Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[RipClaw]

29 minutes ago, Jost Amman said:

How?

For example by adjusting the drop rate of the magazines so that even if you spend half of the week with building of mining you can still keep up with the gamestage. This should work for the majority of players.

[Callum123456789]

22 minutes ago, RipClaw said:

For example by adjusting the drop rate of the magazines so that even if you spend half of the week with building of mining you can still keep up with the gamestage. This should work for the majority of players.

I know some people get annoyed at this but I'm gonna hop on the mods band wagon and say that there will likely be mods that increase the drop rate of those magazines or their abundance.

[RipClaw]

4 minutes ago, Callum123456789 said:

I know some people get annoyed at this but I'm gonna hop on the mods band wagon and say that there will likely be mods that increase the drop rate of those magazines or their abundance.

Quite likely. In addition, you can also increase the drop rate via the loot abundance setting. Or you can decrease it if you feel that it's going too fast. This might be the case if someone is looting 24/7. Extreme play styles are always problematic for balancing.

 

 

 

[meganoth]

11 hours ago, khzmusik said:

 

I hope you realize that was a joke quote from Futurama, I didn't mean it literally.

 

But also, that response is a "you" problem. It doesn't matter whether the team is willing to take risks and experiment, if the end result is a product that is just as bad as a team that is driven by delivery dates and known mechanics.

 

An analogy. Let's say developer A works 60 hours per week because they're "crunching" trying to get a game done before its pre-determined ship date. Developer B works 60 hours per week because it's part of the culture to make a game that is as good as possible, regardless of ship dates.

 

Which developer has a better work environment? Neither. Both are working 60 hours per week, and that's a problem, no matter why they're being told to do it. If a company expects them to work these hours, they should quit.

 

So it is with game mechanics. Players don't (and shouldn't) care whether a team is willing to take risks and experiment. They care about whether they get a game that is fun to play.

 

Then players also shouldn't care in which way the team is reaching that goal. But they do. 😉 Taking risks and trying out new mechanics is not a choice. It is a necessity as players get used to the same mechanics, Remember how the real-time strategy genre almost went away because there was no innovation anymore and every new RTS game was the same in slightly different graphics?

 

11 hours ago, khzmusik said:

 

This change doesn't seem fun to me. Let me ask: What problem is this solving? How is the current game mechanic "broken" in a way that needs to be "fixed?"

11 hours ago, khzmusik said:

Furthermore - if this really is a better game mechanic, then why not use it for everything? Why not get rid of XP and skill points altogether, and make "learning by looting" the only way to progress in anything?

 

EDIT: I can think of one way in which the current system is broken. Once you spec into a certain skill tree, and can craft higher quality items, you can no longer craft lower quality items (because e.g. you don't have enough resources). I guess this system kind of solves that issue - you can choose to not read the magazines, and just store them up until after you crafted the lower quality item.

 

You only see half of the brokenness here: In the old crafting system this also meant the progression was in big jumps, part of the progression was never reached. Lets say you can craft a double barrel shotgun of quality 4 soon because you put 3 points into shotguns. Then you put one point into shotguns, get the pump shotgun recipe and immediately the next step is a quality 5 pump shotgun.

 

So lets assume you have a smooth progression through looting. But here is that big jump that never makes crafting a low quality pump or auto-shotgun possible or necessary. In a well-balanced game there would be a big gap between the time you can craft that q4 double barrel and that q5 pump. And another just as big jump when you find the auto shotgun recipe. I have never ever crafted a quality 1 2 or 3 tier2 or 3 weapon, one reason being I couldn't but the other reason being I wouldn't even if I could because that higher quality tier3 weapon was at worst 1 or 2 loot runs or a trader visit away (for the parts) and most of the time already possible.

 

I would not consider the whole crafting system broken because of this, but it is certainly a big drawback or fault of that system.

 

11 hours ago, khzmusik said:

 

But that's a hell of a big change to solve that issue, especially when it could be solved much easier by just putting a quality selector in the crafting window, needing only a couple UI tweaks and probably a few minor C# changes.

