Alpha 21 Feedback: Trader Stage and Read to Learn

[PoshBeard]

The removal of secret stashes was already a huge blow to the overall function of traders, but the trader stage system meant to keep you from getting ahead in any way through trading makes them borderline useless in the early stages of the game outside of dumping your crap off and quests.  Even before the changes, traders rarely sold anything that was way out of your reach,  and when they did it was usually at a low level and for a HUGE price. This wasn't really game breaking or overpowered in the slightest, so it's both surprising and frustrating that you'd kneecap traders because crafting and looting wasn't worth it. That's a loot and crafting issue, not a trader issue. Instead of bringing the rest of the game in line with traders to make looting and crafting more worth the time and effort spent, traders get a massive nerf and that's all there is to it.

 

Now traders have all of the same boring loot you'd get from looting, so now you can't even turn the trash you get from looting into something that's actually useful. This is a problem with the loot stage system giving boring loot that was indirectly effected by traders, and instead of fixing the issues with loot stage, you decide that traders need to be nerfed as well. You're  is  attacking a symptom of the problem instead of directly addressing the issue, that being that loot stage in its current implementation limits you to getting boring loot for the majority of a game, and saying that if you're not looting for everything you have you're playing the game WRONG. We saw this with the changes to farming as well. 

 

 

An additional gripe, the "read to learn" progression system is a major step BACKWARDS in a lot of ways for the progression system, because now the perks you spec into don't actually grant you access to anything fun, they just make you a bit more likely to find the schematics you want. In A20, you could get most of the recipes through perks, and you could get schematics or magazines to either fill out recipes from other skills that you aren't taking or find recipes that can only be acquired through books Now it's just like Alpha 16, you go dig through  countless bookcases and dumpsters and hope that for example,  maybe you'll find a forge or crucible schematic, and if you don't find it then lulmao get pulped loser better luck next time, have fun digging through containers for the next 2 and a half hours to build a forge.
 

Edited July 21, 2023 by PoshBeard (see edit history)