About shopkeeper rewards

[Roland]

10 hours ago, Uncle Al said:

 

It's not 'what to do if not quest?', it's 'quests are so good, why do anything else?'. And sure, this debate about 'just limit yourself to totally suboptimal playstyles, you'll have more fun' has meandered around on these boards for a while, but I don't feel it's a strong argument. There's a gap between 'minmaxers will find the path that's very slightly better than the others and pursue that exclusively' and 'doing one thing is so much better than all the others it seems like perverse game play to ignore it'.

 

I'm not asking for perfect balance, I'm asking for BETTER balance. Currently the divide between questing and not questing is vast, in terms of rewards. Good game design does require that the player makes difficult, meaningful choices. When one choice is always better, in every situation, you've removed player agency.

 

It's not some weird outlier 'speedrunners' breaking what would otherwise be a balanced system, either.

 

When Tier 2 quests give out Q5 iron tools and weapons you're invariably going to have a situation where quest rewards totally outstrip what you can do for yourself, whether by buying, looting or crafting.

 

Q6 steel weapons at Tier 4 doesn't help either, but you do at least have to do a significant number of quests for that.

 

The other major factor is that there's almost zero opportunity cost to doing quests. 'The rewards aren't worth it' never applies because the rewards are just a freebie on top of normal loot and exp for that POI. Sure if quest POIs had an empty final loot room or something, then we might get the hard choices back (do I loot where I want or do what the trader wants?) but currently the small price of having to loot a specific POI, rather than chosing a target freely, is a tiny price to pay compared to the quality of extra rewards on offer.

 

I agree with what you are saying but I still feel that the addition of options and some slight adjustments would be better than simply deep draconian edits to the current system. If players can choose the number of quests needed for graduation to each tier, the type of reward, and the frequency of how often jobs are offered then people can tailor the experience to their own desires. I would probably limit mine to 3 jobs per week per trader (so I could do more if I travel around the network) and keep the number of quests per tier the same. I would also change the rewards to cash only. That enhances my experience without me having to self-restrict but doesn't harm anyone else's experience and no major change to the current system is needed.

 

BTW, I don't see self imposed rules as the same as playing intentionally suboptimal. I see it as self imposed rules and I can play as efficiently as I can within those bounds. It is no different than people who choose to self delete their world when they die and start fresh. You could stack up the benefits of just continuing with your current progress against starting over on a new world and the former would win for benefits and efficient progression to endgame every single time. And yet, people choose to start over all the time when they die and it isn't for the purpose of intentionally playing sub-optimally. It is to play according a self-chosen ruleset.

2 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

@RolandAs you have to do quests early on to be able to buy water filters, we can´t just say we take it slow so the quest rewards don´t overtake us in progression.

 

You do have to scavenge for plastic and enough loot to sell for the filter. But you don't have to quest a lot for those things. Questing a lot is the fastest way but it isn't the only way. I have been limiting myself on quests for a good while and have no problem coming up with the plastic and the funds for filters. But as I've already mentioned I think the solution is options for players to set how quests work to be best for their own needs and desires.

[Uncle Al]

55 minutes ago, Roland said:

 

I agree with what you are saying but I still feel that the addition of options and some slight adjustments would be better than simply deep draconian edits to the current system. If players can choose the number of quests needed for graduation to each tier, the type of reward, and the frequency of how often jobs are offered then people can tailor the experience to their own desires. I would probably limit mine to 3 jobs per week per trader (so I could do more if I travel around the network) and keep the number of quests per tier the same. I would also change the rewards to cash only. That enhances my experience without me having to self-restrict but doesn't harm anyone else's experience and no major change to the current system is needed.

 

BTW, I don't see self imposed rules as the same as playing intentionally suboptimal. I see it as self imposed rules and I can play as efficiently as I can within those bounds. It is no different than people who choose to self delete their world when they die and start fresh. You could stack up the benefits of just continuing with your current progress against starting over on a new world and the former would win for benefits and efficient progression to endgame every single time. And yet, people choose to start over all the time when they die and it isn't for the purpose of intentionally playing sub-optimally. It is to play according a self-chosen ruleset.

 

Options are always better, pretty much, so I do not disagree. I'm not sure how feasible optioning everything is, from a design and feedback point of view, but you're more knowledgable of dev intent than I am. Certainly the death options show there's still an appetite for adding at least some options early game.