 

 

Edited February 6, 2023 by meganoth (see edit history)

[WhiteLion]

@faatal in my opinion the biggest disadvantage is the multiplayer sync problem. As soon as I play with 3 or people on a privat server and some more zombies are spawned in the attacking movements of the zeds get out of sync. The zed beat animation is before or after the hit will occur  - with a noticeable delay / a-sync. We do not have any potato as clients nor the server is a potato. - Will there be fixes for this in A21 or in future?

[Doomofman]

The zombies hitting at weird points of the animation happens in single player too, I guess it'd be made worse by MP though

[Roland]

31 minutes ago, WhiteLion said:

@faatal in my opinion the biggest disadvantage is the multiplayer sync problem. As soon as I play with 3 or people on a privat server and some more zombies are spawned in the attacking movements of the zeds get out of sync. The zed beat animation is before or after the hit will occur  - with a noticeable delay / a-sync. We do not have any potato as clients nor the server is a potato. - Will there be fixes for this in A21 or in future?

 

When you say "private server" are you talking about a dedicated server that is password protected to keep it private or are you talking about one person hosting the others on their own personal rig while they are playing as well? There is a huge difference in required specs to be able to host others on your own computer. It would be great for them to be able to improve things to the point that person to person multiplayer could work buttery smooth but it may end up being something not recommended for more than two players.

 

There are four of us who play on a dedicated server and we never suffer those delays. But if even just two of us decide to play directly hosted by the other then the client almost always suffers from those types of delays. Adding more players would make it worse.

[RipClaw]

5 hours ago, meganoth said:

I have never ever crafted a quality 1 2 or 3 tier2 or 3 weapon, one reason being I couldn't but the other reason being I wouldn't even if I could because that higher quality tier3 weapon was at worst 1 or 2 loot runs or a trader visit away (for the parts) and most of the time already possible.

There is another reason why you don't want to build a Q3 weapon. You often only have enough parts for one weapon and don't want to risk that you won't find enough parts later to build the higher quality weapon. So you save the parts for the Q5 gun. Q4 makes no sense anyway because the number of modslots is identical to Q3 and the additional damage is negligible most of the time.

 

[meganoth]

54 minutes ago, RipClaw said:

There is another reason why you don't want to build a Q3 weapon. You often only have enough parts for one weapon and don't want to risk that you won't find enough parts later to build the higher quality weapon. So you save the parts for the Q5 gun. Q4 makes no sense anyway because the number of modslots is identical to Q3 and the additional damage is negligible most of the time.

 

 

Yes. A big improvement to the progression could be to increase the damage jump between Q3 and Q4 and decrease or even remove the damage jump from Q4 to Q5 (likewise for the other quality level jumps). I wouldn't be surprised if this were either already implemented or on a to-do list of the developers. Before it made almost no difference as you didn't craft most weapons but just used what dropped in a POI, but in A21 those jumps in progression would be more noticable due to a smoother progression overall and more crafting.

 

 

Edited February 6, 2023 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Dimasic-Colbasic]

Dear developers, I beg you to add the possibility to have a time wolf, as you wanted to do before. Please guys, I was really looking forward to this pet system. I was dreaming about my four-legged companion. Please, I am ready to buy 10 copies of the games on different accounts or give them to you personally, if only you guys add the ability to tame a wolf or a dog

 

 

Edited February 6, 2023 by meganoth
correcting a likely mistake in quoting (see edit history)

[Laz Man]

10 hours ago, Callum123456789 said:

I know some people get annoyed at this but I'm gonna hop on the mods band wagon and say that there will likely be mods that increase the drop rate of those magazines or their abundance.

 

Once the dust settles, I think most will like the crafting magazine system.  It will also be moddable so I am sure modders will enjoy thinking of new ways to use it as well to enhance their sensibilities.

 

Some of the first mods will most likely those that increase/decrease thresholds for unlocks.

[Space4Ace]

1 hour ago, Dimasic-Colbasic said:

Dear developers, I beg you to add the possibility to have a time wolf, as you wanted to do before. Please guys, I was really looking forward to this pet system. I was dreaming about my four-legged companion. Please, I am ready to buy 10 copies of the games on different accounts or give them to you personally, if only you guys add the ability to tame a wolf or a dog

 

 

I don't think it will ever happen. We have the drone as a "pet". The drone follows you and helps you (and even gets in the way sometimes), like any tamed pets would do.

