What makes A20 differ from (very) early versions or "Why doesnt the game have the 'it' factor anymore"

[Hyperbolt]

17 minutes ago, AtomicUs5000 said:

 
Absolutely and I 100% agree with the attempt to provide that for players. However, as Viktoriusiii mentioned, there is currently an imbalance that favors one method (the trader) over the others. There should always be some calculated decision to make depending on your current circumstances. There is no more mental stimulation. Got a problem? The trader is your one-stop solution shop.
 
An alternative to artificial hindrances might be modding. I wouldn't want to remove the traders entirely, though. Again, the problem isn't the existence of traders.

Another balancing matter, that is! 

Fewer items for sale, or more days between restock?  Or as meganoth stated: increase inflation!

 

I think in my next playtrough, im gonna first start to not put any points in BB or DA, and then try to behave like the older days, when, for me the trader was a rare and exiting thing that you took a whole day traveling to... Wow, i got nostalgia feels... When going to a trader was a day-long adventure! xD

[meganoth]

2 hours ago, Hyperbolt said:

Another balancing matter, that is! 

Fewer items for sale, or more days between restock?  Or as meganoth stated: increase inflation!

 

I think in my next playtrough, im gonna first start to not put any points in BB or DA, and then try to behave like the older days, when, for me the trader was a rare and exiting thing that you took a whole day traveling to... Wow, i got nostalgia feels... When going to a trader was a day-long adventure! xD

 

How about the rule: "You can't visit the same trader twice in a row" or even worse "You have to visit the 5 traders round-robin in a sequence that you select at the start of the game"

 

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

[JCrook1028]

18 hours ago, AtomicUs5000 said:

You don't have to mine, you don't have to cut down trees, you don't have to farm, you don't have to hunt. You just need to find stuff and trade and if you can do that good enough, you can even skimp out on crafting anything.

Every single thing you listed there is a choice you make. You can also not buy everything from the trader. Choices are what makes this game so great.

[Viktoriusiii]

1 minute ago, JCrook1028 said:

Every single thing you listed there is a choice you make. You can also not buy everything from the trader. Choices are what makes this game so great.

You can also choose to exploite hordenight.
That argument doesnt work. Period.
Why don't you completely stop playing the game and just imagine the perfect 7d2d?

If something is completely broken, like traders&quests, that everything else is just way less effective, it becomes impossible to balance the game.

Make it harder, every other playstyle gets punished. Balance it around non traders, trader is super easy.
Needing to inforce your own rules in a survival game, just because the game isn't balanced is NOT an excuse.
The devs need to give everything its own incentive.
But this is something TFPs never understood... or at least, do not act like they understand.
If I want to be passive on hordenight and just watch them die, that should be possible. BUT it should have a drawback:
Namely, that you need to farm and build a LOT, in the meantime, you are not able to loot/farm.
But what they did was "we don'T want that, because it is boring! Falldamage can't kill zombies (wtf?) Every trap breaks (even perfectly hidden electric fenceposts)"
Same with sneaking now.

If I use the trader, I can get everything.
But I shouln't get the best stuff. Looting already was the best playstyle, because TFPs love to force the player to go out.
Now it just is 10x more mandetory.

 

[JCrook1028]

I can't help it if a player has zero self control. Also, everything listed as a trader wishlist above is already available thru modding. The base game should be just that, the BASE. Much of the beauty of 7dtd is how easily moddable it is. That is intentional by TFP. Make the game what you want it to be in intended behavior. or don't and complain. Again, a choice each player needs to make for themselves.

[Viktoriusiii]

7 minutes ago, JCrook1028 said:

I can't help it if a player has zero self control.

No.

And luckily TFPs agree with me on this point. They are just... very slow and inaccurate in fixing these things.

[AtomicUs5000]

21 minutes ago, JCrook1028 said:

Every single thing you listed there is a choice you make. You can also not buy everything from the trader. Choices are what makes this game so great.

 
It would be greater if it were a challenge to come up with that decision though. Survival is a problem that can have many, many solutions. In a survival game, a lot of the fun comes from figuring out what choice is going to work best for you at that given moment. Then, when the game throws a wrench in the works, and you have to adjust on the fly it's even better. Here, they give you the best choice and it never changes. 
 
These aren't complaints. I haven't seen anybody say they cannot enjoy the game anymore. We are discussing some abstract characteristic that once was and now is lost. It's hard to place your finger on it, but I believe I have or at least I am close to it. I don't think anybody is demanding any changes. It's not our game to do that.