 

I'm not sure a 'deep draconian' edit is needed. From what I understand, the current design intent has shifted to intending players to hit the point at which their power curve flattens out at about 50 days, and a 'normal' game be viable for up to about 100 days. Trader rewards break this, unless you arbitrarily self limit. Trader rewards also trivialise the crafting and looting of non-consumable items, again, unless you self limit. These do not seem to be good design choices. Simply making trader rewards synch with level by basing them off lootstage or traderstage would fix the wild outliers and is in keeping with all the other design changes we've seen. The magazine system moved us away from 'a lucky roll can give you a Q5 SMG in week one' and that's a good thing. It seems weird the trader reward system didn't evolve alongside.

 

Funnily enough the one non-consumable that quest rewards don't trivialise is vehicles. That highlights how important quest rewards are as a source of gear. Because traders don't hand out vehicles as quest rewards, and only give partial handouts as tier rewards, the vehicles side of quest rewards is actually well balanced. My current duo play is fairly typical - day 20, Q4-Q6 top tier guns, Q6 steel armour for my buddy because he got lucky on the armour tier reward and I didn't. (I'm still running around in Q3 leathers because that's what we can craft - again highlighting how imbalanced the quest rewards are.) We've just accessed motorbikes, and that's with pushing vehicle mags hard (He has grease monkey and loots ALL the magazine sources that can give vehicle mags). The bikes and my armour feel 'about right' for 20 days. His armour and the guns feel rather excessive...

 

You make a fair point on self imposed rules. Maybe it's a me thing. I'll happily play self imposed permadeath all day long, although having the option added was nice, but trying to daily track and restrict my trader usage makes me feel like Cartman in the Southpark 'World of Warcraft' episode. He completely abandons questing and levels to endgame by just killing rats in the starting area. It feels bad...

[FinkPloyd]

On 10/17/2023 at 10:32 AM, Roland said:

It’s funny to me when people wonder what else there is to do if not quest….as if the game was somehow unplayable for all those years before trader quests were added.

 

The return on time investment changed in A21.

 

Before A21 I would put early points into Miner69er so I could craft an iron pickaxe, then mine to build a base.

In A21 I need quite a few magazines to before I can craft an iron pickaxe.

 

So I now spend my early game time looting / doing quests because I don't want to slowly mine with a stone axe.

 

 

[meganoth]

19 hours ago, Roland said:

BTW, I don't see self imposed rules as the same as playing intentionally suboptimal. I see it as self imposed rules and I can play as efficiently as I can within those bounds. It is no different than people who choose to self delete their world when they die and start fresh. You could stack up the benefits of just continuing with your current progress against starting over on a new world and the former would win for benefits and efficient progression to endgame every single time. And yet, people choose to start over all the time when they die and it isn't for the purpose of intentionally playing sub-optimally. It is to play according a self-chosen ruleset.

 

I see self-imposed rules and options as a great way to tailor a game to ones tastes after you know the game. But new players first have to find out what they don't like or they have to reach a point where they want a more difficult experience.

Rules and options can also be used to fix imbalances of a game, sure, but only an experienced user can adopt the correct self-imposed rules or turn on the right options to reach a balanced game again. How should a new user know that he has to add option X or use some self-imposed rule to get a balanced game? Vanilla should be as balanced as possible.

 

Permadeath is a self-imposed rules that is used to make the game more difficult and is used by players after finding out that vanilla is too easy for them. Imagine that TFP had to advice players that they need to start with a self-imposed permadeath rule if they want a balanced experience. Wouldn't that be rather strange?

 

I am all for those self-imposed rules where the alternative is severly limiting the game, for example the self-imposed rule to not use creative menu unless the player decides he now wants to play a more "creative" game. It is also perfectly clear to the player what he is doing and he can do an informed choice. It is not a surprise that creative mode is the option you need to turn on, not the vanilla default.

 

But telling the player he is responsible for **finding** a mix of rules and options that actually balance the game would be moving one of the central tasks of a game developer over to the player.

 

 

 

[Roland]

7 hours ago, FinkPloyd said:

 

The return on time investment changed in A21.

 

Before A21 I would put early points into Miner69er so I could craft an iron pickaxe, then mine to build a base.

In A21 I need quite a few magazines to before I can craft an iron pickaxe.

 

So I now spend my early game time looting / doing quests because I don't want to slowly mine with a stone axe.

 

 

 

Okay, but saying that you need to focus most of your time on quests and looting during the early game in order to get an iron pickaxe because you want to bypass the primitive tool phase as quickly as possible is different than saying that there is nothing to do in the game other than questing. My response was to the second claim and not what you are claiming.