Roland can probably answer this better than I can; but if my memory recalls correctly, it's not planned anymore.

[Roland]

3 minutes ago, Space4Ace said:

I don't think it will ever happen. We have the drone as a "pet". The drone follows you and helps you (and even gets in the way sometimes), like any tamed pets would do.

Roland can probably answer this better than I can; but if my memory recalls correctly, it's not planned anymore.

 

I already offered to buy 20 copies of the game on different accounts and give them to the devs and their children and grandchildren if they would only add ziplines so the line starts behind me...

[RipClaw]

3 hours ago, meganoth said:

Before it made almost no difference as you didn't craft most weapons but just used what dropped in a POI, but in A21 those jumps in progression would be more noticable due to a smoother progression overall and more crafting.

I hope we can find enough parts for it. An upgrade system similar to the one in Undead Legacy would also be nice.

[ArakATK]

What I've thought would be cool from the start of hearing about learn by reading, is if, say, the last magazine in the Shotguns category allowed you to, at great cost, create Shotgun Parts, allowing you to make more of those shotguns. Might solve some of those issues ... might even be easier to control since the magazines will be gating steel also, so even if you gave the ability earlier, it'd still be wildly expensive to craft if you haven't progressed enough along both Shotguns and forging to be able to make it.

[khzmusik]

23 hours ago, Laz Man said:

 

It has been stated by Joel and many others several times already.  Crafting progression is broken (e.g. crafting perks grant specific qualities of all types of items within a category) and largely has been less significant compared to other activities for several alphas now.  With this change, there is a smoother crafting unlock curve AND players can engage in more crafting since now they don't need to have a specific perk just to unlock higher quality crafts.

 

I do remember seeing some of this, thanks for reminding me.  @meganothand @Roland also brought up some good points, including the "jump" in crafting level.

 

But, I never thought "they don't need to have a specific perk" was a flaw, I thought it was a feature, because that's the entire point of skill trees. You have to put points into a "branch" skill in order to gain abilities in the "leaves." Otherwise 7D2D wouldn't have attributes at all, and all the perks would be on one screen. It was a form of artificial scarcity that forced the player into making choices.

 

And, in the end, that's what really upsets me about this change. It takes the choice out of players' hands. Their crafting skills are going to be dependent upon RWG instead. Having anything depend solely upon RWG is never as much fun as being able to make a choice - even if it's a bad choice.

 

EDIT: As an example - there are mods out there which separate crafting into a different skill tree. You have to spend more skill points to craft items, but they balance that by making skill points a bit easier to come by. I would prefer something like this rather than being forced to rely on looting.

 

Plus, it actually exacerbates what I think is the real reason players didn't craft very much: by the time they could craft a high (or even medium) tier item, they were already finding higher quality items in loot. For instance, I don't know if I ever put a point into armor, because I was finding Tier 6 cloth armor in loot before I even had a skill point to spare. This, to me, is a much larger issue than any of the others that have been raised.

 

For this reason, the crafting skills usually became a kind of "backup" in case RWG failed you. Put a point into (say) pistols so you craft a Tier 2 pipe pistol to hold you over until you inevitably found a Tier 6 pipe pistol in loot.

 

Now, by making crafting depend upon looting, it seems like you're making this situation worse. Will you find enough magazines to craft a Tier 5 pipe pistol before you start finding Tier 5 pipe pistols in loot (including quest loot)? Or will you have even more of a chance to find a Tier 5 pipe pistol, because the game is forcing you to do more looting?

 

...But I probably won't change anyone's mind now, and I've made my point, so after this post I'll drop it.

Edited February 7, 2023 by khzmusik (see edit history)

[meganoth]

32 minutes ago, khzmusik said:

 

I do remember seeing some of this, thanks for reminding me.  @meganothand @Roland also brought up some good points, including the "jump" in crafting level.