[Matt115]

24 minutes ago, Viktoriusiii said:

You can also choose to exploite hordenight.
That argument doesnt work. Period.
Why don't you completely stop playing the game and just imagine the perfect 7d2d?

If something is completely broken, like traders&quests, that everything else is just way less effective, it becomes impossible to balance the game.

Make it harder, every other playstyle gets punished. Balance it around non traders, trader is super easy.
Needing to inforce your own rules in a survival game, just because the game isn't balanced is NOT an excuse.
The devs need to give everything its own incentive.
But this is something TFPs never understood... or at least, do not act like they understand.
If I want to be passive on hordenight and just watch them die, that should be possible. BUT it should have a drawback:
Namely, that you need to farm and build a LOT, in the meantime, you are not able to loot/farm.
But what they did was "we don'T want that, because it is boring! Falldamage can't kill zombies (wtf?) Every trap breaks (even perfectly hidden electric fenceposts)"
Same with sneaking now.

If I use the trader, I can get everything.
But I shouln't get the best stuff. Looting already was the best playstyle, because TFPs love to force the player to go out.
Now it just is 10x more mandetory.

 

Forcing to looting is bad decision in my opinion.  Well get the best stuff as fast as it is possible well... is very important in survival game so yeah you should. In stalker finding good stuff early is so good

2 minutes ago, AtomicUs5000 said:

 
It would be greater if it were a challenge to come up with that decision though. Survival is a problem that can have many, many solutions. In a survival game, a lot of the fun comes from figuring out what choice is going to work best for you at that given moment. Then, when the game throws a wrench in the works, and you have to adjust on the fly it's even better. Here, they give you the best choice and it never changes. 
 
These aren't complaints. I haven't seen anybody say they cannot enjoy the game anymore. We are discussing some abstract characteristic that once was and now is lost. It's hard to place your finger on it, but I believe I have or at least I am close to it. I don't think anybody is demanding any changes. It's not our game to do that.

Problem now is not trader but... nerfed of mining - steel parts kiled sens of mining because it is more efficent to find/ buy things that craft

[AtomicUs5000]

1 minute ago, Matt115 said:

Problem now is not trader but... nerfed of mining - steel parts kiled sens of mining because it is more efficent to find/ buy things that craft

 
That's a possibility, or another way to look at it. You can look at it like it is a matter of balancing the trader, or balancing everything that the trader affects or indirectly influences (mining, farming, crafting, hunting)... whatever floats your boat. 

[Matt115]

10 minutes ago, AtomicUs5000 said:

 
That's a possibility, or another way to look at it. You can look at it like it is a matter of balancing the trader, or balancing everything that the trader affects or indirectly influences (mining, farming, crafting, hunting)... whatever floats your boat. 

Well farming is now broken and useless if you don't have 3/3 so it need to be repair , hunting is good, crafting is connected with crafting because you mine iron to make tools but without looting or buying steel parts will stuck with iron tools

[Viktoriusiii]

I wrote it before, but I just understood why:

I want cities to be LATE game content.
Why? Because it gives you something to work towards.
I was SO afraid of the city after dying a lot to dogs and hornets, that I just went into the wilderness, built myself up and finally when I came back it felt rewarding!

 

[JCrook1028]

23 hours ago, Matt115 said:

Well farming is now broken and useless if you don't have 3/3 so it need to be repair

That's just totally untrue.

On 3/23/2022 at 12:20 PM, AtomicUs5000 said:

Here, they give you the best choice and it never changes. 

If you always make the same choice then yes, you're right. As I said, if a player has zero self control that's their issue, not the games. Not to mention that this is nor a pure survival game. It's always been a mix of genres. TFP is making a BASE game meant to be modded upon. How is that so hard to understand? They've said it many times, for years. Their decisions are based on what the base game should contain. Everything asked for above is available thru modding. It is WORKING AS INTENDED. Period. End of story.

[Matt115]

8 minutes ago, JCrook1028 said:

That's just totally untrue.

If you always make the same choice then yes, you're right. As I said, if a player has zero self control that's their issue, not the games. Not to mention that this is nor a pure survival game. It's always been a mix of genres. TFP is making a BASE game meant to be modded upon. How is that so hard to understand? They've said it many times, for years. Their decisions are based on what the base game should contain. Everything asked for above is available thru modding. It is WORKING AS INTENDED. Period. End of story.