 

As to your point, even if the early game is completely dominated by looting/questing because of a desire to quickly get better gear and abilities, taken as a whole playthrough experience it is still just one aspect. If you focus for 2-5 hours on looting and questing so that you can then spend the next 20-30 hours focused on mining and building then overall you still have a game that is mostly about mining and building. 

 

I don't play that way. I'm happy to do some mining and limited building while in the primitive tool stage and then increase my efforts once I graduate to iron and then steel tools. I like playing through each phase of the game because I enjoy experiencing the build and progression in power. I like that zombies go from needing 5-7 hits to take down to just 2-3 hits with frequent one-hit decapitations thrown in. Same with mining, harvesting, and building. When I build my own base I start with wood for the first horde night and then patch and upgrade to cobblestone and eventually patch and upgrade to concrete. So I tend to be fine with doing a mixture of questing, looting, building, mining, farming, etc throughout my playthrough.

 

But regardless of whether someone does some of everything throughout their playthrough or decides to focus on looting and questing to rapidly get past the primitive stage, nobody can truly claim that their entire game experience is only looting and shooting. The game is still very much about surviving, building and defending a base, exploring, mining, farming, and progressing your character from weak to strong. People who say the game is only a looter shooter now are only looking at the first few hours of gameplay and only if their focus is to rapidly bypass the primitive stage of the game by power questing.

 

9 minutes ago, meganoth said:

 

I see self-imposed rules and options as a great way to tailor a game to ones tastes after you know the game. But new players first have to find out what they don't like or they have to reach a point where they want a more difficult experience.

Rules and options can also be used to fix imbalances of a game, sure, but only an experienced user can adopt the correct self-imposed rules or turn on the right options to reach a balanced game again. How should a new user know that he has to add option X or use some self-imposed rule to get a balanced game? Vanilla should be as balanced as possible.

 

Permadeath is a self-imposed rules that is used to make the game more difficult and is used by players after finding out that vanilla is too easy for them. Imagine that TFP had to advice players that they need to start with a self-imposed permadeath rule if they want a balanced experience. Wouldn't that be rather strange?

 

I am all for those self-imposed rules where the alternative is severly limiting the game, for example the self-imposed rule to not use creative menu unless the player decides he now wants to play a more "creative" game. It is also perfectly clear to the player what he is doing and he can do an informed choice. It is not a surprise that creative mode is the option you need to turn on, not the vanilla default.

 

But telling the player he is responsible for **finding** a mix of rules and options that actually balance the game would be moving one of the central tasks of a game developer over to the player.

 

 

 

 

Well, very few complaints about the current default ruleset are coming from brand-new players. By far, the group that is complaining the most are veterans and this forum is predominantly populated by veterans so that is the group I am mostly addressing.

 

It isn't my intention to try and talk the developers out of doing their job of balancing the game since we can self-impose rules to make it "better". I am simply stating that when balancing adjustments are made they will please some and anger others. Changing quests and quest rewards to align better with the gamestage and lootstage of the player will definitely help the magazine system be more effective and relevant in the game and I'm all for the developers doing that to a degree.

 

I just think that for some of the suggestions like limiting the availability of jobs per day or increasing the number of quests needed to graduate to the next tier or removing loot from the rewards and making it cash and/or parts only are changes better left as options because if they are enforced rules that everybody has to play by, it won't end the balance debate. It will only shift the identities of the complainers.

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, Roland said:

Well, very few complaints about the current default ruleset are coming from brand-new players. By far, the group that is complaining the most are veterans and this forum is predominantly populated by veterans so that is the group I am mostly addressing.

 

It isn't my intention to try and talk the developers out of doing their job of balancing the game since we can self-impose rules to make it "better". I am simply stating that when balancing adjustments are made they will please some and anger others. Changing quests and quest rewards to align better with the gamestage and lootstage of the player will definitely help the magazine system be more effective and relevant in the game and I'm all for the developers doing that to a degree.

 

I just think that for some of the suggestions like limiting the availability of jobs per day or increasing the number of quests needed to graduate to the next tier or removing loot from the rewards and making it cash and/or parts only are changes better left as options because if they are enforced rules that everybody has to play by, it won't end the balance debate. It will only shift the identities of the complainers.

 

Undoubtedly changes will always produce complaints. Those would too. Even just reducing current rewards by any amount will produce complaints by people who like an OP trader. Remember that the introduction of magazines and the water changes also didn't end debates, those are continuing to this day. Even LBD still rears its head. So the goal can't be to end debates 😉

 

You are correct that some of the proposed changes are rather heavy-handed. Especially limiting the player to x quests a day would probably be very artificial and hard to explain. I would surely try out all other options before taking a look at this. 