 

But, I never thought "they don't need to have a specific perk" was a flaw, I thought it was a feature, because that's the entire point of skill trees. You have to put points into a "branch" skill in order to gain abilities in the "leaves." Otherwise 7D2D wouldn't have attributes at all, and all the perks would be on one screen. It was a form of artificial scarcity that forced the player into making choices.

 

One flaw of the perk scheme I can think of is the double buff. You put a point into pistols. That buffs your damage but ALSO buffs your crafting of pistols giving you potentially a better pistol as well, buffing your damage. It makes no sense for one perk giving you two different effects that both essentially do the same, increasing your damage and handling, Thereby doubling the progression each point into the perk gives you.

 

Didn't matter in A20 because crafting was seldom usable but imagine a better balanced crafting in the game and it would be a real flaw.

 

32 minutes ago, khzmusik said:

 

And, in the end, that's what really upsets me about this change. It takes the choice out of players' hands. Their crafting skills are going to be dependent upon RWG instead. Having anything depend solely upon RWG is never as much fun as being able to make a choice - even if it's a bad choice.

 

EDIT: As an example - there are mods out there which separate crafting into a different skill tree. You have to spend more skill points to craft items, but they balance that by making skill points a bit easier to come by. I would prefer something like this rather than being forced to rely on looting.

 

Plus, it actually exacerbates what I think is the real reason players didn't craft very much: by the time they could craft a high (or even medium) tier item, they were already finding higher quality items in loot. For instance, I don't know if I ever put a point into armor, because I was finding Tier 6 cloth armor in loot before I even had a skill point to spare. This, to me, is a much larger issue than any of the others that have been raised.

 

For this reason, the crafting skills usually became a kind of "backup" in case RWG failed you. Put a point into (say) pistols so you craft a Tier 2 pipe pistol to hold you over until you inevitably found a Tier 6 pipe pistol in loot.

 

Now, by making crafting depend upon looting, it seems like you're making this situation worse. Will you find enough magazines to craft a Tier 5 pipe pistol before you start finding Tier 5 pipe pistols in loot (including quest loot)? Or will you have even more of a chance to find a Tier 5 pipe pistol, because the game is forcing you to do more looting?

 

...But I probably won't change anyone's mind now, and I've made my point, so after this post I'll drop it.

 

Edited February 7, 2023 by meganoth (see edit history)

[ArakATK]

32 minutes ago, khzmusik said:

 

I do remember seeing some of this, thanks for reminding me.  @meganothand @Roland also brought up some good points, including the "jump" in crafting level.

 

But, I never thought "they don't need to have a specific perk" was a flaw, I thought it was a feature, because that's the entire point of skill trees. You have to put points into a "branch" skill in order to gain abilities in the "leaves." Otherwise 7D2D wouldn't have attributes at all, and all the perks would be on one screen. It was a form of artificial scarcity that forced the player into making choices.

 

And, in the end, that's what really upsets me about this change. It takes the choice out of players' hands. Their crafting skills are going to be dependent upon RWG instead. Having anything depend solely upon RWG is never as much fun as being able to make a choice - even if it's a bad choice.

 

EDIT: As an example - there are mods out there which separate crafting into a different skill tree. You have to spend more skill points to craft items, but they balance that by making skill points a bit easier to come by. I would prefer something like this rather than being forced to rely on looting.

 

Plus, it actually exacerbates what I think is the real reason players didn't craft very much: by the time they could craft a high (or even medium) tier item, they were already finding higher quality items in loot. For instance, I don't know if I ever put a point into armor, because I was finding Tier 6 cloth armor in loot before I even had a skill point to spare. This, to me, is a much larger issue than any of the others that have been raised.

 

For this reason, the crafting skills usually became a kind of "backup" in case RWG failed you. Put a point into (say) pistols so you craft a Tier 2 pipe pistol to hold you over until you inevitably found a Tier 6 pipe pistol in loot.

 

Now, by making crafting depend upon looting, it seems like you're making this situation worse. Will you find enough magazines to craft a Tier 5 pipe pistol before you start finding Tier 5 pipe pistols in loot (including quest loot)? Or will you have even more of a chance to find a Tier 5 pipe pistol, because the game is forcing you to do more looting?

