Concerning Magazines and Learn-By-Reading...

[Rotor]

2 minutes ago, Vaeliorin said:

.....claiming that they're individual recipes just doesn't seem to be a tenable position to me.

 

Heh, I dont have any content to add....Other than that ole saying about wrestling with a pig in the pen and after while realizing the pig likes it.

[Roland]

1 hour ago, Vaeliorin said:

Given that each individual magazine doesn't unlock a new recipe, I don't know how you can see them as anything other than a progression system.  If every magazine unlocked a new tier of item, you could certainly make that argument (I'd disagree) but given that most magazines give you little other than progress to the next unlock, claiming that they're individual recipes just doesn't seem to be a tenable position to me.

 

No problem. This one is simple. It is the apocalypse so any magazines you find are faded, have water damage, are missing pages, etc. If you find 8 copies of the same magazine you might be lucky to piece together whatever is legible or still there to figure out the next recipe. From the very beginning, I imagined the process of sifting through magazines to find bits and pieces of knowledge but I wouldn't have the entire recipe until I had found several copies. I never looked at it like I was reading a magazine and skilling up in knowledge and then reading the magazine again and skilling up in knowledge and then reading it again and skilling up in knowledge until I passed a threshold to where I was skilled enough to craft the next item. Instead, it was pieces of knowledge here and there with never a complete magazine but after finding parts of a few I would have the recipe needed. I've always considered my character skilled enough to craft anything in the game once the recipe was known and there was no progression of becoming more skilled-- it was always finding the recipes or schematics and as soon as I got the recipe I was good enough to craft it.

 

Now in A21, you can spend skillpoints to become better at crafting. You don't learn recipes from spending points but you become more efficient and faster. This is the first time I have felt like crafting skill has a progression now that we can spend points to become better at crafting. The magazines are just recipes that I didn't know but once I can piece them together through my scavenging and research, I can craft them.

 

Maybe if there was a puzzle graphic that showed a schematic with four missing pieces and every time you found a magazine it would provide one piece to the puzzle and after four magazines were found the schematic would be complete and the recipe would be unlocked, that would be an easier graphic for those who can't imagine it on their own. To me, piecing together parts of recipes from several partial magazines makes perfect sense with the randomness inherent with looting and enhances looting. The only problem I have with it at this time is the imbalance of high tier quest rewards that are too quickly advanced to which makes the need to find those recipes irrelevant because the trader gave you a better item than you'll be able to craft for days to weeks of game time.

[Vaeliorin]

30 minutes ago, Roland said:

 

No problem. This one is simple. It is the apocalypse so any magazines you find are faded, have water damage, are missing pages, etc. If you find 8 copies of the same magazine you might be lucky to piece together whatever is legible or still there to figure out the next recipe. From the very beginning, I imagined the process of sifting through magazines to find bits and pieces of knowledge but I wouldn't have the entire recipe until I had found several copies. I never looked at it like I was reading a magazine and skilling up in knowledge and then reading the magazine again and skilling up in knowledge and then reading it again and skilling up in knowledge until I passed a threshold to where I was skilled enough to craft the next item. Instead, it was pieces of knowledge here and there with never a complete magazine but after finding parts of a few I would have the recipe needed. I've always considered my character skilled enough to craft anything in the game once the recipe was known and there was no progression of becoming more skilled-- it was always finding the recipes or schematics and as soon as I got the recipe I was good enough to craft it.

 

Now in A21, you can spend skillpoints to become better at crafting. You don't learn recipes from spending points but you become more efficient and faster. This is the first time I have felt like crafting skill has a progression now that we can spend points to become better at crafting. The magazines are just recipes that I didn't know but once I can piece them together through my scavenging and research, I can craft them.

 

Maybe if there was a puzzle graphic that showed a schematic with four missing pieces and every time you found a magazine it would provide one piece to the puzzle and after four magazines were found the schematic would be complete and the recipe would be unlocked, that would be an easier graphic for those who can't imagine it on their own. To me, piecing together parts of recipes from several partial magazines makes perfect sense with the randomness inherent with looting and enhances looting. The only problem I have with it at this time is the imbalance of high tier quest rewards that are too quickly advanced to which makes the need to find those recipes irrelevant because the trader gave you a better item than you'll be able to craft for days to weeks of game time.

Okay, so now you're shifting the goalposts.  Now magazines aren't recipes, they're pieces of recipes.

