Traders and Loot need a serious nerf.

[Slingblade2040]

Traders need to only sell resources, food, drink, ammo and meds. No books, tools, weapons, armor, crafting stations or buffing items and the same goes for the loot we find.

 

For the quest rewards keep them more or less the same but limit the quality of what appears to quality 3 so we have an incentive to craft those quality 5 items. The same rewards could be found in those hidden treasure maps quests we find once in awhile.

 

There is no way this game will ever get any resemblance of balance without a major nerf like that to the traders when they sell most of items that can make us skip progress so easily. 

 

Give us more reason to craft and loot and actually put those  ridiculous magazines to good use. What's the point in looting up mags if the traders will sell all those things and enable us to skip the progress and become OP even faster.

[Zerginfestor]

Extreme disagree. The trader as it is in early game is borderline useless, at least from experience of up to in-game 2 weeks of gameplay. Progression is so slow in terms of magazines, crafting, and upgrading, that even with 5 levels into miner, I just barely accessed a tier 1 Iron Pickaxe. 

[Ailin]

i got a qual 6 steel sledgehammer as a quest reward while my sledge magazines were still at like T4 iron, So that entire mag series died in value on the spot. Then I got a T4 auto shotgun while i was still on like t4 double barrel so it is likely that mag series is dead on the spot for me. So both my primary weapons got rewarded to nearly BiS before i got even CLOSE to crafting them. 

 

That is to say, the magazines changed my progression vs alpha 20...not at all. Literally bullrush quests, be at T4 complete around the end of week 1 and be so overgeared that rads are just another zombie...before day 14 because ill 100% be T5 complete at that point. I think the only 2 things i really mag scavanged for was Forge Ahead and Vehicles because fishing those things out of traders is a nightmare. But everything else. Same gameplay loop as A20 nearly to the letter with some new flavor ontop. 

[Old Crow]

1 hour ago, Slingblade2040 said:

Traders need to only sell resources, food, drink, ammo and meds. No books, tools, weapons, armor, crafting stations or buffing items and the same goes for the loot we find.

 

For the quest rewards keep them more or less the same but limit the quality of what appears to quality 3 so we have an incentive to craft those quality 5 items. The same rewards could be found in those hidden treasure maps quests we find once in awhile.

 

There is no way this game will ever get any resemblance of balance without a major nerf like that to the traders when they sell most of items that can make us skip progress so easily. 

 

Give us more reason to craft and loot and actually put those  ridiculous magazines to good use. What's the point in looting up mags if the traders will sell all those things and enable us to skip the progress and become OP even faster.

 

I disagree. Just don't use the traders - no need to put that on those of us who prefer using them as they are.

[pApA^LeGBa]

Why would i go on a T6 quest for a T3 reward. Especially in MP Coop, as there isn´t instanced loot in this game, this makes no sense at all.

 

Traders? Don´t use them. Might be a bit of a problem in MP due to the waterfilters, but in SP you can play fine without a dew collector.

Edited June 23, 2023 by pApA^LeGBa (see edit history)

[Khalagar]

Wtf are you talking about OP, trader quests are bugged right now and don't even give decent rewards

 

It's literally a confirmed bug that hasn't been patched to live yet AFAIK

 

Trader rewards are absolute trash and far below what's intended

 

[Slingblade2040]

22 minutes ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

Why would i go on a T6 quest for a T3 reward. Especially in MP Coop, as there isn´t instanced loot in this game, this makes no sense at all.

 

Traders? Don´t use them. Might be a bit of a problem in MP due to the waterfilters, but in SP you can play fine without a 

The whole don't use them thing is ridiculous. They literally kill progression with what they make available. No one is saying to eliminate them but to nerf them to actually encourage more crafting and actually slow down player progression some so everyone isn't so OP by day 14.

 

People already complained about not doing t5 quests before because it's not worth it, you waste alot of ammo, health kits and other junk. You can still get a chance at gear but only after the quest is done. This way it prevents the usual nerd poll and loot the end loot for OP stuff.

[Khalagar]

3 minutes ago, Slingblade2040 said:

This way it prevents the usual nerd poll and loot the end loot for OP stuff.

 

As per always, this is only an issue for people who are being try hard about it. The devs do not, and should not balance the game around the 0.000000000000001% of players who are this sweaty about a PvE game

 

The vast, vast, vast majority of players are just running around looting buildings and doing the occasional quest, and dying horrifically as is. They are not nerd poling onto buildings, and don't have every single T5 poi memorized by heart. They are not chain doing quests of only the most efficient type to maximize rewards. They are not stacking 900 buffs before using the top tier most efficient weapon etc

 

Trying to balance the game around what the people with 900+ hours in the game are doing is not how literally any dev does it, for good reason.