 

...But I probably won't change anyone's mind now, and I've made my point, so after this post I'll drop it.

Reading this I'm struck by the realization that when trying to explain why the devs shouldn't be doing what they're doing, the community here is very quick to recognize how interconnected all the systems are, and how nuanced the art of balancing is.. But when it comes time for TFP to make several major changes at once, suddenly it's all very simple, and learn by reading is entirely based on RNG. It's not, you know. It's been stated from the beginning that the magazines you're looting are 1) more plentiful than the books of A20 etc, and 2) drops are weighted based on perk investment into related trees and skills. Books and schematics were completely RNG. They're dialing back some of that RNG, and you're mad because it's ... RNG? I mean yes, there's some RNG in it... obviously.. but as far as the magazines go from my understanding, however many "types" of magazine there are, that's all you can drop, it's not like there's 500 new items to drop, there's just one for each magazine type, and it's weighted by your skill investment, so with a small pool of possibilities, even a paltry weighting of the drops would probably yield a very pronounced effect on the drops. As opposed to just looting as many book stores as you can PRAYING that this time you'll get that auto shotgun schematic you've been hunting for.

 

From my understanding at the high end, where it really matters, this is WAY less RNG than schematics. At the low end it's way more RNG, but at the low end it doesn't really matter, if you're specced for shotguns it doesn't matter as much if you use your rifle parts to make a sniper rifle, or a hunting rifle, because either of them is going to be unweildy for you, but still valuable to have. But as you progress you'll get those shotgun magazines faster and faster as your skill investment improves, you'll see that payoff faster, and if you pass those magazines to your team's person perked into crafting speed, then they'll be getting those books from multiple shotgun wielders, meaning you'll get to auto shotties way faster than just hoping and praying for RNG. 

 

Partner that with skill changes, loot table balancing, reworks to traders and loot staging, and we can't predict what will come out with A21. But they and their testers have it in hand. I do hope you'll all be just as active here talking about these changes after we've got them in hand, because right now our opinions mean nothing because they aren't informed. You don't know anything to base your opinion of it being a bad idea on. You're guessing, but they've played it, and first hand information trumps armchair quarterbacks any day of the week.

[Mister Forgash]

I think it's also worth mentioning again that the magazines you loot is also affected by the PoI you're in, giving you an additional means of influencing what you'll be finding while making your run.

I understand concerns that crafting might not keep pace with looting, but we've also heard with loot and trader rebalancing to coincide with this change, and finally, the play testers are claiming they're doing way more crafting.. I mean, I guess they could be lying.. but they seem like trustworthy enough folks.

I'm just very eager to see when a date gets pinned down that 21 can be released to the public and we can feel for ourselves the impact of the changes.

Too much doom and gloom, not enough wait and see.

[Roland]

1 hour ago, khzmusik said:

 

But, I never thought "they don't need to have a specific perk" was a flaw, I thought it was a feature, because that's the entire point of skill trees. You have to put points into a "branch" skill in order to gain abilities in the "leaves." Otherwise 7D2D wouldn't have attributes at all, and all the perks would be on one screen. It was a form of artificial scarcity that forced the player into making choices.

 

Mostly all the same trees and leaves from A20 are still there but instead of unlocking recipes they add greater ability when taking action as a player. Wherever a perk was mostly just a recipe unlock it is now a skill increase for that action and in many cases an increased chance to find magazines and parts needed for crafting.

 

1 hour ago, khzmusik said:

And, in the end, that's what really upsets me about this change. It takes the choice out of players' hands. Their crafting skills are going to be dependent upon RWG instead. Having anything depend solely upon RWG is never as much fun as being able to make a choice - even if it's a bad choice.

 

EDIT: As an example - there are mods out there which separate crafting into a different skill tree. You have to spend more skill points to craft items, but they balance that by making skill points a bit easier to come by. I would prefer something like this rather than being forced to rely on looting.

