Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[Archer]

Hi, I'm brand new to the forum, can I get a bit of clarification about something? 
My group can run anywhere between 10-30 people, with sometimes almost all 30 of us playing at once together (we have a robust dedicated server with resources that seem to manage this quite well by the way, although the frame rate does drop a bit during blood moons still) but in the 900+ hours I've played, our group always organized itself in such a way that it could cater to a variety of different people's preferences in playstyles.
Some would stay home at the base, and work on building or designing, or upgrading the base. 
Some would stay home and mostly farm, and help stock food to feed such a large crowd. 
Some would go out to hunt, usually pairing off with a partner who tracks. 
Some would go around looting, and either take the lucky looter perk, or the salvage operations perk and eventually they would all end up getting both over time. 
Some liked to go do quests for the trader and climb the rewards tree with them. 
Some honestly were happy just throwing some music on, hopping into a hole in the ground and mining til their hearts were content. 
The question that I have is this: if the individuals who stay at the base and focus on construction have to rely on the folks who go out and do the looting to find the books & magazines they'll need to progress, won't those fall drastically behind in progression rate over time? Because the folks who do most of the looting are spec'd into something that is increasing their odds of finding the books/mags, but people who are working on the base crafting and making bullets, upgrading walls, etc. are going to see the books their looting friends bring back to them in small numbers than their more loot oriented playmates are. The only way around this is to have the guys who go out looting to also spec into the same thing the folks who stay behind to work on the base have spec'd into which seems redundant/unfavorable. 

Am I missing an underlying mechanic, or do the devs just want to force everyone to leave the base and go loot stuff for some reason? Or are they wanting us to shy away from groups where specialized roles exist, because the player base is majority single players perhaps or something? Just wondering what the wisdom is behind the change, I've seen the skilltree go through a lot of iterations but this one just seems perplexing in the motivations to make it the way it is overall. 
Sorry if this has already been asked/answered - I scrolled up a bit through a few pages but didn't see anything exactly on this particular point, just lots of other questions about the skillbooks and magazines. TIA for answers!

[Riamus]

16 minutes ago, Archer said:

The question that I have is this: if the individuals who stay at the base and focus on construction have to rely on the folks who go out and do the looting to find the books & magazines they'll need to progress, won't those fall drastically behind in progression rate over time? Because the folks who do most of the looting are spec'd into something that is increasing their odds of finding the books/mags, but people who are working on the base crafting and making bullets, upgrading walls, etc. are going to see the books their looting friends bring back to them in small numbers than their more loot oriented playmates are. The only way around this is to have the guys who go out looting to also spec into the same thing the folks who stay behind to work on the base have spec'd into which seems redundant/unfavorable. 

Am I missing an underlying mechanic, or do the devs just want to force everyone to leave the base and go loot stuff for some reason? Or are they wanting us to shy away from groups where specialized roles exist, because the player base is majority single players perhaps or something? Just wondering what the wisdom is behind the change, I've seen the skilltree go through a lot of iterations but this one just seems perplexing in the motivations to make it the way it is overall. 
Sorry if this has already been asked/answered - I scrolled up a bit through a few pages but didn't see anything exactly on this particular point, just lots of other questions about the skillbooks and magazines. TIA for answers!

My understanding is you'll get all magazines but will just have a small increase in the chance of getting what you spec into more often.  They'll still bring back a bunch of magazines your builders would want... assuming you can get them to not read the magazines.  It's one thing to talk someone into bringing back a magazine/book they've already read but since you can read dozens of these, some people may not be very good at bringing them back.  Depends on your group how well that works.

Edited June 11, 2023 by Riamus (see edit history)

[Archer]

11 minutes ago, Riamus said:

My understanding is you'll get all magazines but will just have a small increase in the chance of getting what you spec into more often.  They'll still bring back a bunch of magazines your builders would want... assuming you can get them to not read the magazines.  It's one thing to talk someone into bringing back a magazine/book they've already read but since you can read dozens of these, some people may not be very good at bringing them back.  Depends on your group how well that works.

Edit: Thank you for the reply, by the way!

I'm just wondering if over time, the people who go out to loot all the time will be many levels ahead of the other people who stay behind to work just based solely on the notion that specing into something is supposed to increase the odds that you find it around in the world.