True - someone made a analysis and you will get less that before and even you can lose if you farming without perks 

[AtomicUs5000]

1 hour ago, JCrook1028 said:

If you always make the same choice then yes, you're right. As I said, if a player has zero self control that's their issue, not the games. Not to mention that this is nor a pure survival game. It's always been a mix of genres. TFP is making a BASE game meant to be modded upon. How is that so hard to understand? They've said it many times, for years. Their decisions are based on what the base game should contain. Everything asked for above is available thru modding. It is WORKING AS INTENDED. Period. End of story.

 
How is it hard to understand that I already understand? We've already started talking about modding possibilities.  We've already addressed that no changes are demanded. We've already reaffirmed that we are discussing the "it" factor that is now lost and locating the reasons why. Check the topic. BTW, saying "period, end of story" at the end of posts doesn't end my thoughts on the matter... in caps or not.
Avoiding path a->b when you have the choice to take path a------------------------->b isn't entirely about self-control. 
This is not a pure survival game, but at least survival and crafting is mentioned in the subtitle. I don't see economy game in there.

 

Edited March 24, 2022 by AtomicUs5000 (see edit history)

[BFT2020]

19 minutes ago, Matt115 said:

True - someone made a analysis and you will get less that before and even you can lose if you farming without perks 

 

Such a blanket statement is in fact true, but not correct.

 

But that is not what JCrook was responding to.  He was responding to your statement that anything less than 3/3 in LotL was useless and broken.

 

At 0 perks, you can harvest 2 crops from every seed you plant.  You get food, but won't be able to sustain a farm without finding more seeds to replace any that are lost during the harvest.

 

At perk 1, you get 4 crops from every seed you plant.  As long as you have a large initial farm size (say 10 of the same crop), you are more likely to come out ahead when harvesting to keep the farm going.  If you plant 1 seed, you can be unlucky the first harvest and not able to recover.

 

At perk 2, you are much more likely to succeed than fail when creating a farm (however, same issue as perk 1 if you start with only 1 seed and have bad luck at the beginning - no seed back and no bonus crop)

 

At perk 3, there are no worries about creating a self-sufficient farm.

 

When I play, I always work towards to getting a farm setup.  The only difference I have made is now I wait until I get a single perk in LotL before I harvest from plants.  Though I prefer to get the second rank in LotL if I can.

 

If I remember correctly, you also get more food per harvest now from plants that you harvested (compared to A19 where it didn't matter if you harvested a wild plant or one you planted).

[Matt115]

1 minute ago, BFT2020 said:

 

Such a blanket statement is in fact true, but not correct.

 

But that is not what JCrook was responding to.  He was responding to your statement that anything less than 3/3 in LotL was useless and broken.

 

At 0 perks, you can harvest 2 crops from every seed you plant.  You get food, but won't be able to sustain a farm without finding more seeds to replace any that are lost during the harvest.

 

At perk 1, you get 4 crops from every seed you plant.  As long as you have a large initial farm size (say 10 of the same crop), you are more likely to come out ahead when harvesting to keep the farm going.  If you plant 1 seed, you can be unlucky the first harvest and not able to recover.

 

At perk 2, you are much more likely to succeed than fail when creating a farm (however, same issue as perk 1 if you start with only 1 seed and have bad luck at the beginning - no seed back and no bonus crop)

 

At perk 3, there are no worries about creating a self-sufficient farm.

 

When I play, I always work towards to getting a farm setup.  The only difference I have made is now I wait until I get a single perk in LotL before I harvest from plants.  Though I prefer to get the second rank in LotL if I can.

 

If I remember correctly, you also get more food per harvest now from plants that you harvested (compared to A19 where it didn't matter if you harvested a wild plant or one you planted).

I didin't tested this. I just saw a topic of one guy with his video + topic in A20 about that.  I undestand that - let say you harvest 10 corns - so on perk 0 you will get 5-6 corn seed at 1 7-8 - at 2  8 - 9  and on 3  - 1 15-16 so probably i missunderestanted this person, So sorry for mistake. Well i was waiting unneccasary for 3/3 to start farming XD

[BFT2020]

On 3/24/2022 at 1:21 PM, Matt115 said:

I didin't tested this. I just saw a topic of one guy with his video + topic in A20 about that. 

 

That was your basic mistake.  Don't listen to people on the videos as a lot of time, they are exaggerating things because they simply don't like it.  If something was easy before and now they have to make an effort (and maybe even now actually have a chance to fail), then they will state things like it is completely useless instead of adapting

[Matt115]

3 minutes ago, BFT2020 said:

 

That was your basic mistake.  Don't listen to people on the videos as a lot of time, they are exaggerating things because they simply don't like it.  If something was easy before and now they have to make an effort (and maybe even now actually have a chance to fail), then they will state things like it is completely useless instead of adapting

Well - do you played in Total war? there is some people who makes analises which units are better , how AI works, what is more usefull etc. so i hopped this person do this with sense 😕

[BFT2020]

9 minutes ago, Matt115 said:

Well - do you played in Total war? there is some people who makes analises which units are better , how AI works, what is more usefull etc. so i hopped this person do this with sense 😕

 

I play Total War:  Warhammer 1 and 2 (haven't gotten Warhammer 3 yet).

