Traders and Loot need a serious nerf.

[pApA^LeGBa]

4 hours 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. 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.

 

Without even playing further once? How would they know that this part is the most interesting for them if they haven´t even seen a T5 POI from inside or experienced a demolisher on horde night.

 

I mean you try to tell us here that they know everything about the game, otherwise they wouldn´t know what´s most interesting for them, without playing it properly.

 

That´s the most riddiculous example of sugarcoating i have ever seen tbh.

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

[Roland]

2 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

 

Without even playing further once? How would they know that this part is the most interesting for them if they haven´t even seen a T5 POI from inside or experienced a demolisher on horde night.

 

I mean you try to tell us here that they know everything about the game, otherwise they wouldn´t know what´s most interesting for them, without playing it properly.

 

That´s the most riddiculous example of sugarcoating i have ever seen tbh.

Oh excuse me. Let me rephrase for you. 
 

I think it shows that they restart the game and replay what they think is the most interesting part of the game. 
 

Sorry, I didn’t mean to give affront to your favorite T5 POIs by making an absolute statement about what is actually most interesting….

[Vaeliorin]

3 hours ago, Zerginfestor said:

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. 

Not really.  I mean, I do quests, but the drop rate for crafting mag bundles on quests is terrible.  I think I may have gotten 2 from Tier 1 and Tier 2 quests.  Mostly, I loot every single thing I see that may have a book.  I prioritize POIs I know have lots of books.  I've done this since A17, since the only thing that's really valuable (to me) loot-wise is books.

 

I also put all my points into Strength and Miner 69'er until I have it maxed out before moving on to other skills/perks, because having good tools is the most important thing in the game for me (because I spend a ton of time mining and building.)

[Zerginfestor]

1 hour ago, Vaeliorin said:

Not really.  I mean, I do quests, but the drop rate for crafting mag bundles on quests is terrible.  I think I may have gotten 2 from Tier 1 and Tier 2 quests.  Mostly, I loot every single thing I see that may have a book.  I prioritize POIs I know have lots of books.  I've done this since A17, since the only thing that's really valuable (to me) loot-wise is books.

 

I also put all my points into Strength and Miner 69'er until I have it maxed out before moving on to other skills/perks, because having good tools is the most important thing in the game for me (because I spend a ton of time mining and building.)

Then the difference here is literally just me not getting enough books, because I had maxed out Miner 69'er, but only barely reached Iron tools. 

[Vaeliorin]

55 minutes ago, Zerginfestor said:

Then the difference here is literally just me not getting enough books, because I had maxed out Miner 69'er, but only barely reached Iron tools. 

Yep.  I run around town looting everyone mailbox I see.  Then, when the trader sends me to a new town, I run around that town looting every mailbox I see.  Repeat every time I encounter a new town.  I often in A20 would have the spear, archery, and clothing book series maxed out on day 1.  I consider books to basically be the only worthwhile loot in the game, everything else is incidental, so I go out of my way to get every chance to get a book.

[Khalagar]

The more I think on it, the more I do think traders shouldn't be able to give over a t4 version of an item just to make sure you absolutely *can't* power creep and  totally ruin a magazine line by getting a t6 steel spear or something when you only halfway through the magazine line, and some of the extra rewards could be more focused on things like resources instead.

 

My friend that hate mining and grinding resources loved the t1 rewards like 1500 wood etc, but those disappeared and all we get now are t2 iron gloves and such as a reward. I feel like they could even increase crafting costs, but have traders give stuff to help offset the raised costs, like making it take a lot more parts to craft high tier stuff but have traders give parts bundles. Or have traders give duct tape etc.

 

I also do think the traders should give low tier upgrades as high tier reward. Like if you do a t5 infested to get a big reward, it should offer something like farming or gun bundles etc

Edited June 24, 2023 by Khalagar (see edit history)

[Chale]

Traders and loot in general do need a review and overhaul/nerf.  maybe this is just good RNG but in my current game I'm running a spears build and my very first trader (jen) had 5 spear books for sale so I buy all 5, on day 4 she restocks 5 more spear books so I buy those, on day 7 she restocks with 5 more spear books I'm starting to see a trend here.  So on day 7 before my first horde night between jen mailboxes and random quest looting and magazine bundle rewards with 2/5 in the spears skill I have enough books and spear parts to make a tier 3 steel spear, and with the tier 2 25 steel quest rewards I have enough steel to make it as well.  Which I do and it makes day 7 horde a non issue even at 32 zombie horde nights, by day 10 with a game stage of like 62 I max out the spear magazines and make a tier 5 steel spear.  Oh and I had 7/7 spear books by day 8 so all I do is repeatedly power attack and if I kill just 1 zombie in a grp my stamina is refilled.