So if looter A is going out to find books for Builder B, whatever Looter A is spec'd into will be what they are more likely to find books/mags for when looting. So as looter A goes around looting all the piles and shelves and so forth, most of the stuff they find, not all, but most, will be primarily *for* them, and not for whatever builder B is spec'd into. 
Thus, over time, builder B, will fall behind the rate of progression of his friend who prefers to loot a lot in the game, since Builder B doesn't loot very often not wanting to put valuable construction perk points into looting, and not wanting to burn valuable time either by going out and looting, when building a base large enough and strong enough to accommodate their group before the next blood moon is obviously a critical thing, and time is of the essence. 

The same would apply for the guys making bullets, running forges, managing the workbench, the chemistry set, upgrading sections of wall, installing spike traps, setting land mines, etc. all back at the base. 

I've genuinely never had a single complaint against a single thing the Fun Pimps have iterated, I don't even care that it's still in early access or any of that it's fun the way it is, but why on Earth is this whole thing being added in I wonder? I'm new on the forums, so I don't know the history here at all but is this a thing people have been asking for? 

 

Edited June 11, 2023 by Archer (see edit history)

[Old Crow]

4 minutes ago, Archer said:

 I'm new on the forums, so I don't know the history here at all but is this a thing people have been asking for? 

 

 

I'm pretty sure it's not likely to be something anyone asked for, outside of the Fun Pimps themselves.

[Archer]

46 minutes ago, Old Crow said:

 

I'm pretty sure it's not likely to be something anyone asked for, outside of the Fun Pimps themselves.

My guess is, they're possibly diverging away from the game being so focused around building bases and crafting, and they're wanting to push it more into the direction of quests and traveling to places and accomplishing missions and so forth, and they're pushing the player base to explore the world more I my assumption. 

I just think this is a terrible way to do that if that is indeed the idea, because I think more people play this for the crafting/building, they're just listening to the players who go to forums (which I think are usually the most enthusiastic players, but also greatly skew what the general player base wants, because the most enthusiastic players, play the game a *lot* whereas 95% of the player base plays a few weeks every few months or something. This leads to lots of feedback about "not having enough to do" and "feels stale" and so forth, so the devs take that feedback and think the player base wants more of this mission type of stuff, and wants all these constant reworks of core mechanics (like the poor skill tree that's been redone over and over and over again) which keeps them chasing down a goal post the small crowd that provides feedback of *any* kind (good or bad) moves around constantly. 

Devs want to listen to their playerbase, they care what people think of their product. They want to give us a game that we like. 
But at the same time, the other side of that coin is that feedback most of the time is a bad sample of your customer base and a lot of companies, not just game devs, but all types, end up taking a direction, or providing a product, or a change, that nobody likes, because they've essentially gotten bad "data" from the customers they're looking for the feedback from. This may - or may not - be the situation here, but I just can't see why else this change has been brought about and how it pulls the players away from the bases (which is where we *like* to be for a lot of us, it's why we play/bought the game) but I'd still rather this be a game of Crafting/Survival and exploration with a little 'e'. Now it feels like looting/exploring/quests etc. are front and center, and crafting and building are taking a backseat.

[Roland]

Hi Archer and welcome to the forum. I think you are fundamentally misunderstanding the new progression. The learn by reading has nothing to do with player levels. People who stay home and build will likely continue to level at the fast pace they always have. 
 

The learn by reading system is for gaining crafting recipes. With 30 of you, all you need to do is decide among you who will be in charge of what and then get the appropriate magazines into their hands. It doesn’t matter if they loot, farm, build, mine, or run around killing chickens. If that person is in charge of crafting tools then everyone in the group needs to feed that player tool crafting mags and let that guy craft tools for everyone. 
 

It is foolish to have five guys each read three tool crafting mags rather than having one guy read 15. It’s hard to fathom that based on past experience with books and how leveling up was tied to learning new recipes but it is all different now. 
 

You gain xp through actions you enjoy doing and that levels you up. Completely separate from that you read magazines to learn better and better recipes. You can be level 200 but still only craft burnt meat If you never read a single cooking magazine. But if someone else on your team read them all and makes stew for everyone then it’s no big deal that you can’t cook the good stuff and that doesn’t leave you behind in leveling up. 
 

Hope that clarifies and I know the lightbulb will click fully on as you play it for yourself as I’ve been witnessing all weekend with the streamers. The changes really enhance teamwork and group dynamics. 

