Some ideas for the game

[Riamus]

Here are a couple suggestions I had posted for the game in general discussion. I condensed them for here so they are easier to read.
 

• A "Lock" option for items in inventory to prevent moving the item(s) when using the R key.  For use with vehicles (keeping gas cans in there) and drones with medical mod (keeping medical supplies in there).
• Refuel a vehicle that has Gas in its own inventory without having to transfer the Gas to our inventory to refuel and then transfer it back to the vehicle.
• Make it possible to retry lockpicking after grabbing a lockpick without having to hold E and selecting it again.  This is a pain when you break lockpicks multiple times in a row.
• I saw the video of the new gas fire environmental hazard.  The pipe was red.  This should really be changed.  In the US at least, red is generally your fire suppression/sprinkler system and the game is based on the US of you go by the flags.  Gas lines, if color coded, are usually yellow.  If not color coded, they'd usually be black.  There may be different colors in some states and quite possibly elsewhere in the world, of course.  But I think the number of red gas pipes around the world are very low, even if they aren't yellow or black.  Better to use the color most commonly seen or else black (or your unpainted iron/steel color that you use for other pipes) to avoid color coding entirely.
• The game has some minor character creation options that I feel are nice to have in the game.  I'd like to suggest another option to consider for further character creation choices.  I think adding something like a character background would be nice.  What I'm suggesting is having basically an option of prior job, career, or hobby.  Here's the idea of how it would work.  The player chooses the background when creating their character (it would require being able to have separate profiles for each game played).  This background would allow for a special "ability" that is not game changing and does not affect your ability to play the game in any way.  It should *not* be something where players feel one of the choices is better than the other for meta reasons.  Here are some possibilities:  If you were an artist, you might have the ability to make unique paintings (it doesn't have to be more than a few) that cannot otherwise be made or purchased or found that you can hang in your base.  If you were an electrician, you might have the ability to create lights that are different colors for your base, vehicles, and light mods.  I know you can change light values/colors when editing POI, but I don't believe that's currently an option in the game itself when making your base.  This might also allow you to make undercarriage lights for your vehicles (maybe even the bicycle?  ).  Those are just a couple of examples.  As you can see, they don't have any "real" effect on the game and only offer a cosmetic option.  I think that's crucial.  The lighting itself is already available, so would be a very quick thing to add to the game and even the artwork wouldn't be too hard to add.  Undercarriage lighting would be new and would take more time to add, of course.  Other options include a background that offers a few extra "paints" (wallpapers can be from a separate background from paint colors or textures depending on how you do it), being able to add a logo to armor/clothing instead of dye, being able to make a flag with a number of options for how it looks, etc.  I believe the additional option for characters would interest both new and old players alike without risking unbalancing the game and with minimal effort.

Edited September 16, 2022 by Riamus
Auto correct error (see edit history)

[Aithaed]

Better inventory management I do think is a must-have QoL option, though if you want it right now there is a mod for that.

In-inventory refueling for vehicles would be pretty great.

A better system for retrying lockpicking might be nice. I think an easy solution would be to make pressing E on a lockpick-able object automatically try to lockpick it instead of having to navigate through the hold-E menu.

 

Character creation options would kinda have to have something worthwhile; restricting cosmetic options in a sandbox game to only people who make a 1-time choice at the beginning of their game would be quite annoying to anybody who wants to use multiple of those cosmetic options. If the options were added, why wouldn't they just be allowed to everybody by default, or even simply restricted to Schematics?

 

Some alternative examples for character creation I had thought of previously were to spawn with a set of books (either preset based on occupation or just randomly selected at the start of the game), but in all honesty I don't think a prior occupation system is a good idea for 7D2D. 

 

The multiplayer experience already has an issue with how skill point upgrades rapidly scale higher leveled players beyond lower level ones, any occupation selection beyond purely cosmetic options would provide SOME benefit to the people who follow a meta strategy and devalue the rest of the possible options. The same would technically apply to those purely cosmetic building options, as there would doubtlessly be some option that COULD provide value in some way, which would then be the exclusively picked option.

 

Separately, I do think that having more cosmetic options IS a fantastic idea. More cosmetic customization never hurts anybody, and with how clothing has statistical benefits to your character there isn't any reason to not wear the leather duster when you find one, which can make personalizing the outfit of your character in multiplayer more difficult.

[Riamus]

I can see what you mean about the character background.  It isn't too unusual in a game to have a restriction based on your choices.  Any RPG (which this sort of is) has such limitations based on class choices and often race choices as well.  Although this is a sandbox game, I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with having some restrictions.  You pick what you like most.  And since a large number of players are in multiplayer games, you have certain players pick up certain backgrounds to allow for all customization options in their game.

 

Still, I'd be open to having more customizations available to everyone as well, particularly the light colors, which because it's already available in the POI editor, should be easy to enable within the game.  More paintings/posters would also be nice as you're always seeing the same few over and over.  Repeating POI isn't too bad because there are a lot to see, so it's not constant.  But with the paintings, there are only a few (3?) and a limited number of posters, so you see the same things in every POI.  Having more variety would certainly help in the POIs, but would also be nice in your base.