 

Yes, I have seen those types of videos.  They are okay to watch, but when I play, I just want to play with the units I can; not what someone on the web has said is the "uber" unit for beating the game.  When I purchase these games, my intent is for me to play it my way; not the way some web person plays and posts it online.

 

Those types of players are just looking to beat the game the most efficient way possible - aka no flavor playing.  If that is how they want to play, more power to them.  I prefer to figure out how to use all my units; failure is an option.

Edited March 25, 2022 by BFT2020 (see edit history)

[Matt115]

Just now, BFT2020 said:

 

I play Total War:  Warhammer 1 and 2 (haven't gotten Warhammer 3 yet).

 

Yes, I have seen those types of videos.  They are okay to watch, but when I play, I just want to play with the units I can; not what someone on the web has said is the "uber" unit for beating the game.  When I purchase these games, my intent is for me to play it my way; not the way some web person plays and posts it online.

 

Those types of players are just looking to beat the game the most efficient way possible - aka no flavor playing

Well about W1&2 things can not actual often  (  like cavalery).  Shogun 2 is just... yhh because you have to play in "1 only good way" on legendary because without this you don't have chance. Legendary in Shogun 2 is so broken. Btw Yari Ashigaru is soo good 

[Dimpy]

Perhaps there could be more disadvantages to using traders in later versions, like bandits start viewing you as an easy mark, or certain NPCs won't like you because you deal with the White River.

[Rotor]

I "cheated" last night :). 

 

In all my play throughs (not many), even when I went to day 6tysomething, I didnt have a vehicle.  The bicycle always eluded me.  Either I had found the recipe but couldnt get the parts or vice versa.  Then last night I went to the vendor (usually do after clearing a PoI) to empty pockets.  I always look to see what is available.  Currently on D36 and had 4k dukes, never have had enough to buy anything I need.  But holly smokes there was a bicycle for 7500.  I sold everything I had in my pockets to Jen, I offered my soul but she is not nice to accept.  I went to my locker and picked up all the weapons parts I had collected, armor parts, car parts, 2 tires, SOLD!  6200 dukes maybe a little more...dang it!  6pm.  2 days before I had found a wrench, not wanting to wait and loose the listing (to me was like a beach front property came available below market value, I had to get it, could not wait!)  Wrenched 3 vehicles...8pm.  My pockets were heavy, laden with burdensome crap still unusable to me (level 10 D36), but I kept running.  Finally sell all to Jen...7600 and change.  So, I cheated and bought the bicycle.

 

Yes, the trader is a drug dealer, it finally offered something I could not resist.

 

I feel dirty.............but I can ride :).

[BarryTGash]

On 3/26/2022 at 6:24 AM, Dimpy said:

Perhaps there could be more disadvantages to using traders in later versions, like bandits start viewing you as an easy mark, or certain NPCs won't like you because you deal with the White River.

 

A hub, like a trader, where people are likely to congregate would make a very enticing ambush location. All those people coming and going with loot and cash. That's a nice bicycle you have there... it'd be a shame if something happened to it...

 

I'm not a huge fan of ridiculous over-inflation in games. I think I'd prefer to see a seriously reduced offering - say 6 items in the main stash, 6 items in the secret stash. More representative of a desolate world. You may get lucky and find that elusive beaker at the trader but the odds are very much against you. Perhaps you could request an item - lay down a fat load of cash as collateral and come back in 14 days. You may get the item when you return, after paying for the actual sell price (on top of the deposit), or you may have to wait an extra 7-14 days. You can't request another item until the first buy order has completed - the trader only has one runner. Maybe you could cancel the previous contract - for a fee - then wait a couple of days to set a new one up.

Edited March 27, 2022 by BarryTGash (see edit history)

[RipClaw]

1 hour ago, BarryTGash said:

I'm not a huge fan of ridiculous over-inflation in games. I think I'd prefer to see a seriously reduced offering - say 6 items in the main stash, 6 items in the secret stash. More representative of a desolate world.

My approach would be that the trader only offers you parts but not complete weapons or tools. However, I would keep working workstations or fully assembled vehicles in case someone wants to do a "no crafting" challenge.