[4sheetzngeegles]

Welcome Archer; as a visual to understand what Roland posted take a peep at
Neebs Gamining, They work mostly as a cooperative. Although they act hapless
much of the time that is mostly for entertainment value. Look at the black
and white of it and it should give a decent idea of Roland's post and TFP's
attempted approach.

 

If it works out the only thing that will need to be adjusted are the average
gen values. But that will be tested and proven After playing for a bit.

 

PS. Please don't Nuke the residential mail boxes. That's how I get most of my books now.

Edited June 11, 2023 by 4sheetzngeegles (see edit history)

[khzmusik]

11 hours ago, Roland said:

All containers that didn’t poof or change to an empty/open state respawned their loot when I went back. [...]
 

The only lootables that went poof were things like garbage bags, piles of clothes, stacks of ammo, duffel bags, etc. containers like shelves, medicine cabinets, cupboards, carts, garbage cans, etc did not go poof but did just become blocks in an open/empty state and no longer functioned as containers. Already existing open/empty “containers” are not containers at all and are just blocks that can be destroyed but not filled with loot. 

 

Now that you explained how it works in detail, I think I understand the problem that others were talking about.

 

When loot respawns, the containers that used to be lootable do not go back to a lootable state. The remain in the open/empty state, and those are not containers, just destructible blocks.

 

And from the looks of things, this is the majority of containers in the game: fridges, freezers, ovens, stoves, cabinets, store shelves, book shelves, and so on. It looks like it might even apply to the boxes that you get when you break open crates (from Shamway, Mo' Power Electronics, Working Stiffs, etc).

So no matter what your loot respawn setting, they will never respawn loot. This makes the loot respawn setting almost useless, since it pretty much only affects the loot room containers.

 

Incidentally - this never mattered to me that much, because the default loot respawn time is 7 days, and - unlike zombie respawns - those have to be 7 continuous days where the player doesn't touch any chunk that the container is in. I tend to stay in one place (the city around my base), so I rarely encounter POIs that I have looted but not gone near in a week. It's much more common for me to re-enter the POI a couple of days later and encounter respawned zombies but no respawned loot.

 

So this affects me less than it would other people, but I can understand where they're coming from.

[Roland]

2 minutes ago, khzmusik said:

 

Now that you explained how it works in detail, I think I understand the problem that others were talking about.

 

When loot respawns, the containers that used to be lootable do not go back to a lootable state. The remain in the open/empty state, and those are not containers, just destructible blocks.

 

And from the looks of things, this is the majority of containers in the game: fridges, freezers, ovens, stoves, cabinets, store shelves, book shelves, and so on. It looks like it might even apply to the boxes that you get when you break open crates (from Shamway, Mo' Power Electronics, Working Stiffs, etc).

So no matter what your loot respawn setting, they will never respawn loot. This makes the loot respawn setting almost useless, since it pretty much only affects the loot room containers.

 

Incidentally - this never mattered to me that much, because the default loot respawn time is 7 days, and - unlike zombie respawns - those have to be 7 continuous days where the player doesn't touch any chunk that the container is in. I tend to stay in one place (the city around my base), so I rarely encounter POIs that I have looted but not gone near in a week. It's much more common for me to re-enter the POI a couple of days later and encounter respawned zombies but no respawned loot.

 

So this affects me less than it would other people, but I can understand where they're coming from.

so far, the crates from shotgun messiah, shamway, etc DO remain as containers after you loot them. They remain as cardboard boxes and don’t get recovered in plywood but they do respawn loot. 

[Noctoras]

Coool, I like the idea of scarcer loot and not everyone having everything, especially just by coming back to the same place 5 days later. 

I also appreciate the learning by magazines, it's just so much more realistic. 

The streamlining/reducing different stuff in loot variance, well, I was never a friend of that, but I guess, I can deal with it, given all the other positive developments

[4sheetzngeegles]

15 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

If that is the case, I think a lot of single players will be disappointed.

I am actually curious, about the water resources, I don't think it will make much of a difference for me.

I have edited out terrain water since A15, and have only gotten mine from scavenging. toilets, and water

towers. 

 

This may only be a secondary source that cuts out the middle man if the water is already clean.

[Archer]

45 minutes ago, Roland said:

Hi Archer and welcome to the forum. I think you are fundamentally misunderstanding the new progression. The learn by reading has nothing to do with player levels. People who stay home and build will likely continue to level at the fast pace they always have. 
 