Edited June 24, 2023 by Chale (see edit history)

[pApA^LeGBa]

6 hours ago, Roland said:

Oh excuse me. Let me rephrase for you. 
 

I think it shows that they restart the game and replay what they think is the most interesting part of the game. 
 

Sorry, I didn’t mean to give affront to your favorite T5 POIs by making an absolute statement about what is actually most interesting….

 

You just have to defend no matter how valid a point is, right? Having to get personal sounds like desperation tbh.

 

Who plays games like that? No one. If people play a game more than a few hours they at least take a look at all that it has to offer and THEN maybe deceide to replay what they like most.

 

99% of the people who didn´t make it to gamestage 50, tried the game and never touched it again. And don´t forget the 500 zombies achievement. Even if you play only the early game over and over again, you will have killed 500 zombies at one point.

Edited June 24, 2023 by pApA^LeGBa (see edit history)

[Gr.o.m.]

3 hours ago, Khalagar said:

The more I think on it, the more I do think traders shouldn't be able to give over a t4 version of an item just to make sure you absolutely *can't* power creep and  totally ruin a magazine line by getting a t6 steel spear or something when you only halfway through the magazine line, and some of the extra rewards could be more focused on things like resources instead.

 

My friend that hate mining and grinding resources loved the t1 rewards like 1500 wood etc, but those disappeared and all we get now are t2 iron gloves and such as a reward. I feel like they could even increase crafting costs, but have traders give stuff to help offset the raised costs, like making it take a lot more parts to craft high tier stuff but have traders give parts bundles. Or have traders give duct tape etc.

 

I also do think the traders should give low tier upgrades as high tier reward. Like if you do a t5 infested to get a big reward, it should offer something like farming or gun bundles etc

Great idea, but than tell me, why should ppl invest a lot and I mean A LOT of time to run tier 4 and 5 poi's and get the same reward, as running a tier 3 or 4 poi? Money?

I am at day 5 and sitting on over 16.000 dukes because there is nothing wort buying on the item side. XP? I get the same or more XP if I run 2-3 tier 3 poi's instead of one tier 5. Nerving the rewards is the best way to ruin the endgame. Hey lets restart the game, maybe there are mods out there, where I can have fun.

[BFT2020]

4 hours ago, Khalagar said:

The more I think on it, the more I do think traders shouldn't be able to give over a t4 version of an item just to make sure you absolutely *can't* power creep and  totally ruin a magazine line by getting a t6 steel spear or something when you only halfway through the magazine line, and some of the extra rewards could be more focused on things like resources instead.

 

My friend that hate mining and grinding resources loved the t1 rewards like 1500 wood etc, but those disappeared and all we get now are t2 iron gloves and such as a reward. I feel like they could even increase crafting costs, but have traders give stuff to help offset the raised costs, like making it take a lot more parts to craft high tier stuff but have traders give parts bundles. Or have traders give duct tape etc.

 

I also do think the traders should give low tier upgrades as high tier reward. Like if you do a t5 infested to get a big reward, it should offer something like farming or gun bundles etc

 

There is a lot you can do.  I removed quest rewards and left those as just dukes.  I also removed lower quality gear (so only Q6) and boosted the price.  But my thought process was that they are in business so why would they be giving away gear for free?   🤔

[Khalagar]

9 hours ago, Gr.o.m. said:

Great idea, but than tell me, why should ppl invest a lot and I mean A LOT of time to run tier 4 and 5 poi's and get the same reward, as running a tier 3 or 4 poi? Money?