[Slingblade2040]

1 minute ago, Khalagar said:

Wtf are you talking about OP, trader quests are bugged right now and don't even give decent rewards

 

It's literally a confirmed bug that hasn't been patched to live yet AFAIK

 

Trader rewards are absolute trash and far below what's intended

 

This is about the stuff they sell and over all loot. End loot shouldn't be making equipment so easily available to skip the whole crafting process neither should it be so easy to buy the stuff just by doing a few quests. 

 

I haven't had a problem with the quest reward as they are since I take the molotovs, pipe bombs, steel ingots or ammo but I know people always want OP rewards instead of actually crafting them. 

[Slingblade2040]

1 minute ago, Khalagar said:

 

As per always, this is only an issue for people who are being try hard about it. The devs do not, and should not balance the game around the 0.000000000000001% of players who are this sweaty about a PvE game

 

The vast, vast, vast majority of players are just running around looting buildings and doing the occasional quest, and dying horrifically as is. They are not nerd poling onto buildings, and don't have every single T5 poi memorized by heart. They are not chain doing quests of only the most efficient type to maximize rewards. They are not stacking 900 buffs before using the top tier most efficient weapon etc

 

Trying to balance the game around what the people with 900+ hours in the game are doing is not how literally any dev does it, for good reason.

So basically just keep things how they are to skip any possible progression system. Got it.

 

If the majority of players are just screwing around then it wouldn't change much of their play style now would it? Nothing I said would stop them from looting, questing or doing whatever it is they do in MP or SP. 

 

I swear so many people on here make it sound like a new player is completely breain dead and can't get the hang of this game in an hour or two. That they want things made as easy as possible with their hands held every step of the way.  This game is no where near as complicated or difficult as you make it out to be. 

[manni44]

9 minutes ago, Slingblade2040 said:

So basically just keep things how they are to skip any possible progression system. Got it.

 

If the majority of players are just screwing around then it wouldn't change much of their play style now would it? Nothing I said would stop them from looting, questing or doing whatever it is they do in MP or SP. 

 

I swear so many people on here make it sound like a new player is completely breain dead and can't get the hang of this game in an hour or two. That they want things made as easy as possible with their hands held every step of the way.  This game is no where near as complicated or difficult as you make it out to be. 

My wife got 700 hours in the game and she still has her problems with the game. This game is unique if u cant play every day all day long i can verymuch understand having hard times in this.

I got like 4k hours in this, for me this is easy even with all the changes between alphas. My wife hast to relearn alost the whole game each alpha.

[Khalagar]

55 minutes ago, Slingblade2040 said:

I swear so many people on here make it sound like a new player is completely breain dead and can't get the hang of this game in an hour or two. That they want things made as easy as possible with their hands held every step of the way.  This game is no where near as complicated or difficult as you make it out to be. 

 

 

 

70% of players don't even kill 500 zombies or reach game stage 50

 

 

 

 

80% of players don't even reach end game in the first place.

 

I absolutely assure you that the number of players who are nerd poling to the top of every Poi and using turbo cheese tactics to bum rush end game is a ridiculously small percentage of players.

 

It's a far better use of the devs time to focus on adding interesting content and balancing out the early and over all stages of the game, rather than worrying about what the people who have 1,000 hours in the game might do to ruin their own fun. Yes absolutely bum rushing traders to the exclusion of all else will mess up the balance of the game. You can also just get on a bicycle and loot every mailbox and bookstore in the map to power farm magazines instead and do that too

Edited June 23, 2023 by Khalagar (see edit history)

[Zerginfestor]

44 minutes ago, Khalagar said:

 

70% of players don't even kill 500 zombies or reach game stage 50

 

I absolutely assure you that the number of players who are nerd poling to the top of every Poi and using turbo cheese tactics to bum rush end game is a ridiculously small percentage of players.

 

Hell, even if we do the total player vs actual players that played the game (73.8% at least did something in it), it comes down to 41.8% players reached Gamestage 50. So while it is more so, that's still an incredibly small amount of players that even reached end game, and it's apparent that most players are sticking around early game wise, and only just over 10% of the active playerbase even reached gamestage 200 (Even I didn't with 148/200 because I took a breather to play other games). 

 

I totally agree, the devs shouldn't be focusing on the Tryhard meta players, because as usual, they're the on the very small minority.  It's better to have an impact for the majority and a strong early game presence along with balance to keep them tied to it. 

Edited June 23, 2023 by Zerginfestor
Grammar correction and minor edit. (see edit history)

[Slingblade2040]

8 hours ago, Khalagar said:

 

 

 

70% of players don't even kill 500 zombies or reach game stage 50

 

 

 

 

80% of players don't even reach end game in the first place.