The learn by reading system is for gaining crafting recipes. With 30 of you, all you need to do is decide among you who will be in charge of what and then get the appropriate magazines into their hands. It doesn’t matter if they loot, farm, build, mine, or run around killing chickens. If that person is in charge of crafting tools then everyone in the group needs to feed that player tool crafting mags and let that guy craft tools for everyone. 
 

It is foolish to have five guys each read three tool crafting mags rather than having one guy read 15. It’s hard to fathom that based on past experience with books and how leveling up was tied to learning new recipes but it is all different now. 
 

You gain xp through actions you enjoy doing and that levels you up. Completely separate from that you read magazines to learn better and better recipes. You can be level 200 but still only craft burnt meat If you never read a single cooking magazine. But if someone else on your team read them all and makes stew for everyone then it’s no big deal that you can’t cook the good stuff and that doesn’t leave you behind in leveling up. 
 

Hope that clarifies and I know the lightbulb will click fully on as you play it for yourself as I’ve been witnessing all weekend with the streamers. The changes really enhance teamwork and group dynamics. 

Hi Roland, thanks for answering my question.
So, the magazines/books unlock tools and crafting abilities - not levels. Got that. 
That still means that the books/magazines that people who aren't looting and are busy building/crafting are still going to be getting those recipes at a lower pace, even if people are diligently saving those for that individual, than the people who are looting get their particular magazines for their particular spec, because the mechanic is that the person who is doing the looting is the one who gets the perk to have an increased chance of getting that particular spec's recipes dropped if I understand this correctly, right? 
The RNG works in favor of the person doing the looting - and unless the person doing the looting is spec'd into the same thing the person back at the base building is spec'd into, their odds of getting that drop are lower than the looting person who has the increased chances for their particular spec - is that correct?

Edited June 11, 2023 by Archer (see edit history)

[RipClaw]

41 minutes ago, Roland said:

If that person is in charge of crafting tools then everyone in the group needs to feed that player tool crafting mags and let that guy craft tools for everyone. 

The disadvantage of such a specialization is that you have to rely on this person. If the person is not online, then you can collect all the magazines you want, but no one will be able to make better tools for the group.
 

2 minutes ago, Archer said:

The RNG works in favor of the person doing the looting - and unless the person doing the looting is spec'd into the same thing the person back at the base building is spec'd into, their odds of getting that drop are lower than the looting person who has the increased chances for their particular spec - is that correct?

In theory, the person doing the looting should also find other magazines, but in the streams I've seen that the boost from the perks is more noticeable than expected.
 

[Roland]

1 minute ago, Archer said:

Hi Roland, thanks for answering my question.
So, the magazines/books unlock tools and crafting abilities - not levels. Got that. 
That still means that the books/magazines that people who aren't looting and are busy building/crafting are still going to be getting those recipes at a lower pace than the people who are looting because the mechanic is that the person who is doing the looting is the one who gets the perk to have an increased chance of getting them dropped if I understand this correctly, right? 
The RNG works in favor of the person doing the looting - and unless the person doing the looting is spec'd into the same thing the person back at the base building is spec'd into, their odds of getting that drop are lower than the looting person who has the increased chances for their particular spec - is that correct?

The meta up to now is to read every book you find because it doesn’t matter if you and I both read the same books. That is different in A21. It actually hurts the group for looters to read everything they find. Best is to assign people to be craftsmen of specific things and then feed them books.

 

So if I loot all the time but am assigned to craft wrenches I should only read those mags and take the rest back to base for others to read and while back at base read any wrench mags others might have brought back. 
 

It just depends on what you specifically want to craft. If you don’t care about crafting at all then you don’t need any mags. Just find out who in your group is reading hammers and such and ask them to keep you supplied with the best building tools they can make. 

[Archer]

2 minutes ago, RipClaw said:

The disadvantage of such a specialization is that you have to rely on this person. If the person is not online, then you can collect all the magazines you want, but no one will be able to make better tools for the group.
 

In theory, the person doing the looting should also find other magazines, but in the streams I've seen that the boost from the perks is more noticeable than expected.
 