 

And there are probably better, less artificial options. For example if rewards do not use reputation to roll for the quality of items, but use reputation to roll for quantity of the reward. So if someone gets to tier5 quests rather early in the game the difference between a tier1 and a tier5 reward would not be between double-barrel and auto-shotty. Both would give a double-barrel, but the tier5 would also give say 4 times as much money, ammo, magazines and materials.

 

Yes, some players will complain and say they don't care about money, ammo, magazines, materials . But that is a different topic, the game has to provide expensive money-sinks for example so that players care about money and material. 

 

Or here is another idea: Diminishing returns on quest reputation: Only the first quest of a day gets you full reputation, the next half, the next half again and so on. You still get the rewards, increase your reputation, but the difference between a slow quester and a fast quester is never too big to balance.

 

Basically this doesn't change anything for normal questers (no, you don't need to do one quest every day unless you actually want some high-rep stuff from the trader, and there are always alternatives to the trader). But it practically limits fast questers reputation gain to less than 2 per day. 

 

Edited October 18, 2023 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Roland]

4 hours ago, meganoth said:

You are correct that some of the proposed changes are rather heavy-handed. Especially limiting the player to x quests a day would probably be very artificial and hard to explain. I would surely try out all other options before taking a look at this. 

 

It's easy to explain. "Someone else" did the other jobs while you were working on yours and there isn't anything left to do until tomorrow. I guess if it was always just one quest per day that would be artificial but if it varied between 0-3 quests that would feel more natural. Some days there just wouldn't be any work and others there would be more but maybe some of those jobs that you were offered at the start of the day got done while you were gone so when you go back and check for a new job the trader says, "Sorry, there are no more jobs today, please check back tomorrow"

 

I agree that this particular change should be a customizable option but since I self-impose a limit on myself such a change wouldn't affect me much. But I know it would crimp a lot of players' styles.

 

The diminishing returns is an interesting idea. This was also proposed during the days of LBD by people looking for ways to make unlimited grinding less effective but TFP ultimately dropped the feature without trying diminishing returns-- although I think they did it a bit with crafting xp and maybe they still do? Can't remember.

 

I'd be good with that but it would be about the same result as simply adding more quests needed to graduate to the next tier.

[pApA^LeGBa]

Well early on there is basically not a lot to sell in MP. Sure in SP i get a lot of stuff i don´t need, but for 5 people things look different as the loot isn´t instanced and we don´t play in a group to go looting alone. It´s a stupid mechanic. It makes absolutly no sense. It doesn´t catch rain, the huge barrel only gives out 3 jars, it somehow calls screamers even though the drops come in very slow. I thought hard about if there was a worse way for water. Couldn´t think of one.

 

And the worst thing is that in SP it makes no difference at all. It´s still a all you can drink buffet, while MP is now even worse than before. That alone should be enough to rethink the whole mechanic. And it´s not even because i want the jars back, i don´t care about jars. Make water harder, TFP let us sufferr from thirst, no problem. Not like that though. The current mechanic simply sucks.

Edited October 18, 2023 by pApA^LeGBa (see edit history)

[meganoth]

20 hours ago, Roland said:

The diminishing returns is an interesting idea. This was also proposed during the days of LBD by people looking for ways to make unlimited grinding less effective but TFP ultimately dropped the feature without trying diminishing returns-- although I think they did it a bit with crafting xp and maybe they still do? Can't remember.

 

I'd be good with that but it would be about the same result as simply adding more quests needed to graduate to the next tier.

 

Currently you need 7 quests to reach the next level, as RipClaw corrected me. In that case you would reach lvl5 quests after doing 28 quests. Lets see how this works out now, with more quests and with diminishing returns. I will look at John Turtle, who actually does just 1 quest per day, Ken Normalo, who does 2 and Ren Speedrunner, who does 5 per day.

 

Now:

John Turtle needs about 28 days, Ken Normalo 14 days and Ren Speedrunner a whooping 5.6 days for this. The fastest player needed only a fifth of the time that the slowest player needed.

 

So TFP changes this and simply adds more quests to level up. You now need 10 quests to the next level (a bit less than 50% more). Result:

John Turtle needs about 40 days, obviously too much. Ken Normalo looks better with 20 days, but Ren Speedrunner is hardly slowed with 8 days. The difference between John and Ren is still a factor of 5 in playtime!

