A little nitpicking about the skill system

[Unamelable]

A game that positions itself as coop multiplayer has a useless barrier to player play style choices.

 

To level up skills you need to pump the main skill, it would seem to sound logical. But in one branch there is a pattern of skills that does not apply to the rest. That is, if you want to save skill points for effective skills, you will have to stick to a given playstyle in advance.

 

Let's consider the main branch of the progression, It is responsible for increasing the level of other skills, increasing the damage on the head, and increasing the chance of critical damage to the given weapons from this branch of skills. From level 1 through level 5, you spend one point each. That's 4. From 6 to 8 you spend two point each. That's 6. From level 9 to 10, you spend three points each. That 6. In total you have to spend 16 points for a specific skill branch to unlock all other skills to be available to upgrade.

 

And that's when the system starts to collapse. The game deliberately limits the player to 1 point per level-up. You can of course use items such as nerd glasses or grandpa's drink, but you will get them randomly or in the mid-end game. Plus their crafting is very expensive and not justified. So instead of leveling skills, the game artificially limits the style of the player to his main skill. It would seem like every player on the team has his own man, right? Who thought a pre-installed set-skill was a good idea. For example, I do not want to be forced to take stealth skills that are useless in this game, or be limited in defense from - because of robotics skills.

 

16 points can easily level up 3 skilts of 5 each. That is a weighty figure that no one would not want to waste. For example, would I want to be an intellectual with traders, defend myself with spears, shoot pistols while specializing in extracting resources from animals? The game won't give me that unless I spend a ton of points on the main skill that artificially limits players and their playstyle.

Edited May 6 by Unamelable (see edit history)

[Riamus]

It isn't intended that you max out the skills within the first week.  You can easily unlock every skill by around day 30-40 with 2 hour days, double that for 1 hour days.  Making it faster isn't a good idea.  And making you choose what to do isn't a bad thing either.  I never max out a tree's attribute points right away.  It isn't necessary and I use skills from every tree instead of focusing on one thing.  Sure, it means I don't do the best possible with my weapon as quickly, but that's a choice I can make and it's not bad to be able to choose such a route.  Having it be at the cost of having better skills in one tree faster is a good thing.

[pApA^LeGBa]

My problem with the skill system is that i usually get better things that i can craft. Like almost every time. Crafting has become meaningless. Even if you go magazine hunting like crazy and double dip at quest locations. Imo this system has failed. Hardcore.

[Riamus]

6 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

My problem with the skill system is that i usually get better things that i can craft. Like almost every time. Crafting has become meaningless. Even if you go magazine hunting like crazy and double dip at quest locations. Imo this system has failed. Hardcore.

"Become" meaningless?  You say that like the magazines made it meaningless.  Crafting wasn't meaningful even before magazines.  I actually craft more with the magazines than I did before them but it's still only specific things because I choose to loot often and so will always get better stuff faster that way.  It does need improving, though.

[pApA^LeGBa]

@Riamus Let´s put it this way: It has become even worse than it was before. But with the old skill system you could at least specialize and get that stuff crafted in higher tiers before you get them via looting/reward or trader.

[Riamus]

15 minutes ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

@Riamus Let´s put it this way: It has become even worse than it was before. But with the old skill system you could at least specialize and get that stuff crafted in higher tiers before you get them via looting/reward or trader.

If you mean it could be faster, then yes, I'd agree.  At least for certain things.  But it still wasn't meaningful, imo.

[Aganon Tret]

22 hours ago, Unamelable said:

A game that positions itself as coop multiplayer has a useless barrier to player play style choices.

 

The game won't give me that unless I spend a ton of points on the main skill that artificially limits players and their playstyle.

You do know the point of choosing a play style is to pick a course and stick with it. If you want branch out from that style (or as other games call it "multi-class") then you are going to have to spend a ton of points to get to that. A lot of games out there either lock skills once you get to a certain point in other skills or progressively require more point the higher you get in a skill. If every skill level only required 1 point the game would get really boring really fast as it would be easy to do everything. 

 

 

[Roland]

On 5/5/2024 at 7:15 PM, Unamelable said:

A game that positions itself as coop multiplayer has a useless barrier to player play style choices.