Yeah, we're OK with having a couple of redundancies in the team so that in case one person is offline, we have a backup cook/hunter/farmer/builder/miner/crafter etc. What I'm concerned with is that most of the looting team we have never actually crafts - well, anything for the most part. Most of the actual building is done by the home base team, thus, home base team are the ones who need the abilities to build tools/craft items. However the ones who are now most likely to get the magazines or books or whatever that drops and unlocks more items for them to craft, are essentially *primarily* funneling into individuals who aren't going to be having much to actually craft. We normally gave individuals their roles based off of what was in the skill tree. So if for instance, you're spec'd into strength, you'll mine a bunch, then come back to base for a break from the mines, whip up some food, then go back to mining. If you're spec'd into intel, you'd run the crafting rooms, building tons of stuff. The looters generally put all their points into stuff that is to benefit them being more...whatever, agile, quiet, whatever they use to survive during loot runs, and such.

 

[khzmusik]

20 minutes ago, Roland said:

so far, the crates from shotgun messiah, shamway, etc DO remain as containers after you loot them. They remain as cardboard boxes and don’t get recovered in plywood but they do respawn loot. 

 

Well, that's a step in the right direction. I'm still hoping it's relatively trivial to mod this out (like, just remove their "looted block" reference in XML or something). I guess we'll find out on Monday.

[Archer]

6 minutes ago, Roland said:

The meta up to now is to read every book you find because it doesn’t matter if you and I both read the same books. That is different in A21. It actually hurts the group for looters to read everything they find. Best is to assign people to be craftsmen of specific things and then feed them books.

 

So if I loot all the time but am assigned to craft wrenches I should only read those mags and take the rest back to base for others to read and while back at base read any wrench mags others might have brought back. 
 

It just depends on what you specifically want to craft. If you don’t care about crafting at all then you don’t need any mags. Just find out who in your group is reading hammers and such and ask them to keep you supplied with the best building tools they can make. 

Honestly, we never did read every book we've always been good at funneling those to the right person, none of us just read books we picked up, we even had crates dedicated just to books based on the specialized role they had in the group for what they did. 
The problem is that certain things now look like they're going to take longer to get to the people who need them. 
Someone who loots is rarely the same person who crafts tools and items. 
However, the person looting gets the increased odds of a thing they spec'd into dropping a corresponding mag/book. 
Which sounds like the people back at base - who need the recipes the most to be able to build better tools or whatever - are going to be the last in line to getting the stuff they need, unless that person doing the looting is also spec'd into building the better tools like the person back at base waiting on a magazine/book if I'm understanding the new system correctly

Edited June 11, 2023 by Archer (see edit history)

[Blake_]

24 minutes ago, Roland said:

so far, the crates from shotgun messiah, shamway, etc DO remain as containers after you loot them. They remain as cardboard boxes and don’t get recovered in plywood but they do respawn loot. 

Most cabinets and sink cabinets do not open after looting them despite already having open versions made for them. I've seen it in all the streams (I watched like 7 different ones already? lol) in every gameplay mode, so I believe devs know? If not, they do now?

Edited June 11, 2023 by Blake_ (see edit history)

[Roland]

7 minutes ago, RipClaw said:

The disadvantage of such a specialization is that you have to rely on this person. If the person is not online, then you can collect all the magazines you want, but no one will be able to make better tools for the group.

 Yes, well that is simply a matter of coordinating  rl schedules which can be problematic for any game. The fact that you DO actually have to rely on each other enhances the team building feeling of the game and more than compensates for those times when someone can’t get on to play because it really makes you work as a group. I love that and yes sometimes it’s a bummer when someone can’t get on for an evening— it always is. Then you just have to make do with what you have for that evening. 

[Archer]

7 minutes ago, Roland said:

 Yes, well that is simply a matter of coordinating  rl schedules which can be problematic for any game. The fact that you DO actually have to rely on each other enhances the team building feeling of the game and more than compensates for those times when someone can’t get on to play because it really makes you work as a group. I love that and yes sometimes it’s a bummer when someone can’t get on for an evening— it always is. Then you just have to make do with what you have for that evening. 

Yeah this aspect of things does not bother me, personally. 
Edit: In fact, we already depended on one another, we already sorted books out to people who used/depended on them more, and we already had very niche, role based jobs for everyone in the group. 

That's kind of why this update seems to be so out of left field with this *one* aspect of the update itself, it just makes no sense why people who aren't usually crafters - they're typically out focused on actually getting loot - not crafting, are going to be the ones who have an increased chance of getting books/magazines for stuff that they themselves are not really usually allocated to making for the sole fact that they're usually already busy doing other things, specifically *looting*. 