 

Fine.  Then let us find "partial magazines" and we have to craft them together into a full magazine to unlock the next step in the crafting line.  That would make your initial argument make more sense.

 

Personally, I assume that things in the game are what they tell me they are.  I don't try to rationalize things so that they make sense.  If they're supposed to be bits of magazines, call them that.

[Roland]

3 hours ago, Vaeliorin said:

Okay, so now you're shifting the goalposts.  Now magazines aren't recipes, they're pieces of recipes.

 

Fine.  Then let us find "partial magazines" and we have to craft them together into a full magazine to unlock the next step in the crafting line.  That would make your initial argument make more sense.

 

I'm just sharing my thought process and how I view it. If you want to think all the magazines are in mint condition, go for it. As I said, you probably need an actual graphic that shows pieces of each recipe coming together until the whole recipe is found in order to get it but I don't. I've always assumed that the books and magazines provided recipes and schematics. Some books have the whole recipe in one go but other recipes aren't whole until you've searched through a number of magazines.

 

It's all perspective. You want the magazines to represent skill increases and skill progression. You then make it all work in your mind so that it makes sense as skill progression. The end result is something you don't like because skill progression shouldn't be random.

 

I want the magazines to represent recipes. I then make it all work out in my mind so that it makes sense as recipes. The end result is something I like because finding recipes among the filth of the wasteland should be random.

 

As for how the magazines are represented, we can't open the insides to see them. We just see the covers. Many of the book piles lying around look pretty ratty tattered and torn. The setting is post-apocalyptic, dirty, and run-down. Often when we open a shelf that is visually full of books all we get is worthless paper which also is evidence that much of the insides of the book covers shown is worthless unreadable paper. 

 

In my opinion, it is more of a stretch to assume the magazines are whole and pristine rather than partially readable and incomplete. I have been stating all along that I view the magazines as purely sources of recipes--even when it takes 3 magazines to gain one recipe so I haven't moved any goalposts. You said you couldn't imagine why I would see them that way so I provided you with the thematic reason. If you don't find it compelling then just keep right on interpreting things in a way that keeps leading to unfun for you. <shrug>

 

3 hours ago, Vaeliorin said:

Personally, I assume that things in the game are what they tell me they are.  I don't try to rationalize things so that they make sense.  If they're supposed to be bits of magazines, call them that.

 

They did tell you. TFP stated that they made the change for the express purpose of decoupling the crafting recipes from the player skill progression. That is what they told you. You ARE rationalizing things to make sense of it the way you want it to be. You want the crafting to still be a skill progression and so you see it that way and then because it is random and you have no control over the pacing of what you see as this aspect of your character progression you call it a bad skill progression design.

 

So, please, just come to terms with the fact that we are all rationalizing and interpreting this very abstractly represented part of the game the way we want. I'm sorry that your rationalizations lead to confusion over why the game is the way it is and a dislike of the feature. I'm glad that my rationalizations lead me to complete peace with the feature and having it make sense to me. I'm not saying that if you rethink things my way you'll suddenly have fun. I'm saying that I'm having fun with it and don't suffer from any disconnect with how the feature works.

[Vaeliorin]

I spent quite a while writing a reply, but I'll be honest, I really don't care much about this whole recipe versus skill progression thing.

 

Let's just say I got a little annoyed and let it go at that.

[meganoth]

I rationalized it differently: Books or schematics are complete works of knowledge about a topic, but magazines are periodicals where often information is spread over many issues in article series. So each magazine you find is an issue from a different month and year and only has part of the information you need to build an item or many items.

 

It also is a good explanation for getting better quality levels of weapons. You might be able to make a crude version of a weapon without having seen all issues of an article series. But then you have to guess about some parts of the fabrication and that leads to subpar items with many faults. Only when you find further magazines you find out details that make that item more durable or more reliable.

 

As an example you might find out from some magazines how all parts of a specific weapon look like and can build it. But it often jams and is inaccurate. Only in a different part of the magazine series you can read that some part of the weapon should be built with a different alloy. With that knowledge you suddenly can built it with a large boost in reliability and accuracy

 

[meilodasreh]

all true, but the downside of it - and that's why i absolutely don't like this progression system - is that everything has become very linear and repetitive.

It is as if you would find an encyclopedia, always starting with letter A, then you'll find B, and so on...oh you want to know something starting with letter T...well what a shame you're only at letter F, but at least you know exactly how many letters you will - and have to - find.