 

I absolutely assure you that the number of players who are nerd poling to the top of every Poi and using turbo cheese tactics to bum rush end game is a ridiculously small percentage of players.

 

It's a far better use of the devs time to focus on adding interesting content and balancing out the early and over all stages of the game, rather than worrying about what the people who have 1,000 hours in the game might do to ruin their own fun. Yes absolutely bum rushing traders to the exclusion of all else will mess up the balance of the game. You can also just get on a bicycle and loot every mailbox and bookstore in the map to power farm magazines instead and do that too

If 70% of players don't reach end game, don't kill 500 zombies and like you also pointed out don't reach gamestage 50 then this game obviously has massive flaws for player retention because that looks as if they bored really fast because progression sucks or the fun and novelty dies out really fast. Hell that sounds like they barely make it to mid game. Which makes this all worse. This is even after how many years of this game being in early access and still not even coming close to having anything resembling a story or proper progression system. 

 

Most of those players obviously also don't bother posting on here to complain or say stuff so if we are going to go by those achievements then it's obvious this game has massive issues with its gameplay loop and keeping players actually wanting to play and at the very least reach mid game. 

[Vaeliorin]

11 hours ago, Zerginfestor said:

Extreme disagree. The trader as it is in early game is borderline useless, at least from experience of up to in-game 2 weeks of gameplay. Progression is so slow in terms of magazines, crafting, and upgrading, that even with 5 levels into miner, I just barely accessed a tier 1 Iron Pickaxe. 

I play on 2 hours days, but in b313 I could craft q5 iron tools on day 2, in b317 I was delayed until day 3.  I couldn't actually craft them on Day 2 in b313 because I was lacking duct tape, but apparently that was just bad luck, since duct tape and glue are much more common in my current world.

10 hours ago, Khalagar said:

 

 

 

70% of players don't even kill 500 zombies or reach game stage 50

 

 

 

 

80% of players don't even reach end game in the first place.

 

I absolutely assure you that the number of players who are nerd poling to the top of every Poi and using turbo cheese tactics to bum rush end game is a ridiculously small percentage of players.

 

It's a far better use of the devs time to focus on adding interesting content and balancing out the early and over all stages of the game, rather than worrying about what the people who have 1,000 hours in the game might do to ruin their own fun. Yes absolutely bum rushing traders to the exclusion of all else will mess up the balance of the game. You can also just get on a bicycle and loot every mailbox and bookstore in the map to power farm magazines instead and do that too

Honestly, the achievement stats are pretty meaningless.  I've got almost 2k hours in the game, and have 0 achievements.  I'm guessing it's because you can't get achievements with EAC turned off, but I've never really looked into it.

 

That said, I did jump from q5 Iron Knuckles to q5 Steel Knuckles and a q5 AK to a q5 M60 thanks to the trader (though getting the M60 involved me driving 6 kilometers to find a (zombie) bear so that I could make a cigar.)  I found that pretty disappointing because I was getting fairly close to making q5 Steel Knuckles (could only craft a q3 Tactical Assault Rifle when I got the M60) which made my book hunt kind of useless.  I even debated about whether I wanted to buy them, but I figured given I was doing T5 quests, it would be nice to have the M60, and the Steel Knuckles would free up a hot bar and inventory slot, since I wouldn't need a knife.

 

Wouldn't mind seeing traders unable to sell the top tier of items, as long as they brought back q6 crafting.

[Khalagar]

4 minutes ago, Vaeliorin said:

 

Wouldn't mind seeing traders unable to sell the top tier of items, as long as they brought back q6 crafting.

 

I do think that would be a good change, to make sure the perk books were always relevant. Maybe even make it so the traders can't sell over Q4 or even Q3 of an item. That way you might still get a decent item in the early and mid game, but won't power spike. Instead they need to make the crafting magazine bundle scale more so that a low level one only gives a couple of magazines and a high tier one gives a lot

[Roland]

2 hours ago, Slingblade2040 said:

If 70% of players don't reach end game, don't kill 500 zombies and like you also pointed out don't reach gamestage 50 then this game obviously has massive flaws for player retention because that looks as if they bored really fast because progression sucks or the fun and novelty dies out really fast. Hell that sounds like they barely make it to mid game. Which makes this all worse.

 

I think that what it shows is that the early to mid game is the most interesting part and people like to restart a new game and go through the early build up and feel vulnerable again after outpacing the difficulty curve before they get to late game and gameplay becomes wash rinse repeat. There could definitely be some mid to late game challenges added to help people not get bored once they've overcome all the early and mid game threats and hopefully bandits will fill that niche and perhaps we will see the percentage of people who play further into the higher gamestages increase after A22. That would be an interesting study.