 

It does do this to some extent. I am absolutely certain that people who are used to rushing all the recipes to T3 are going to feel frustration at not having the control to optimize their gear progression as quickly as they are used to being able to do it. It won't matter that they are finding magazines regularly and incrementally working their way up the tiers. I think that most people who don't care about rushing will find the pace enjoyable-- but I could be wrong, of course. 

 

In this case I'm going to say the R word and say that it is actually more realistic that the players are learning to craft from reading about it rather than by spending points or even by the A16 LBD. Repetitive practice gets you really good at doing things you already know how to do but they do not reveal new knowledge you don't already have. Skillpoints earned from doing a variety of survival actions can be thought of has general knowledge that can increase your survival skills but they wouldn't reveal the secret of how to make or craft something you've never made before. But finding old world knowledge by piecing together parts of articles from magazines absolutely could be a way to learn new knowledge. 

 

I know that people are judging the new magazine feature by what they've experienced in the past with books and schematics in this game. The magazines are nothing like those. I played Darkness Falls since I was curious about how similar the magazine feature is to that mod. It is nothing like it.

 

1 hour ago, khzmusik said:

Plus, it actually exacerbates what I think is the real reason players didn't craft very much: by the time they could craft a high (or even medium) tier item, they were already finding higher quality items in loot. For instance, I don't know if I ever put a point into armor, because I was finding Tier 6 cloth armor in loot before I even had a skill point to spare. This, to me, is a much larger issue than any of the others that have been raised.

 

It is completely counter-intuitive because it does seem as though this change would mean less crafting and more getting gear in loot but it is just not the case. I craft all the time now. I very rarely find something better than I can craft and those moments are cool because they are so rare. There are more parts and knowledge being found than actual full working weapons. When you do find a weapon it is usually something you already have so you scrap it for parts so you can craft the next higher tier. It completely returns crafting as a pillar to the game and at the same time it makes looting a lot more rewarding and fun. I think many people who don't like looting in A20 and below will suddenly find it more appealing in A21 and beyond.

 

2 hours ago, khzmusik said:

Now, by making crafting depend upon looting, it seems like you're making this situation worse. Will you find enough magazines to craft a Tier 5 pipe pistol before you start finding Tier 5 pipe pistols in loot (including quest loot)? Or will you have even more of a chance to find a Tier 5 pipe pistol, because the game is forcing you to do more looting?

 

You might find a tier 5 pistol rarely before you can craft one if pistols aren't something you perked into. But most of the time you absolutely will be crafting stuff before you find it. Of course, that will also be affected by where you scavenge. If you head into the wasteland early on then you will have a much better chance at finding better loot than you can craft but that will be a choice you will be making. But even then the ratio of working guns to parts to magazines in loot is more towards parts and magazines.

 

[khzmusik]

1 hour ago, Roland said:

It is completely counter-intuitive because it does seem as though this change would mean less crafting and more getting gear in loot but it is just not the case. I craft all the time now. I very rarely find something better than I can craft and those moments are cool because they are so rare. There are more parts and knowledge being found than actual full working weapons. When you do find a weapon it is usually something you already have so you scrap it for parts so you can craft the next higher tier. It completely returns crafting as a pillar to the game and at the same time it makes looting a lot more rewarding and fun. I think many people who don't like looting in A20 and below will suddenly find it more appealing in A21 and beyond.

 

I'm glad to hear that my main issue with crafting vs. looting seems to be rebalanced now.

 

In any case - it just occurred to me that if I really don't like the RNG aspect of it, it should be pretty easy to make the magazines craftable. You know, magazines and schematics could scrap to "skill pages" which could be used in recipes for the crafting magazines. So if you want to craft a shotgun, you wouldn't have to wait for RNG to give you a shotgun magazine, you could scrap other magazines (pistols, spears, whatever) and craft a shotgun magazine from the skill pages. Several mods already do something similar.

 

There would still be a little bit of RWG (since you'd need to find some magazines/schematics in the first place), but it would allow players to choose which crafting magazines they'd prefer to read (or "spec into").

 

So either way I'm probably good. I'll wait until I play A21 to see if such a mod would be an improvement.