 

Well it's a fair and equal to all system, that I admit, but on the other hand, as I said, I find it too repetitive and so somewhat...well not to say boring, but lacks a bit of excitement and diversity

 

Especially the food progression also doesn't make much sense in that "lil pieces of knowledge" way of thinking.

Food recipes should be completely independent from each other, you don't need to know how to make a soup to be able to make a steak or a cheesecake.

And also I liked it very much in former playthroughs, when you sometimes got lucky and found e.g. the bacon and eggs recipe very early on. These were good moments, food could be checked off the list and one could happily focus on other stuff.

But also when you couldn't find it, it still worked fine, it didn't block your progress, just made it a different challenge/experience because you had to rely and focus on other things to keep you fed, but maybe you got lucky in another context.

 

Things like these lucky moments made it a little different every time, and I miss that a lot now that you know exactly what you get next every single time.

At first I liked it, because there was always this "just one more magazine of..." motivation, but that has deflated fast after a few new starts.

Edited October 5, 2023 by meilodasreh (see edit history)

[pApA^LeGBa]

Well the fact that you need to rationalize it to make sense, does speak for itself imo.

 

@meilodasreh Yeah, bookstores become the number one target for looting, double dipping is the norm. Crowded Public Servers must be a nightmare i imagine. It´s all about finding magazines fast enough to not fall behind the gamestage.

Edited October 5, 2023 by pApA^LeGBa (see edit history)

[Roland]

2 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

Well the fact that you need to rationalize it to make sense, does speak for itself imo.

 

I was asked to explain my thinking because people said they couldn't imagine it any other way than skill progression. So I obliged. There was no need in order to make sense of it for myself. It seemed obvious and apparent to me from the very beginning. I didn't flounder trying to come up with some way to explain it all. That seems to be you guys who want it to be skill progression instead of recipes. You can't quite make it fit to make sense of it whereas in my point of view when you think of the magazines purely as recipe acquisition everything makes complete sense. I mean look at @meilodasreh's problem with the food recipes. They think of the magazines as increasing skill and so get hung up on why cooking soup would lead to cooking steak or cheesecake. I just think of them as different recipes and so have never felt any kind of thematic disconnect over the soup to steak connection. I'm not getting more skilled at cooking soup so I can suddenly start baking cheesecakes. I'm already skilled enough to make cheesecakes but I don't have the recipe yet.

 

2 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

@meilodasreh Yeah, bookstores become the number one target for looting, double dipping is the norm. Crowded Public Servers must be a nightmare i imagine. It´s all about finding magazines fast enough to not fall behind the gamestage.

 

Huge exaggeration. You would have to walk everywhere and set loot to 25% and only do one quest every other day to actually risk falling behind the gamestage. A normal player playing normally will always be ahead in their personal progression compared to the gamestage and people who do as you describe double-dipping bookstores and focusing 100% on consuming magazines will be so far ahead of gamestage as to make the game completely a cake walk. 

 

I don't know what you think "falling behind the gamestage" means but I don't think it means what you think it means. 

 

Perhaps if you are playing at the hardest difficulty and at 50% loot it might be a struggle to keep up with the game's progression but those settings are there to be challenging. At default or nomad or even warrior, a veteran player should have no problem keeping up with the game's progression without resorting to exploitive tactics to maximize magazine consumption.

 

I mean if you like rushing your progression then have fun with that but let's not pretend it is actually necessary to rush magazine consumption in order to keep pace with the game.

 

Edited October 5, 2023 by Roland (see edit history)

[Kalen]

 

55 minutes ago, Roland said:

They think of the magazines as increasing skill and so get hung up on why cooking soup would lead to cooking steak or cheesecake. I just think of them as different recipes and so have never felt any kind of thematic disconnect over the soup to steak connection. I'm not getting more skilled at cooking soup so I can suddenly start baking cheesecakes. I'm already skilled enough to make cheesecakes but I don't have the recipe yet.

 

But see, this is where thinking of magazines as skills actually make sense.   You do need to become skilled at something, like cooking, in order to craft more complicated things, like cheesecake.   You say you're already skilled enough to make cheesecake.... I'm curious what in the game represents that skill?

 

As I mentioned before, what doesn't work, if you think of magazines solely as recipes, is the fact that you find recipes in the exact same order every playthrough.  You find stone axe before iron pick before steel pick.... every single playthrough.   

 

[8_Hussars]

On 10/4/2023 at 11:03 AM, Vaeliorin said:

This is my biggest dislike about the magazine system.  It feels like I'm being punished for spreading skill points around to multiple skills.