 

In any co-op game that is designed around specialization within a team there will also be an aspect of negotiation between those team members on who is going to specialize on what. If you don't like to negotiate what your designated play style will be to help the team then don't play a team-focused game. Figuring out who is going to play which role at the very beginning is critical so that everyone can focus on progressing the specific skills they need for their chosen play style. There is no barrier to what you can choose other than what you can agree upon with your friends and I wouldn't call that a useless barrier. It is emergent gameplay at its finest. The game doesn't force any negotiation scripts upon players or even gray out choices once each player decides what they will do. The rules of negotiating roles is 100% determined by....wait for it....cooperation of the team.  The game only sets the stage for a group of friends to hammer out the details of what they are going to do together and what each member's responsibilities will be. I can't imagine a better position for a co-op multiplayer game to place itself in. Its part of why my group enjoys the game so much-- particularly on subsequent playthroughs where we all want to try roles we didn't play the last time. It provides extremely powerful replay value.

 

On 5/5/2024 at 7:15 PM, Unamelable said:

snip

 

I like the asymmetrical design of it. If everything was equally expensive no matter what tree you chose then people wouldn't play the game in all its variety. They would always take the most optimal skills and quickly tire of the game. I'm glad that this game simply makes going cross-attribute more expensive rather than impossible like some games do. It seems like you just don't like the expense and how long it takes to be able to afford all the skills you want that reside in different attribute branches. The answer is going to have to be to mod or use the giveselfxp command or change the xp earning settings to gain skill points faster and mitigate the costs you don't enjoy.

 

I do think it would be cool if there were a tool that made the perk trees modular so you could easily rearrange perks and put them in different trees--gather the ones you like together into a single branch and then when you started that game the perks would be rearranged in the manner you desired. That could be fun to experiment with.

Edited May 7 by Roland (see edit history)

[Unamelable]

6 hours ago, Roland said:

 

In any co-op game that is designed around specialization within a team there will also be an aspect of negotiation between those team members on who is going to specialize on what. If you don't like to negotiate what your designated play style will be to help the team then don't play a team-focused game. Figuring out who is going to play which role at the very beginning is critical so that everyone can focus on progressing the specific skills they need for their chosen play style. There is no barrier to what you can choose other than what you can agree upon with your friends and I wouldn't call that a useless barrier. It is emergent gameplay at its finest. The game doesn't force any negotiation scripts upon players or even gray out choices once each player decides what they will do. The rules of negotiating roles is 100% determined by....wait for it....cooperation of the team.  The game only sets the stage for a group of friends to hammer out the details of what they are going to do together and what each member's responsibilities will be. I can't imagine a better position for a co-op multiplayer game to place itself in. Its part of why my group enjoys the game so much-- particularly on subsequent playthroughs where we all want to try roles we didn't play the last time. It provides extremely powerful replay value.

 

 

I like the asymmetrical design of it. If everything was equally expensive no matter what tree you chose then people wouldn't play the game in all its variety. They would always take the most optimal skills and quickly tire of the game. I'm glad that this game simply makes going cross-attribute more expensive rather than impossible like some games do. It seems like you just don't like the expense and how long it takes to be able to afford all the skills you want that reside in different attribute branches. The answer is going to have to be to mod or use the giveselfxp command or change the xp earning settings to gain skill points faster and mitigate the costs you don't enjoy.

 

I do think it would be cool if there were a tool that made the perk trees modular so you could easily rearrange perks and put them in different trees--gather the ones you like together into a single branch and then when you started that game the perks would be rearranged in the manner you desired. That could be fun to experiment with.

 

Did you read what i wrote? 16 points per 1 branch, that's what kills the versatility of the tree. And is an unnecessary limiter at worst. The game has 5 skill trees where "drum roll" you need 80 skill points to be able to pump skills to the highest level. I can still accept that the player could use the style of two skill trees. But not having at least any way to discount their spending is weird.

 

For example a player spends 32 points on 2 skill trees. Then he will have to spend 13 instead of 16 points, after the third tree 10, on the last tree also 10. In this case, you can set up a system of pumping so that players do not frustrate halfway through the game because they can not take specific skills from different skill trees.

In this case we instead of 80 points (it is equivalent to 80 levels). We reduce it to 65. Of course it will be hard to unlock other skills as usual. but at least it won't be artificially stretched to that. Because it will at least be possible. Of course you can play up to level 150 in the game, but I think by that point you'll be sick of playing 7DTD.

