Couple of Perk Balance Suggestions

[G0dsend]

Background to inform my point of view for feedback: I have played consistently with 1-2 Friends since alpha 13 about. I am typically the perception looter role, while my other friend that I consistently play with takes the builder role. We play on insane difficulty.

 

First suggestion: While it may seem weird to buff lucky looter after it got nerfed, the suggestion I am making doesn't buff the power of the skill (the area it was nerfed it) it more has to do with buffing the player role that this skill is so pivotal in playing. As the looter I typically fall behind in experience to the players that build or farm materials for building. Upgrading blocks and eating rocks gives far more experience that killing zombies, and usually players will have exp share turned on for the overall cooperative experience. This is such a drastic difference that I often have 1000 zombies kills they have 300 and they are still twice my level. Additionally, when you play video games cooperatively, everyone still wants a piece of that serotonin you get from opening loot containers. So, having a player that should be opening all the containers to get the better loot for the group deprives their teammates of some of the fun innate to playing videogames. (The same issue plagued a similar skill in the game Divinity 2) So, I suggest two changes the lucky looter skill... one is the same fix that divinity made to their version of the skill... make the loot quality increase an aura for yourself and nearby party members. This makes it so while you are solo you are fulfilling your role, but when you are looting a poi with your team, you never deprive them of that joy of looting containers. (This does not need to apply to loot speed) The second change, is to make the skill provide a small boost to the experience gained for opening containers. (Again should not be part of the aura) This is to help the experience gain of looters fall more in line with those who spend their time hammering walls or smashing rocks.

 

Second suggestion: Make The Huntsman Perk require less investment in fortitude or move it to agility and give fortitude a new harvesting perk, Rationale: no other harvesting perk (Miner 69er, Mother Load, Living off the Land, Salvage Operations) requires as much investment in their attribute as The Huntsman. To make that more perplexing, harvesting animals is made more efficient by using bladed weapons, which fall under the agility attribute for scaling, and tracking animals falls under perception..... Getting the most use and skill in hunting animals for your party requires a pretty steep attribute investment that results in a significant overlap in the skillsets of said party members.... Just doesn't make much sense. Thematically, I think the skills are all where they belong. But mechanically, it is too many points to create the animal hunter role. Realistically, I think this can be fixed by making the Huntsman only requiring 5 points in Fortitude or moving it to Agility with a 7 point requirement in Agility. That said, if moved to agility fortitude would need a replacement skill to maintain fortitudes civil role. Maybe the new water purification system that I am hearing about?

[geistigsenil]

IMO the XP difference of Looting and Farming is no big Problem, since its a Tradeoff between XP and Loot.

Miners etc get more XP for monotone Tasks but no Loot, while  Looter get lot of Loot and some XP from Zombies.

Implementing some kind of Aura wouldnt help much since the diffrence in Level would still be there and the Specialization of the Party Members wouldnt change.

The only diffence is, that now nobody besides the Looter has to skill Looting in Order to get good Loot.

 

Beside there is already a kind of Aura in the Intelligence Tree that grants nearby Players some Buffs.

Also the Miners could use their Level Advantage to skill Looting, so theres really no Senese in adding a Aura.

 

The distribution of Perks between Skilltrees is problematic.

When playing the Game with friends, we mostly stick to one or Two Skilltrees since some Skilltrees only contain one or two good Perks and so are not worth to pursue.

IMO a thematic Grouping of Skills in a Skilltree or without One would be great.