Interesting, as that is the one real benefit in my mind.  A player can craft a bicycle and/or Q4 AK without putting a single point into Grease Monkey, Automatic Weapons, or Fortitude for that matter, simply by finding magazines.

 

[Roland]

1 hour ago, Kalen said:

You say you're already skilled enough to make cheesecake.... I'm curious what in the game represents that skill?

 

The fact that I can do it as soon as I've obtained the recipe.

 

Then if I put points into cooking in the strength tree, I can cook cheesecake faster and with fewer components because THAT is where my cooking skill increases-- when I spend skillpoints.

 

1 hour ago, Kalen said:

As I mentioned before, what doesn't work, if you think of magazines solely as recipes, is the fact that you find recipes in the exact same order every playthrough.  You find stone axe before iron pick before steel pick.... every single playthrough.

 

It still works but I'll be the first to admit it is artificial and inelegant. There have always been progression gates in this game of one form or another. I see the linear order of recipes as a game enforced gate to protect the progression timeline. If it was purely random and I found the recipe for a tier 5 iron axe on day 1, then there would be quite a lot of subsequent finds that wouldn't matter at all and would be underwhelming as I played. It would be just like when a trader reward jumps you ahead five levels in your weapon and now the next five times you learn a new recipe it doesn't matter. It would also be frustrating because I would have the materials to be able to craft the next higher tier of whatever I knew how to craft now but I probably wouldn't have the parts needed for the more powerful recipe.

 

Like I said, I can totally see your point of view and understand where you are coming from with why the magazine feels like skill progression and I have no problem with people looking at it that way. I look at it a different way and it makes sense to me. I would much rather have the forced linear order of recipe learning than to go back to being able to craft tier five of every tool once you learned the recipe for a tier 5 stone axe. This is much more satisfying even if it means we are forced to learn the recipes in a particular order in order to protect the fun of finding magazines and learning recipes.

Edited October 5, 2023 by Roland (see edit history)

[Vaeliorin]

1 hour ago, 8_Hussars said:

Interesting, as that is the one real benefit in my mind.  A player can craft a bicycle and/or Q4 AK without putting a single point into Grease Monkey, Automatic Weapons, or Fortitude for that matter, simply by finding magazines.

Sure, but if you aren't specced into those, it's going to be day 60 before you can do so (okay, that might be a bit of hyperbole, but it'll probably be about day 60 before you can max out off spec magazines) and by that point the game's been over for 30 days.

 

But that wasn't what I was talking about.  I was talking about how if you put points into Engineering, for example, instead of Lockpicking, you're going to get a lot of magazines for Electricity, Traps, etc, instead of just getting Workstation magazines thanks to lockpicking, thereby greatly slowing down how quickly you get access to the higher tier workstations.  That feels, to me, like I'm being punished for putting points in things other than lockpicking if I want to progress my workstations.  That is, in my estimation, anti-fun.

[meganoth]

7 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

Well the fact that you need to rationalize it to make sense, does speak for itself imo.

 

I don't need to, but I can.

 

Would be nice to also have rationalizations for the strange fact that zombies are attacking me every 7 days, or why I can put 20 motorbikes into my backback. But in these and many other cases I have no rationalization. And as you can see I don't need one, as I am still playing the game.

 

[8_Hussars]

14 hours ago, Vaeliorin said:

Sure, but if you aren't specced into those, it's going to be day 60 before you can do so (okay, that might be a bit of hyperbole, but it'll probably be about day 60 before you can max out off spec magazines) and by that point the game's been over for 30 days.

 

But that wasn't what I was talking about.  I was talking about how if you put points into Engineering, for example, instead of Lockpicking, you're going to get a lot of magazines for Electricity, Traps, etc, instead of just getting Workstation magazines thanks to lockpicking, thereby greatly slowing down how quickly you get access to the higher tier workstations.  That feels, to me, like I'm being punished for putting points in things other than lockpicking if I want to progress my workstations.  That is, in my estimation, anti-fun.

Its a glass half empty/full situation.

In the end a player does not get less magazines for making a perk choice.  They get a bonus for magazines for the perk(s) chosen.  A Player can control that perk choice and min/max their magazine acquisition.  I see managing that bonus as a benefit not a punishment.  I like the fact that I can progress in some crafting skills without perking into them, even though it takes some in-game time.  Day 85 in a no trader run and I am just a third of the way to maxing out most non perked magazine series.  

