There were even some who tried their best to just keep playing normally (normally being how they played in Alpha 10 and below) and just let their tool and weapon qualities advance slowly over time even though the temptation to rush the progression was definitely something new in the game.

 

Edited January 8, 2022 by Roland (see edit history)

[Krougal]

I thought A16 was still the height of LBD but I'll defer to Roland's memory being better than mine so anything I said that contradicts he is most likely correct.

Even though I've been playing since possibly A7 or earlier, a lot of things just blend together after so many years.

 

[Pernicious]

24 minutes ago, Roland said:

 

To be honest, the chatter back then was much like it is now. People unhappy with whatever the current system was would come and post and those who liked it would defend it. There has never been 100% consensus by the player base of everyone being happy with the system.

 

Yeah, I guess that was my point - For people to be able to search that, and see that it's impossible to keep everyone happy, and that this iteration, it just happened to be their turn to be unhappy.

 

[eXSe]

Dumbing down is my point of contention. I would just hate to see this game go full arcade mode 🙁

[Darklegend222]

19 hours ago, Viktoriusiii said:

Prefix:

TFPs have said again and again since the very early types they don't care about balancing (okay to be fair focusing on developing the game rather than focusing on balancing on features that might not be around in the end is usually a good thing... just not if this short period goes on for over 8 years 😕 )

 

So since this is a balancing issue and different people say different things (like my previous poster saying that clubs are best, when on high difficulties I play on the machete is without a doubt the 1st place. Not even close. And the stun baton closely behind (moving up there once you knock every Z down with the mod)

 

 

 

But since we are on the topic, I will give my opinion on what needs to change:

Perkrequirements. Good lord I hate level gating, but this is a close second. It is the epitomy of "we don't want you to have this too soon, but we didn't know how to make it happen, so go out there and level". In an RPG (which this is NOT, but won't open that can of worms again) this can work. In a sandbox, it just feels cheap.

 

Since they dislike LBD, maybe they can do it by setting requirements that are independent of levels:
"kill 500 zombies with a club" for "pummel Pete 4" 

"knock down 100 zombies with turrets" to unlock the scrap turrets

or or or.

Make it INTERESTING and not dependent on levels. This means you need to chose what path to go.

And not having a motorbike because you want to get a farm going... feels bad.

While TECHNICIALLY it doesn't matter if you are farming xp or doing a "challenge", you are working towards a specific goal and need to do various things.

While XP is so general... it feels ike it comes out of nothing. And you still need to grind the xp... you can just chose to build 5000 wooden blocks to get better at fighting.

 

And now that I write this I realize that I could have saved my breath because this is probably just seen as "LBD-light", so no point.

I just dislike that it is not a perk tree. Just a random assortment of buffs basically. Either completely broken, or borderline useless (or early useful late useless or other way round)

I've reached the point where if I need to level up I just start building a new horde base design or rebuilding previous ones. Need that perk to make better food and I'm not in the mood for a horde base? Here's concrete 11x11x5 block.. ooh 4 perk points.

 

A LBD system where you have to get a requirement of kills as you said would be absolutely perfect for weapons. I'm not sure how to go about farming, maybe harvesting 100-150 plants? This is just a general discussion and the devs more than likely won't listen to it, but I think a modder would take up the challenge.

 

We should have the option of being able to take the perk before reaching the free perk requirement in case we don't mind wasting a skill point for an instant buff.

 

The biggest issue is that everything is so heavily perk reliant, you can't do a lot without perks unless you manage to get lucky and find schematics of everything you require. Otherwise its perking into many, many different trees.

[GlyphGryph]

16 hours ago, Roland said:

To be honest, the chatter back then was much like it is now. People unhappy with whatever the current system was would come and post and those who liked it would defend it. There has never been 100% consensus by the player base of everyone being happy with the system. When Alpha 11 hit and tools and weapons had quality that was dependent upon how many times you crafted that tool it significantly changed the way the game was played by many people. So we had a lot of people who enjoyed the grind of making 100 stone axes and we had a lot of people who hated it but did it anyway. There were even some who tried their best to just keep playing normally (normally being how they played in Alpha 10 and below) and just let their tool and weapon qualities advance slowly over time even though the temptation to rush the progression was definitely something new in the game.

 

 

I do want to say I'm actually fairly happy with the current system as a system. I think the game could do better by, say, playing to the games strengths and integrating the questing/POI system more directly somehow (I would love if every 5-level skill had one point that required you to complete a special quest at a special POI to get that bonus point or something just because I always want more reasons to do quests at cool new locations instead of the same old ones), but my complaints so far haven't really been with the system but rather with many of the specific skills being very weak, sometimes weak and niche, while others (especially int skills in single player) are incredibly powerful. I'd most just like to see many of the skills be more impactful and noticeable.

I'm not a big fan of LBD systems, for what its worth, and I overall like the current system of earning experience and spending points. That part is fine.

Edited January 8, 2022 by GlyphGryph (see edit history)

[Boidster]

I'm tellin' ya...I'm TELLIN ya....1 perk point for every 24 hours survived. Maybe an extra perk point or two for surviving BMH. Eliminate XP entirely. This is the way. Building, looting, crafting, questing - all of it is only to support the survival goal. This would be my preferred way to play so obviously it is objectively the best option.  

 

Oh, but then I can just get a stash of food and drink and AFK in my base for 3 days and 3 points!

Sure, why not! Is that fun for you? Do you enjoy games where you don't really interact with the game at all, you just get "levels"? Have fun, then! And frankly, finding food & water and hunkering down in a safe spot isn't the stupidest way to try to survive a zombie apocalypse. Doesn't make for a fun game IMO, but IMO is not IYO so knock yourself out.

 

I'd contribute to the Venmo account of a modder who built such an overhaul after the game goes gold.

Edited January 8, 2022 by Boidster (see edit history)

[Roland]

19 minutes ago, Boidster said:

I'd contribute to the Venmo account of a modder who built such an overhaul after the game goes gold.

I’d turn over all control and credit for my 0XP mod to a boidster with the skill and passion to fix it and improve it….

 

Oxp Boidmod has a nice ring to it!