 

So TFP uses diminishing returns with the original 7 quests per level instead:

John Turtle needs 28 days again, Ken Normalo needs 18.6 and Ren 14.45 days. Notice that the speedrunner is still faster, but the factor is just 2 compared to John Turtle and as much as Ren speedruns through his quests, he is just 4 days ahead of Ken Normalo.

 

(I ignored here that players do not do quests in such a regular way, sometimes they do 3 on a day and sometimes none. But since one still gets some reputation even for the second or third quest on a day, the effect of this is not dramatical and can be ignored for this demonstration)

 

 

 

Edited October 19, 2023 by meganoth (see edit history)

[RipClaw]

2 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Currently you need 10 quests to reach the next level, right?

You only need 7 quests to reach the next level. It is kind of a point system. A T1 is worth 1 point, T2 is worth 2 points, and so on. So you could actually only do T1 quests and still get to T6. But that would require you to do 231 T1 quests, if my math is correct.

 

[meganoth]

17 minutes ago, RipClaw said:

You only need 7 quests to reach the next level. It is kind of a point system. A T1 is worth 1 point, T2 is worth 2 points, and so on. So you could actually only do T1 quests and still get to T6. But that would require you to do 231 T1 quests, if my math is correct.

 

 

Thanks. It doesn't matter too much because this affects all my calculations the same, the relations would be still intact. One would just needs to multiply every number I mentioned with 0.7 and would get the correct value.

 

Okay, I have edited it now to use the correct number of 7.

 

Edited October 19, 2023 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Vaeliorin]

16 minutes ago, meganoth said:

So TFP uses diminishing returns instead:

John Turtle needs 40 days again, Ken Normalo needs 26.6 and Ren 20.6 days. Notice that the speedrunner is still faster, but the factor is just 2 compared to John Turtle and as much as Ren speedruns through his quests, he is just 6 days ahead of Ken Normalo.

And the for the second, third, fourth and fifth trader another 20 days each?  No thanks.

 

Also, by the time I've hit day 20, the rewards from a T5 or T6 quest would be kind of meaningless (admittedly, I play on 2 hour days) as I'd already be able to craft on-spec items or have possibly  looted whatever trader rewards I'd be receiving at that point.  And as OP as trader rewards are, once you've got high quality tier 3 items, they mostly just become sales fodder.  I often end up with crates full of Q6 items that I just haven't bothered to mod up and sell.

 

I'm much more on board with the idea of traders only giving money or components as rewards.  I did a playthrough with a mod that only gave dukes as a reward, and that was much more nicely balanced in my opinion.

[meganoth]

10 minutes ago, Vaeliorin said:

And the for the second, third, fourth and fifth trader another 20 days each?  No thanks.

 

This was an example calculation with wrong number of quests to advance. Don't get too hung up on the actual numbers, they should only show the relationship between slow and fast players. TFP could always decrease or increase the number of quests per day needed for a level to adjust so that everything stays the same for a normal player. But the advantage of the diminishing returns would always be that the difference between slowest and fastest player would be much less than it is now.

Edited October 19, 2023 by meganoth (see edit history)

[RipClaw]

57 minutes ago, Vaeliorin said:

And the for the second, third, fourth and fifth trader another 20 days each?  No thanks.

Yeah that would be the big drawback. In the late game when you want to increase the traderstage you spam quests because you already have the equipment, the skills and a fast vehicle. Rewards don't matter at that point.

 

[Numberz]

I think it would be interesting if the player could choose the quest tier from the trader from day 1 instead of only being able to select quests at or below the current tier.  The obvious benefit would be avoiding having to slog through lower tier quests when finding a new trader after having completed some tiers at the "home" or other traders already.  Conversely, to balance this and to discourage taking quests that are above the player's capability, implement some kind of reputation system where failing a quest brings about some moderately punishing trader-related consequences (eg. higher prices ? TBD).

[Riamus]

Considering how quickly you can do tier 1-3 quests and even most tier 4 quests, it isn't all that much of a slog, imo.  I actually don't mind it because I tend to see more POI than I'd see otherwise and I enjoy the various POI that are in the game.  Sure, I could just go into them on my own, and I often do, but the quests make sure I go to them and I like that.

 

I'd actually love to have some more different traders to add to the number of quests to do before maxing out everyone.  And before anyone says, this has nothing to do with experience or rewards.  I get more experience on a horde night than in half a week of questing unless I am doing a lot of tier 5/6 quests.  And generally speaking, I don't really get much in the way of rewards.  I know people complain about it being OP and the rewards given often are, but they just also aren't often what I need or want.   I'll usually find my equipment faster than I get it from rewards.