FWIW; BFT2020 has identified the code to eliminate or reduce the bonus chance for magazines.  
 

  

On 9/21/2023 at 6:36 PM, BFT2020 said:

 

Easiest way to completely remove:

 

<remove xpath="//perk/effect_group/passive_effect[contains(@tags,'CSM')]"/>

 

That would remove all the code for increasing drop chance of crafting magazines

 

To do a universal reduction in chances:

 

<set xpath="//perk/effect_group/passive_effect[contains(@tags,'CSM') and @value='2,10']/@value">1,5</set>

 

 

[binf_shinana]

雑誌システムの問題は比較的高い精度で未来を予測できることであり、ボーナスを多少減らしてもプレイ指針は今と大して変わらないと思われます。

 

完全にランダムであれば（一部の出現数固定クレートがあるので、多少はそれによって増減するでしょうが）基本的には均等に上がるだけになるので、予測精度の高さはやはり変わりません。
しかも、取得する雑誌の確率を自分で操作できなくなるため、プレイフィールはとても受動的になります。

 

雑誌システムは、これをうまく扱うにはアプローチする要素が少ないと思います。しかし、バニラでこれ以上条件を複雑に設定するのも正直厳しいと感じています。

The problem with the magazine system is that it can predict the future with a relatively high degree of accuracy, so even if the bonuses are reduced somewhat, the playing guidelines will probably not change much.

If it is completely random (there are some crates with a fixed number of appearances, so it will increase or decrease somewhat depending on that), it will basically just increase evenly, so the high prediction accuracy will still remain the same.
What's more, you can't control the probability of the magazine you get, so the play feel becomes very passive.

I think the magazine system has fewer elements to approach in order to successfully handle this. However, I honestly feel that it would be difficult to set more complicated conditions in vanilla.

[BFT2020]

21 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

Well the fact that you need to rationalize it to make sense, does speak for itself imo.

 

@meilodasreh Yeah, bookstores become the number one target for looting, double dipping is the norm. Crowded Public Servers must be a nightmare i imagine. It´s all about finding magazines fast enough to not fall behind the gamestage.

 

Not necessary.  You could also tweak the magazine counts in the brand crates and that helps out a lot.  This would only require a server side modlet to accomplish.

[Vaeliorin]

2 hours ago, 8_Hussars said:

Its a glass half empty/full situation.

In the end a player does not get less magazines for making a perk choice.  They get a bonus for magazines for the perk(s) chosen.  A Player can control that perk choice and min/max their magazine acquisition.  I see managing that bonus as a benefit not a punishment.  I like the fact that I can progress in some crafting skills without perking into them, even though it takes some in-game time.  Day 85 in a no trader run and I am just a third of the way to maxing out most non perked magazine series.  

FWIW; BFT2020 has identified the code to eliminate or reduce the bonus chance for magazines.  
 

  

 

Sure, but when it's the difference between getting a motorcycle on Day 10 versus Day 40, I'm always going to choose Day 10.  Not being mobile sucks.  Same with not having access to the chem station, etc.

 

I can live without high quality weapons (for the most part, need to keep pace on my melee weapon or things get real tedious) but not having high quality tools, multiple workstations, and fast, high inventory vehicles sends me right up the wall (mostly because it feels like the game is making me waste my time without them.)

[Roland]

1 hour ago, Vaeliorin said:

Sure, but when it's the difference between getting a motorcycle on Day 10 versus Day 40, I'm always going to choose Day 10.  Not being mobile sucks.  Same with not having access to the chem station, etc.

 

I can live without high quality weapons (for the most part, need to keep pace on my melee weapon or things get real tedious) but not having high quality tools, multiple workstations, and fast, high inventory vehicles sends me right up the wall (mostly because it feels like the game is making me waste my time without them.)

 

Okay but that goes against the nature of the game since it is designed to have the player progressively grow stronger over a longer time period than 10 days. It's fine that you don't enjoy having to take a long journey to get to the top tier items in the game but that is the intended design and always has been. Just because it was easy in the past to bypass the progression or rush it fairly easily doesn't mean that it was the intention of the designers for players to have a motorcycle by Day 10. It is unreasonable to expect that in creating a game where the intention is that the player will begin on foot and progress through the different levels of vehicles that the devs should completely ignore it when players can bypass or rush that progression to an excessive degree.