 

Better rewards. Would be pretty straight forward to just make it so tier 1 quests only give primitive items of low qulity, tier 2 give better quality, teir 3 give iron items of low quality, tier 4 give better iron, tier 5 give low quality steel etc

 

 

They could also have it offer resources instead of dukes or weapons. If a Tier 1 fetch gives you 100 cobble stone that's nice but not that big of a deal for late game. Where as a tier 4 might give you a thousand cobble or 350 cement or something that you actually consider.  Worthwhile. A lot of players just don't like grinding resources so if the trader offered up 750 gunpowder as a quest reward sometimes, a lot of people would pick that over a t3 steel sledge

 

I also personally think bundles are fun just because of the loot box aspect. I think there should be more of those in the offering like a "parts bundle" and "food bundle" etc

[theFlu]

I'd like to see what percentage of steam players have the achievement "Started the Game" before drawing too many conclusions from the stats.

 

74% have crafted a Bedroll, 69.5% have crafted a Stone Axe. Something something 30% is more like 50% -of the actual players.

[Zerginfestor]

8 minutes ago, theFlu said:

I'd like to see what percentage of steam players have the achievement "Started the Game" before drawing too many conclusions from the stats.

 

74% have crafted a Bedroll, 69.5% have crafted a Stone Axe. Something something 30% is more like 50% -of the actual players.

That's why I did the mathematics based on the players who actually crafted the bedroll and whatnot as the bare minimum, which does alter the % of the other achievements, like 30%-->41% but it's not a huge amount. Would be a good idea though to finally get a strong foundation of what's considered the main playerbase and not a % of people that said "aight, I'm out" the moment they took one look at the game after downloading it. 

[Vaeliorin]

1 hour ago, theFlu said:

I'd like to see what percentage of steam players have the achievement "Started the Game" before drawing too many conclusions from the stats.

 

74% have crafted a Bedroll, 69.5% have crafted a Stone Axe. Something something 30% is more like 50% -of the actual players.

As I said previously, the steam achievements aren't necessarily indicative of anything players have done.  I have almost 2k hours in game, and I don't have the achievement for crafting a bedroll (and I craft 2 at the start of every game.)  I have none of the achievements, not even a single point of progress for them.  I have no real idea why, and I don't care, I just thought I'd point out that seemingly the tie between what players have actually done and the achievements isn't necessarily that strong.

 

Edit:  I got distracted and forgot to say what I actually came here to post.  I feel like trader stock needs to be more tied to trader stage (or whatever it's called.)  I haven't done a single quest for Jen, but she sold me a q5 sniper rifle.  I feel like that shouldn't be possible.

 

I'd like to see it such that you much improve a trader's tier before they'll sell you better stuff.  And there should be some highly desirable high end things that are exclusive to each particular trader.  Give me a reason to do quests for other traders than the one in my starting city.  As it is, I have zero incentive to do quests for multiple traders, as not only do I have to start over at tier 1, but dealing with bringing back the loot from a faraway city is such a pain (I think it would be kind of neat if the traders offered a shipping service, i.e., you pay them X amount of dukes, they give you temporary access to a box you can put stuff in, and when you go to any other trader, you can pull that stuff out of the box) that it's just not worth it to spend any extended period of time in a city you don't have a base in. 

Edited June 25, 2023 by Vaeliorin (see edit history)

[Riamus]

Trying to look at Steam achievements and determine how many people do something is not going to get you very far.  A lot of people buy a game and never open it, potentially for years.  This is why your easiest achievements are often around 70-80%.  Many others who do start the game will play for an hour or two and then shelf the game because it either isn't what they like or they have other things they want to play and just wanted to take a peek at the game, which is why most games have an even lower percent of people who have completed the first area/chapter/zone, etc. of the game and it steadily goes down from there.  None of these players would be active players and so really don't count when trying to debate what active players are doing or not doing in the game.  You can probably estimate most achievements at 2-3x what they are to get a good idea of active players, though that's nothing more than a general estimate you can make it basically any Steam game and may not be very accurate.

