Experience with and thoughts on the magazine system

[katarynna]

After a decent amount of time playing a21, i have several thoughts and suggestions regarding the magazine system.

 

I personally overall like both the magazine system as is and the potential of what it could be to me with a bit of balancing.

 

Some magazines seem to come a bit too fast. some just right, and some either a bit or a lot too slow.

 

Maybe too fast: cooking and first aid

  I think because they have exclusive containers that they spawn in plus also spawn everywhere that "any" magazine can be found, these are obtained much faster than anything else. This 

not a problem for these skills, but because other skills are lagging behind a bit, it might be better to just remove these magazines from spawning at all in generic containers such as mailboxes. That would decrease the leveling of these skills just a bit, while increasing the leveling of other skills that are lagging.

 

Seems just right: armor, workstations, seeds

  By the time i can craft iron armor, i have either just crafted a workbench or am just about to.  At the same time, i am looting q5-6 t0 and possibly q1 iron armor. Everything seems in balance, excluding quest rewards. and seeds are common enough in loot that crafting them is not even really needed early game and the magazines are fairly common.

 

A bit too slow: all tools

  The tools you loot seems to outpace what you can craft fairly early in the game. For me, by the time i can craft q2-3 stone, i am looting q5-6 stone, and the gap widens as you continue leveling. Another source of tool magazines would help.

 

Too slow: weapon magazines

  I think because you have so many different weapon magazines competing for very few exclusive containers, my weapon crafting experience lags way behind what i loot. I find i am almost never crafting weapons.

 

Possible solutions:

 

I think the problem with the things that seem to level too slow is that they need more exclusive sources for those particular magazines. The solution i came up with is pretty simple. Create a weapon crafting magazine bundle and a tool crafting magazine bundle. Maybe give the weapon crafting bundle 3 each of 3 magazines and the tools one 2 each of 2.

 

Add these bundles to both the trader quest rewards and air drops. Give them equal weight to the generic crafting magazine bundle. See how that affects the speed of leveling up skills and adjust/change as needed.

 

That leaves quest rewards as the major outlier.

 

Any time that the trader would now offer a weapon, decrease the chances of a weapon appearing by 50% and substitute the weapon crafting magazine bundle for the other 50%. The same would work for tools. 

 

That leaves armor as the only thing with a tier and quality that the trader offers as a quest reward that remains unchanged. You could do the same thing as with tools and weapons, by creating an armor crafting bundle with say 5 magazines and 3 steel or military armor parts.

 

I think it is fine and even desired to occasionally get a quest reward significantly better than what you can craft/loot, but maybe not 2 tiers higher or 5 quality levels higher, lol.

 

To me, these changes should help balance the rate at which you acquire the different magazine types while also helping to balance crafting, looting, and quest rewards.

 

If your experience with the rate of looting different magazines is much different than mine, please let me know what differences you are seeing. If you have any better ideas on how to balance, i would enjoy hearing those as well.

[Rince]

I'm playing my second A21 game, since I wanted to see if the experience was kinda similar to the first one.

 

I'm not noticing much difference. I'm in the third in game week.

 

In the main weapon magazines, I'm rolling with a crafted T5 stun baton, and I'm almost reaching the T5 robotic turret.

On the secondary weapons, I just reached T5 AK-47, but didn't crafted it, since I got early a bundle from an air drop that gave me a T5 AK. Thinking about crafting a T1 Tactical to see the difference.

 

In armor, I put a point in heavy armor pretty late, around the second horde time, and just reached iron armor. But I got lucky with the trader rewards and have a T4 steel helmet and a T4 military boots. Gonna craft the other parts when I reach T3 iron, to not lose all the mod slots.

 

The medical and food magazines are slowly getting there, not too fast. But I didn't had any points here, only got to physician 1 because I sprained my leg in a POI and wanted the insta-cure.

 

The tools, in this game I got some luck and got a T5 steel axe, no luck with any pickaxe, so gonna need to craft one iron pickaxe. In my first game I had to craft all the set of T5 tools.

 

So far, so good. I'm having a bit more luck this time with the rewards than in my first game. Particularly those armor drops. In my first one, since two T6 scrap armor pieces, I never got any better than what I crafted, all the way into full T5 steel. And at day 71, still rolling with T5 crafted things, since I never found any T6.

 

I think that they could make so in the container that drop weapons magazine, there's an extra chance to get an additional magazine, so you don't end with a weapon leveling fast and others lagging behind.

[pApA^LeGBa]

It´s basically a race with the gamestage. If you can´t have a crucible before you get demos, you will have a hard time. Wich means hardcore looting to be able to find all the magazines before you hit gamestage 148. 

 

If you wanna play in the desert or snow, this will be even harder. Pretty much impossible to get it in time in the wasteland i would say, maybe even in the snow already.

 

Besides the crucible i generally get all the magazines i need to keep up, but only if i constantly go looting. It get´s boring only hunting for magazines.

 

The whole water and magazine change motivates people to min/max the game even more. I am not sure if that is what you want as a developer.

 

 

Edited July 17, 2023 by pApA^LeGBa (see edit history)

[RipClaw]

20 minutes ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

It´s basically a race with the gamestage. If you can´t have a crucible before you get demos, you will have a hard time. Wich means hardcore looting to be able to find all the magazines before you hit gamestage 148. 

Temrekti from Guns, Nerds and Steel had to learn that today. No crucible and therefore no steel. The result is a broken base.