Vanilla Loot system needs a rework and Pipe Machine Gun is nuts.

[ChrisTheDragon]

Max out looting skills, find decent rarity Pipe Machine Gun, add any Scope - Boom you have best gun in game in less than 2 days.

It takes some time to find the scope to make it god-like, but the gun on its own is literally all you need for the first few weeks when starting the game.

I'm a beginning player, I just started with my friend, but I'm already finding myself that the game is too easy on nomad difficulty with such gun both against First week horde or animals like bears and attack from few feral zombies + spiders at night, it might be just an aim for heads, but it still takes 1/2 shots to kill any zombie for now.

I'm not only here to complain about the Pipe Machine Gun-(lets call it P.M.G) which is OP even without anything extra on it, crafted or not, but I find the idea of finding green/blue rarity guns and not just P.M.G but also tier 6 pipe shotgun, bows and armor and mayhaps tools after putting few (I invested 4) levels in looting in first 2 days of game and already finding almost best loot IS INSANE
-that kind of loot in my opinion should be obtainable after few weeks in game like a reward by the game that you managed to survive all these days and weeks while struggling with zombies and so with hordes or animals, so you can find better loot to fight harder enemies that are coming but NO the game isn't any challenge because of it because cracking up the Perception perk gives you best loot by just farming exp by doing quests from traders which are also a problem because you can "cheese this" as well and have a bike in day 2 or 3 if you have a bit of luck to get it as fast as possible with ,,Fetch" quests to easy to even bother with zombies and just jug the few coffees to go back and forth maxing the perception skills while doing them and getting best loot possible from everything in less than a week. It's a bit of a rant, but I expected a game to be more challenging or balanced in terms of looting but doing few basic quests like craft this craft that and head over to trader???? Like weren't we supposed to spawn in the middle of no-where and do our best to survive instead of finding another survivor (trader) in Day 1? I find the idea of finding traders ourselves by exploring the city to be a reward for exploring the map instead of the game telling you head over there, so you can be somewhat entertained by doing repetitive quests like Fetch,Clear and repair generators and talk to the trader in another city later on.

-And here comes my solution for broken looting system and more of suggestion for now since the Devs are currently aiming and working on other stuff at the moment for Alpha 21 so it might be taken to consideration after its release, but what if Perception skill was adding additional loot items to what we find in crates and trash bags instead of better quality of its loot? It would make more sense since Perception is more about surroundings and what we can find and see in a room and what comes with it is additional findings in loot

The Factor that should increase our looting quality should not be mentioned Perception Skill but maybe a new Luck system which increases every day or after every week after successfully surviving horde attack and with it the Biome Loot Multiplier would coexist with that idea since from what I see we always start on forest biome which has worst loot multiplier,
-But it might give players a reason to look out for new biomes and cities around the map in which they can find loot and guns that will give players higher chance of surviving another week, so the players are entertained and motivated to explore the map instead -Yeah i found Purple tier 6 rarity P.M.G,tools and other similar quality guns, and I'm done looting since now I have 600 pieces or so of ammo few sentry guns that don't need electricity and so the desire to keep playing dies of just like that.

 

[BFT2020]

Well problem solved since the console game doesn't have the pipe machine gun or Alpha 20 to be exact....

[theFlu]

The pipe machine gun is still a little too strong for the tier, but the loot system seems sort of fine even with your example. The lowest tier of weapons is supposed to be bad - getting good quality junk early isn't really an issue, it's still junk. The issue there isn't the loot system, it's that single OP pipe weapon.

[Viktoriusiii]

The problem is that the system is super basic. The gunquality is nearly completely unimportant.
Back before they reworked it, every gun had different stats that had modifiers. So you could build an AK with crazy high damage but low firerate or high firerate but low ammo and so on... Now everything is the same. And since every gun is basicially the same, only modslots matter. Which means a Q6 pipe weapon is better than a Q1 high tech weapon.

And since every weapon is the same, every weapon also needs to be somewhat worth it... so low tier weapons are weak on higher difficulties (don't use pipe weapons on insane waste of ressources), but on normal difficulties they kill just as much as the high end weapons...
They have this incredible potential of kind of going back to the old customizability of weapons (I know no takebacks... I know TFPs by now) but they stick to this super simple +2 damage per qualitytier and attachment... which also means certain weapons will always be better or worse no matter what.

[Roland]

A21 resolves a lot of these issues. The loot tables have been completely rebalanced. The PMG is probably still OP but you don't have to craft it. If you're looking for a bit more challenge in  your early game craft one of the other pipe weapons. Think of the PMG as for beginners who need a more OP weapon at the start in order to make it. Like I said, though, there are way fewer guns and a lot less ammo in the game with A21 and while ammo is still offered as a reward there are other rewards as well that tempt you from automatically selecting ammo.

[Rotor]

So, being in an industry where acronyms abound, one of them is " PMG" , I was like "WTF is a permanent magnet generator going to be good for in A21?". Yes I am reading from bottom up, so waant following the Convo.

[Old Crow]

The pipe machinegun is insane and hands-down the best pipe weapon. good rate of fire, super fast reload. Just need good luck with 7.62 ammo. Considering how slowly the other pipe firearms reload, I have to wonder if the PMG's reload speed is a bug.

Please do not make it slower. Maybe just.. speed up the other Pipe guns' reload speeds.