 

Regarding the traders, if you don't use Daring Adventurer, I think the traders are fine for what they sell and when they sell it.  Of course, I rarely buy anything from traders except what I can't find or craft (e.g. solar).  If you put points into DA, you need to accept that they'll sell stuff that will often be better than you can craft.  If you don't like that, don't use DA.  Quest rewards should relate to the tier of quest you are doing and so a high tier quest should give good quest rewards.  I think the rewards in A20 were generally fine.  And once the bug is fixed in A21, I think they'll be fine there as well.  If you are rushing quests, you're in the same boat as DA... you're going to get better stuff than you can craft.  If you're more casual in how you play, you'll be relatively even.  That being said, I do think the magazine nerf slowed crafting down way too much to stay even with questing and should be bumped up again.  That, or they should just adjust the number of magazines needed to craft things rather than changing the number of magazines you find.  You can have magazine numbers be lower without killing crafting by just lowering the number needed to craft things, achieving a balance without needing a ton of magazines.  To me, a balance is where you can craft pretty much the same things you find in loot if you quest around 50-70% of your day.  If you are pushing quests more than that, then you should expect crafting to be behind and if you're doing less questing, you should expect crafting to be ahead.  Those numbers could be adjusted some to fit what others might like but it would still be somewhere around there in order so most people are going to craft at about the same rate they loot.

 

The one change I'd make to traders is the quantities in their quest rewards.  1500 wood?  800 coal?  10 boiled water?  This is too high.  Most (not all) resource rewards are too high by 50-75%.

[meganoth]

7 hours ago, Riamus said:

Trying to look at Steam achievements and determine how many people do something is not going to get you very far.  A lot of people buy a game and never open it, potentially for years.  This is why your easiest achievements are often around 70-80%.  Many others who do start the game will play for an hour or two and then shelf the game because it either isn't what they like or they have other things they want to play and just wanted to take a peek at the game, which is why most games have an even lower percent of people who have completed the first area/chapter/zone, etc. of the game and it steadily goes down from there.  None of these players would be active players and so really don't count when trying to debate what active players are doing or not doing in the game.  You can probably estimate most achievements at 2-3x what they are to get a good idea of active players, though that's nothing more than a general estimate you can make it basically any Steam game and may not be very accurate.

 

Regarding the traders, if you don't use Daring Adventurer, I think the traders are fine for what they sell and when they sell it.  Of course, I rarely buy anything from traders except what I can't find or craft (e.g. solar).  If you put points into DA, you need to accept that they'll sell stuff that will often be better than you can craft.  If you don't like that, don't use DA.  Quest rewards should relate to the tier of quest you are doing and so a high tier quest should give good quest rewards.  I think the rewards in A20 were generally fine.  And once the bug is fixed in A21, I think they'll be fine there as well.  If you are rushing quests, you're in the same boat as DA... you're going to get better stuff than you can craft.  If you're more casual in how you play, you'll be relatively even.  That being said, I do think the magazine nerf slowed crafting down way too much to stay even with questing and should be bumped up again.  That, or they should just adjust the number of magazines needed to craft things rather than changing the number of magazines you find.  You can have magazine numbers be lower without killing crafting by just lowering the number needed to craft things, achieving a balance without needing a ton of magazines.  To me, a balance is where you can craft pretty much the same things you find in loot if you quest around 50-70% of your day.  If you are pushing quests more than that, then you should expect crafting to be behind and if you're doing less questing, you should expect crafting to be ahead.  Those numbers could be adjusted some to fit what others might like but it would still be somewhere around there in order so most people are going to craft at about the same rate they loot.

 

The one change I'd make to traders is the quantities in their quest rewards.  1500 wood?  800 coal?  10 boiled water?  This is too high.  Most (not all) resource rewards are too high by 50-75%.

 

Not only that, but giving money AND loot for quest reward is too much. Dukes should be just one guaranteed choice and probably a bit less than now. Because ideally the trader could have better weapons on display if buying it would mean you would have to save up for it and get nothing else from rewards in the meantime.

 

The typical player would then start the game by saving up dukes for the filter in his first 2-3 quests, then either going full on saving up money or mixing it up and getting quests rewards or money whatever seems better, For example on day 5 the save-all player could then actually afford an iron quality 4 weapon by giving all his money, the other player could just buy a stone tier5 or iron tier1.

 

As it is now, my group of 4 gets so much money from questing that we could afford to buy everything of iron level useful to us the traders had offered. AND I got a quest reward from a tier2 infestation quest of a q4 steel pickaxe. On day 7! The only iron level item we actually crafted is a q2 turret, nothing at all was looted(!), about 5-8 iron level items were simply bought from the trader or were quest rewards

 

 

 

 

Edited June 25, 2023 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Kostriktor]

want to share your secret ? how do you make all those dukes, in order to skip "progression" so fast ?