[Laz Man]

3 hours ago, khzmusik said:

But, I never thought "they don't need to have a specific perk" was a flaw, I thought it was a feature, because that's the entire point of skill trees. You have to put points into a "branch" skill in order to gain abilities in the "leaves." Otherwise 7D2D wouldn't have attributes at all, and all the perks would be on one screen. It was a form of artificial scarcity that forced the player into making choices.

 

I agree, I don't consider the previous design of unlocking recipes via perks a flaw.  They basically were an alternative method for acquiring specific recipes apart from looting.  I can empathize with the worry of those who enjoyed using that alternative method as it certainly was one way to progress crafting.  Although players will no longer be able to XP grind / Perk unlock their favorite crafting recipes anymore, I personally hope the new crafting progression system along with many other related changes will be a net positive experience.  (e.g. extra skill points to allocate elsewhere since no longer needed for unlocking recipes,  experience a wider range of crafts per playthrough, etc.)

 

As far as the entire point of the skill trees, I don't believe it's main point was to segment crafting.  Crafting unlocks was just a secondary benefit to it IMO.

 

4 hours ago, khzmusik said:

Plus, it actually exacerbates what I think is the real reason players didn't craft very much: by the time they could craft a high (or even medium) tier item, they were already finding higher quality items in loot. For instance, I don't know if I ever put a point into armor, because I was finding Tier 6 cloth armor in loot before I even had a skill point to spare. This, to me, is a much larger issue than any of the others that have been raised.

 

Agreed, loot and trader stock is still being balanced accordingly as well.

 

 

[RipClaw]

3 hours ago, Mister Forgash said:

I think it's also worth mentioning again that the magazines you loot is also affected by the PoI you're in, giving you an additional means of influencing what you'll be finding while making your run.

Actually, it's more the kind of crate that determines what kind of magazines you find. If you find a working stiff crate in an apartment building, it has the same loot table as the working stiff crate in a working stiff or on a construction site.

 

3 hours ago, Mister Forgash said:

I understand concerns that crafting might not keep pace with looting, but we've also heard with loot and trader rebalancing to coincide with this change, and finally, the play testers are claiming they're doing way more crafting.. I mean, I guess they could be lying.. but they seem like trustworthy enough folks.

It's more the concern that you can't keep up with the gamestage if you don't loot enough.

 

Nobody is implying that the test players are lying, but there are things we don't know.

 

For example, we don't know the playstyle of the test players. We don't know how much time they spend looting and how much time they spend doing other activities. We don't know how often they do quests or if they do quests at all. All this has an impact on progress, which in turn affects balancing based on feedback from the test players.

 

Let's say the test players loot a lot on average and spend little time on other activities. Then the balancing will take this into account so that the developers get the desired progress. Players who loot significantly less and spend more time on other activities will therefore have a slower progress.

 

[Laz Man]

31 minutes ago, khzmusik said:

In any case - it just occurred to me that if I really don't like the RNG aspect of it, it should be pretty easy to make the magazines craftable. You know, magazines and schematics could scrap to "skill pages" which could be used in recipes for the crafting magazines. So if you want to craft a shotgun, you wouldn't have to wait for RNG to give you a shotgun magazine, you could scrap other magazines (pistols, spears, whatever) and craft a shotgun magazine from the skill pages. Several mods already do something similar.

 

That idea once crossed my mind.  I certainly can understand the appeal and convenience but its too early to see if something like that is even needed.  Keep in mind magazines can also be purchased from the trader and received as quest rewards.  Additionally, it is just a method that encourages mindless grinding (e.g. just loot 1000 skill pages from mailboxes and learn how to craft an M60).

 

If more methods to acquire magazines were needed, I would prefer something more immersive like a limited late game quests that players can engage in versus some magical magazine recycler.  Any idea of the sort is cart before the horse talk until A21 is experienced by the public.

Edited February 7, 2023 by Laz Man (see edit history)

[DuHast_Play]

Good day to all!
Please clarify if there is any news regarding alpha 21? and there is a question. Will past worlds still be active? Or the saves will fly off after the update? I've been playing for a little over a month just ... thanks in advance