 

But I don't think people are playing to gamestage 49 and then quitting. I think they are replaying over and over and over the portion of the game that is most interesting to them.

Edited June 23, 2023 by Roland (see edit history)

[sovapid]

11 hours ago, Khalagar said:

 

As per always, this is only an issue for people who are being try hard about it. The devs do not, and should not balance the game around the 0.000000000000001% of players who are this sweaty about a PvE game

 

The vast, vast, vast majority of players are just running around looting buildings and doing the occasional quest, and dying horrifically as is. They are not nerd poling onto buildings, and don't have every single T5 poi memorized by heart. They are not chain doing quests of only the most efficient type to maximize rewards. They are not stacking 900 buffs before using the top tier most efficient weapon etc

 

Trying to balance the game around what the people with 900+ hours in the game are doing is not how literally any dev does it, for good reason.

 

i dont play that much and im not all that great, but was watching some variety streamers play the latest alpha and they were constantly dying lol.

 

made me feel better about how good i am......

[Khalagar]

  

34 minutes ago, Roland said:

I think that what it shows is that the early to mid game is the most interesting part and people like to restart a new game and go through the early build up and feel vulnerable again after outpacing the difficulty curve before they get to late game and gameplay becomes wash rinse repeat

 

 

Yep, I'm nearing the thousand hour mark and have played many, many, many times on the various alphas over the years with friends, but we basically always get bored by like day 50-60 once we are decked out in full gear and have nothing to do but run the same couple of PoI etc.

 

Restarting over is definitely the most interesting part of the game, where you try different builds and scrounge through the mud in the early game. It's why I love the way TFP release their alphas, it's basically like seasons in ARPG where you start over from scratch every couple of months with a new patch note list of changes.

Edited June 23, 2023 by Khalagar (see edit history)

[Archael]

13 hours ago, Khalagar said:

 

As per always, this is only an issue for people who are being try hard about it. The devs do not, and should not balance the game around the 0.000000000000001% of players who are this sweaty about a PvE game

 

The vast, vast, vast majority of players are just running around looting buildings and doing the occasional quest, and dying horrifically as is. They are not nerd poling onto buildings, and don't have every single T5 poi memorized by heart. They are not chain doing quests of only the most efficient type to maximize rewards. They are not stacking 900 buffs before using the top tier most efficient weapon etc

 

Trying to balance the game around what the people with 900+ hours in the game are doing is not how literally any dev does it, for good reason.

I would agree with that in a20. in a21 with magazines. devs shows the intended gameplay is to do pois and gather magazines. You can either go from poi to poi or get quests and get bith poi and quest reward.
Unless something is done with magazines and learn by looting, or this statement is false.

[NBornkilla]

fun pimp dont listen to this guy nuf said.

[OgreSlayeR]

I do think traders need a nerf, but I wouldn't say you shouldn't be able to buy good weapons from them. I would think a better change for them is to limit trader rewards to weapon and tool parts and being able to buy Q5 Steel stuff at a much later game stage.  I definitely think you shouldn't have Steel stuff in week 2 for example. Maybe around week 3-4 imo.

Edited June 23, 2023 by OgreSlayeR (see edit history)

[Old Crow]

13 hours ago, Khalagar said:

 

 

 

80% of players don't even reach end game in the first place.

 

 

 

 

Heh.. "endgame."

This game doesn't have an endgame yet.

[AtomicUs5000]

I'm not sure the global achievements show that players are or are not capable of something more difficult. You see the same range of percentages for just about any game on Steam, even if it's an easy and short 20 hour or less game. I'm pretty sure that most developers adding achievements to their games try to make sure that some are easy, some are not, some come early, some come very late. The achievements also do not reflect the retention of players. Plenty of players play for a little bit, then go play something else, then return later. There are a lot of other things to play, let alone real life responsibilities.
 
Making the game great in the beginning should be of focus since most customers don't put in extreme number of hours. They will get their first impressions and pass on their recommendations. Making the game great beyond that should also be of focus since a large number of these players with extreme hours invested are the streamers and content providers. Their extended gameplay passes on the recommendations repeatedly to a great number (and often growing) of potential customers. Stifling the opinions of one player type to give more attention to the other has its consequences either way. 

[Zerginfestor]

4 hours ago, Vaeliorin said:

I play on 2 hours days, but in b313 I could craft q5 iron tools on day 2, in b317 I was delayed until day 3.  I couldn't actually craft them on Day 2 in b313 because I was lacking duct tape, but apparently that was just bad luck, since duct tape and glue are much more common in my current world.

 

You're getting that via quests, right? I didn't speedrun it, managed to get up to T2 before the trader decided to drop through the floorboards and that was that.