[theFlu]

12 hours ago, Zerginfestor said:

That's why I did the mathematics based on the players who actually crafted the bedroll and whatnot as the bare minimum

Huh, so you did. And the rest of the thread happened.. I must've had a massive brainfart, or had some old version of the thread loaded when replying.. oh well

[Greymantle]

The traders are the dev team's first love. They have been OP since the start and will never be balanced except by mods. Been many years since the traders were added and till this day they have been WAY OP compared to the looting game outside of questing.

[Severice]

The role of the trade should be to smooth out the RNG of the game.

In the early game while wearing no armor it's very easy to get injuries like lacerations and infections. It can be very difficult to find sewing kits, honey, aloe, and splints. I'd be fine if the trader was coded in such a way that if you walked up to him with a broken leg, he always carried a splint, and a cast at +200% prices. Demand is up buddy.

The problem is the trader isn't smoothing out the RNG what he carries is just more RNG. He might sell you a double barrel shotgun, he might sell you an M60, who knows. Completely random. That was one of the big issues with the trader perks before, you needed 5 perks to get his secret stash up to buying night vision and q5t4 weapons that any other progression option was worthless.

He should sell food/water/medical/materials thats it, he shouldn't be used to bypass crafting gates. He could also be used to upgrade q5 weapons to q6 for a cost in dukes.

[Slingblade2040]

Just from doing quests and playing normal as intended by day 17 I've gotten my character more OP than in alpha 20 at the same day on same settings of warrior difficulty. 

 

It feels like this ridiculous goal of nerfing water because duct tape and yet again reworking the skill system made the game be even more out of balance than before. 

 

Almost 2 years all for this. Something they could have ignore and instead released something that would want players to actually get past gamestage 50 and maybe try dipping into end game content instead of getting bored at mid game and starting over because according to certain people that's what most folks find interesting about the game which is really sad after what almost 10 years in EA? And the early game is the only thing they still find interesting. 

 

 

Edited June 25, 2023 by Slingblade2040 (see edit history)

[Vaeliorin]

14 hours ago, Riamus said:

The one change I'd make to traders is the quantities in their quest rewards.  1500 wood?  800 coal?  10 boiled water?  This is too high.  Most (not all) resource rewards are too high by 50-75%.

1500 wood is 5 1200 hp trees (by comparison, my tree farms are a minimum of 60 trees.)  800 coal is 8 coal blocks.  I thought those rewards were laughable when I saw them, they're easily harvested in a minute or two.  Arguably the water is too much, but I've never been tempted to take it, since water is a non-issue past day 2 or so.

[Riamus]

1 minute ago, Vaeliorin said:

1500 wood is 5 1200 hp trees (by comparison, my tree farms are a minimum of 60 trees.)  800 coal is 8 coal blocks.  I thought those rewards were laughable when I saw them, they're easily harvested in a minute or two.  Arguably the water is too much, but I've never been tempted to take it, since water is a non-issue past day 2 or so.

Yes, but for people who quest a lot, they can get all the resources they'll ever need without ever gathering the resources at this level of reward.  You should need to gather resources and not just quest if you want to build things, imo.

5 hours ago, Kostriktor said:

want to share your secret ? how do you make all those dukes, in order to skip "progression" so fast ?

If you quest as much as you are able to in the first few days, you'll have plenty of dukes.  You can then work on your base before day 7 and once it's ready, go back to questing all day each day and you'll end up with stacks and stacks of dukes.  Quest rewards offer a lot of dukes and you can sell all the stuff you found that you don't need or want for even more.  Any points into Daring Adventurer will increase the dukes you get from the quest rewards as well.  So if you're going that route, you can easily skip progression.  If you don't want to skip progression, you just don't go this route or you choose not to spend your dukes.

[Vaeliorin]

I suppose it's because of the way I build, but I'd need to take that reward a couple dozen times to have enough wood to even build a mid-game type of base.  It just seems a horribly inefficient way to get those resources to me.

[theFlu]

7 minutes ago, Vaeliorin said:

800 coal is 8 coal blocks.

That's with a full mother lode, no? My gut feeling is more like 30-40 per block, for non-STR builds 20 blocks is, well. Trivial, but most people don't seem to like mining even that much