 

As soon as I played the magazines the very first time, I knew that people who like to rush to motorcycles or chemistry stations wouldn't like it because the fast pace that used to be completely under their control was now left to random chance. The developers essentially erased the ability to deterministically rush the progression of what can be crafted. When they released A21 initially and saw that player behavior was still resulting in excessively rapid advancement what did they do? They nerfed the supply of magazines to slow things down to a reasonable pace even if someone was pushing hard to collect magazines as quickly as possible. 

 

What you want in terms of pacing and top gear acquisition is in complete opposition to the purpose and nature of the game. It still is pretty easy to rush in this game but it isn't as easy as it used to be. Don't be surprised if further changes make it even more difficult to rush. 

[Vaeliorin]

1 hour ago, Roland said:

Okay but that goes against the nature of the game since it is designed to have the player progressively grow stronger over a longer time period than 10 days. It's fine that you don't enjoy having to take a long journey to get to the top tier items in the game but that is the intended design and always has been. Just because it was easy in the past to bypass the progression or rush it fairly easily doesn't mean that it was the intention of the designers for players to have a motorcycle by Day 10. It is unreasonable to expect that in creating a game where the intention is that the player will begin on foot and progress through the different levels of vehicles that the devs should completely ignore it when players can bypass or rush that progression to an excessive degree.

 

As soon as I played the magazines the very first time, I knew that people who like to rush to motorcycles or chemistry stations wouldn't like it because the fast pace that used to be completely under their control was now left to random chance. The developers essentially erased the ability to deterministically rush the progression of what can be crafted. When they released A21 initially and saw that player behavior was still resulting in excessively rapid advancement what did they do? They nerfed the supply of magazines to slow things down to a reasonable pace even if someone was pushing hard to collect magazines as quickly as possible. 

 

What you want in terms of pacing and top gear acquisition is in complete opposition to the purpose and nature of the game. It still is pretty easy to rush in this game but it isn't as easy as it used to be. Don't be surprised if further changes make it even more difficult to rush. 

But it hasn't been against the nature of the game since...A18?  I think A17 still had level gates, but I can't recall for certain.  They've made it easier and easier to rush things over the past several alphas.  I usually didn't have a motorcycle in A20 until day 8 (I play 2 hour days), but I've seen someone unlock it on day 5 or 6 playing standard day length in A21 (you can look up IzPrebuilt's Intellect series on Youtube.)

 

I actually dislike that it's so easy to rush things, but given that it is, I can't not do it.  I've spent a ton of time playing "expert" (it generally means really difficult with long, drawn out crafting processes) minecraft modpacks, so it's not like I'm looking for easy, I just want to spend my time on the things I enjoy doing instead of the things that I find tedious or annoying (these general involve travel and inventory management.)  A difficult process of working my way up in items would be cool (though I'd prefer complex processes for refining and crafting rather than needing to spend a bunch of time looting) but that doesn't seem to be likely something that'll be added to the game (and complex refining doesn't seem readily moddable, or I'd have expected to see something like it already.)

 

Admittedly, I play this game for different reasons than most people.  As I've said in the past, I've multiple times considered removing all the zombies except on horde night.  The environmental zombies are just an annoyance to me, something that I have to deal with in my quest to make a cool, massive base that utterly crushes the horde.

[Roland]

48 minutes ago, Vaeliorin said:

But it hasn't been against the nature of the game since...A18?  I think A17 still had level gates, but I can't recall for certain.  They've made it easier and easier to rush things over the past several alphas.  I usually didn't have a motorcycle in A20 until day 8 (I play 2 hour days), but I've seen someone unlock it on day 5 or 6 playing standard day length in A21 (you can look up IzPrebuilt's Intellect series on Youtube.)

 

Just because you can rush it doesn't mean that it is the intended design. I don't know whether they will ever force the issue by making it impossible to rush. They don't seem super keen on going to war on that issue being perfectly willing to let people do it if they want. I'm certainly fine with people doing it if it makes them happy. It boggles my mind that people would do it when they know it leads to boredom and tedium.

 

54 minutes ago, Vaeliorin said:

I actually dislike that it's so easy to rush things, but given that it is, I can't not do it.

 

...

 

55 minutes ago, Vaeliorin said:

Admittedly, I play this game for different reasons than most people.  As I've said in the past, I've multiple times considered removing all the zombies except on horde night.  The environmental zombies are just an annoyance to me, something that I have to deal with in my quest to make a cool, massive base that utterly crushes the horde.

 

Sounds like you should change the settings to horde night every night.