This is why I've actually bothered to make a forum account after 10 years, it's just such a bizarre change that seems to be targeted entirely at solo players who get bored sitting around their bases by themselves, and want 'more content' to keep them busy. 

It just sounds like the dev team is trying to make both types of players happy and having trouble keeping one side balanced, while making the other side engaging enough. 

 

Edited June 11, 2023 by Archer (see edit history)

[Roland]

15 minutes ago, Archer said:

Honestly, we never did read every book we've always been good at funneling those to the right person, none of us just read books we picked up, we even had crates dedicated just to books based on the specialized role they had in the group for what they did. 
The problem is that certain things now look like they're going to take longer to get to the people who need them. 
Someone who loots is rarely the same person who crafts tools and items. 
However, the person looting gets the increased odds of a thing they spec'd into dropping a corresponding mag/book. 
Which sounds like the people back at base - who need the recipes the most to be able to build better tools or whatever - are going to be the last in line to getting the stuff they need, unless that person doing the looting is also spec'd into building the better tools like the person back at base waiting on a magazine/book if I'm understanding the new system correctly

In my experience you get further up the crafting tiers easier and faster in group play than you do in single player. It does take some coordination as a group to make it all work but it really does. It becomes intuitive and if your group already shares books well you will slip into the new feature seamlessly. I found the coordination and “work” of helping others advance in their craftsmanship to feel very rewarding and definitely one of those emergent objectives that great games always have. You’ll be celebrating with your cook whenever you find a cooking mag for THEM to read. 
 

If your looters don’t care about crafting they will very quickly grok that reading mags for them is a waste. They’ll learn to bring them back as a type of resource just like people who bring back iron, wood, stone, and clay for others to make stuff in the forge. 

Also you can tell them to loot POIs with a building theme like Working Stiffs and they’ll find plenty of building mags regardless of what they are perked into. The nine mags you get from quest rewards are pretty random as well. 
 

Really it just comes down to how fast you want to progress. If you want best tools fast then get out there and help loot and quest. If you’re okay with a slower progression to best tools then stay home and build and the mags will come to you in time. 

Edited June 11, 2023 by Roland (see edit history)

[Archer]

15 minutes ago, Roland said:

In my experience you get further up the crafting tiers easier and faster in group play than you do in single player. It does take some coordination as a group to make it all work but it really does. It becomes intuitive and if your group already shares books well you will slip into the new feature seamlessly. I found the coordination and “work” of helping others advance in their craftsmanship to feel very rewarding and definitely one of those emergent objectives that great games always have. You’ll be celebrating with your cook whenever you find a cooking mag for THEM to read. 
 

If your looters don’t care about crafting they will very quickly grok that reading mags for them is a waste. They’ll learn to bring them back as a type of resource just like people who bring back iron, wood, stone, and clay for others to make stuff in the forge. 
 

I must be doing a poor job of communicating what my concern is lol I'm sure you're answering me as best as possible (It looks like you've probably been dutifully answering these questions for hours), maybe my brain is just too much mud to understand what you're saying. 

I *understand* that getting the right mag to the right person is a thing any of us can do.

What I *dont* understand, is why we're giving the increased chances for a person to get a magazine, to a person who is usually not going to be using that magazine, because they're usually spending their time on the server out looting, sometimes spending 3-4 days or more in-game time away from the base out gathering resources we use for the base on blood moon. Yet the new mechanic is giving those looting a perk for things they spec in.
 
Looters don't *need* perks for magazines to drop to build tools, at least not in groups, because it's the builders and crafters at the base who are the ones building the tools, thus are the ones who need the recipes, yet there's no perk or bonus for the ones back at base to get the drop they need. The individual out looting doesn't get a drop bonus for that individual who needs it more back at home, so the effect of the drops increasing are never going to funnel to the person who needs/deserves the increased chances to obtain the magazine so they can make the tool. 
Which is why I've said a few times here and in other places, this seems to be tailored to cater to single players or duos of players, and while it makes the game more engaging for people who are playing it solo, it throws a weird wrench into things for the groups. 
 

Edited June 11, 2023 by Archer (see edit history)

[Roland]

39 minutes ago, Blake_ said:

Most cabinets and sink cabinets do not open after looting them despite already having open versions made for them. I've seen it in all the streams (I watched like 7 different ones already? lol) in every gameplay mode, so I believe devs know? If not, they do now?

Yeah, I’ve noticed some don’t turn. I don’t know what the intention there is whether it’s a bug or they haven’t finished updating them or if they plan to keep it where some do it but others don’t. 
 

19 minutes ago, Archer said:

I must be doing a poor job of communicating what my concern is lol I'm sure you're answering me as best as possible (It looks like you've probably been dutifully answering these questions for hours), maybe my brain is just too much mud to understand what you're saying. 

I *understand* that getting the right mag to the right person is a thing any of us can do.

What I *dont* understand, is why we're giving the increased chances for a person to get a drop, is going to a person who is usually not going to be using that drop that they had the increased chance of getting, because they're usually spending their time on the server out looting, sometimes spending 3-4 days or more in-game time away from the base out gathering resources we use for the base on blood moon. Yet the new mechanic is giving those individuals a perk for things they spec in. 
Looters don't *need* perks for magazines to build tools, because it's the builders and crafters are the ones building the tools, thus are the ones who need the recipes, yet there's no perk or bonus for the ones they need to drop, just because someone who they're playing with is out looting it *for* them if that makes sense.
Which is why I've said a few times here and in other places, this seems to be tailored to cater to single players or duos of players, and while it makes the game more engaging for people who are playing it solo, it throws a weird wrench into things for the groups. 
 

You’re placing too much emphasis on the perk boost. The boost isn’t a min/max mechanic that makes it stupid for certain people to open certain containers. It is simply a safety net so that you don’t get completely screwed by RNG and never find the mags you need. Your looters will find a wide variety of magazines especially with multiple people all looting and questing. They will find plenty of cooking, farming, and building type mags even if they’re perked into machine guns. I’ve often been able to craft a better unperked weapon than my perked weapon for a time because it is still random and the boost guarantees nothing other than never not finding what you need. 
 

No doubt if you join in quests and looting you’ll move up the building tools crafting faster but If you don’t loot or quest at all you’ll still move up. 
 

The bigger concern would be looters staying away for 3-4 days at a time. I suspect they’ll either come back to base more often or you’ll want to make a run to whatever outpost they have your stack of magazines stored at…

Edited June 11, 2023 by Roland (see edit history)

[Archer]

9 minutes ago, Roland said:

Yeah, I’ve noticed some don’t turn. I don’t know what the intention there is whether it’s a bug or they haven’t finished updating them or if they plan to keep it where some do it but others don’t. 
 

You’re giving too much emphasis on the perk boost. The boost isn’t a min/max mechanic. It is a safety net so that you don’t get completely screwed by RNG. Your looters will find a wide variety of magazines. They will find plenty of cooking, farming, and building type mags even if they’re perked into machine guns. 
 

No doubt if you join in quests and looting you’ll move up the building tools crafting faster but If you don’t loot or quest at all you’ll still move up. 
 

The bigger concern would be looter staying away for 3-4 days at a time. I suspect they’ll either come back to base more often or you’ll have to make a run to whatever outpost they have your stack of magazines stored at…

After the game progresses to a certain point, if you're supporting a population of more than 10 individuals, the 'looted' radius around the base grows quite quickly after a couple of weeks, and you have to go further, and further, and further out to find an adequate amount of a particular item or resource. Brass especially becomes a difficult thing, and we sometimes in very late game in the current build would melt down a lot of our dukes (I mean thousands of 'em) to make it through the next blood moons in the later game stages in the 200+ range. 

So it becomes fundamentally necessary for looters to go further out, and thus be gone longer and longer to get to and from those places. Even with all the vehicles unlocked and available in the game, it takes a lot of time to support a base with a big crowd of people. 

[RipClaw]

16 minutes ago, Roland said:

You’re placing too much emphasis on the perk boost. The boost isn’t a min/max mechanic that makes it stupid for certain people to open certain containers. It is simply a safety net so that you don’t get completely screwed by RNG and never find the mags you need. Your looters will find a wide variety of magazines especially with multiple people all looting and questing. They will find plenty of cooking, farming, and building type mags even if they’re perked into machine guns. I’ve often been able to craft a better unperked weapon than my perked weapon for a time because it is still random and the boost guarantees nothing other than never not finding what you need. 

It has always been said that it is a safety net but then you would expect an approximate equal distribution in the magazines. But if you look at the streams, you'll notice that players are finding significantly more magazines for their specialization. Either luck is on the players side or the boost is bigger than you think.