 

I can agree that players can create an "uber-mega meta build" where they can take all the essentials and play with it because, it has all the best qualities. And then there is no point in taking other skills unless you have extra skill-points.

 

It would be logical if in the world creation menu you could put a personal number of skill points, because this number is easily modifiable in the config files of the game. Moreover, I can give the example of Unturned where you can modify literally all the settings of the game, when the same 7DTD has a limited pool of world settings, which can be changed as you want manually.

Edited May 7 by Unamelable (see edit history)

[meganoth]

4 hours ago, Unamelable said:

 

Did you read what i wrote? 16 points per 1 branch, that's what kills the versatility of the tree. And is an unnecessary limiter at worst. The game has 5 skill trees where "drum roll" you need 80 skill points to be able to pump skills to the highest level. I can still accept that the player could use the style of two skill trees. But not having at least any way to discount their spending is weird.

 

Then tell me which skills from each tree you absolutely need to pump to the highest level, otherwise you would fail the game? Assuming you maxed out one tree of your liking.

 

4 hours ago, Unamelable said:

t would be logical if in the world creation menu you could put a personal number of skill points, because this number is easily modifiable in the config files of the game. Moreover, I can give the example of Unturned where you can modify literally all the settings of the game, when the same 7DTD has a limited pool of world settings, which can be changed as you want manually.

 

Since you mention other games, I have played lots of games with skill trees where the player had to specialize. They almost always made it so you had to choose a tree you want to go along and that meant you simply didn't have enough points left to go down some other tree, much less go down all other trees. If you were even allowed to go into other trees, a lot had fixed classes where you either played barbarian, mage or ... . Were they all wrong and failures? Maybe they did it so players would be enticed to replay the game and specialize in a different tree ?

 

 

 

Edited May 7 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Unamelable]

7 minutes ago, meganoth said:

 

Then tell me which skills from each tree you absolutely need to pump to the highest level, otherwise you would fail the game? Assuming you maxed out one tree of your liking.

 

I play solo, and I again - have to do everything at once. I go through the game to see all the content so I can go multiplayer. After all, I am already familiar with the mechanics of the game and understand who I can go to play for.

 

- Traders and their reward. It is a skill of the first necessity as the main part of the game is tied to it

- Any melee/firearm skill. Because Bows or Knuckles are ineffective against hordes

- And personal upgrades that greatly increase mobility and survivability. (Jump height, health regeneration, all-weather endurance, reload on the go, etc.)
- And the style of armor, whether Light or Heavy.

[BFT2020]

I play solo all the time and never felt I had to max out all the skill trees to succeed at the game.  I also tend to go Agility builds, but even on horde nights, I found that non specializing weapons still worked against them.

[meganoth]

29 minutes ago, Unamelable said:

I play solo, and I again - have to do everything at once. I go through the game to see all the content so I can go multiplayer. After all, I am already familiar with the mechanics of the game and understand who I can go to play for.

 

- Traders and their reward. It is a skill of the first necessity as the main part of the game is tied to it

- Any melee/firearm skill. Because Bows or Knuckles are ineffective against hordes

- And personal upgrades that greatly increase mobility and survivability. (Jump height, health regeneration, all-weather endurance, reload on the go, etc.)
- And the style of armor, whether Light or Heavy.

 

Trader and their rewards: By day 40 I usually swim in money I have no use for. Without having maxed out the respective perks. 

 

Any melee/Firearm Skill: The melee/firearm in any tree, even knuckles, are good enough if maxed. In the end game you need to use firearms more and more, at horde night especially. But any melee weapon works quite well when doing quests and beating zombies one on one.

 

Jump height: I love that perk, but I have played a lot of runs without it and still got to the end.

Health regen: Just don't get hit so much and use health kits. I usually put just one point into that perk because it is too slow for combat healing anyway and otherwise just heals me very slowly over time.

All-weather: The alternative is the right clothing and one or two mods. And at the moment the disadvantage of freezing or overheating is just that you need more water or food.

 

The game does not allow you to be best-in-all, not without a lot of effort. All the RPGs I played did not allow that either.

 

Edited May 7 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Unamelable]

5 minutes ago, meganoth said:

 

Trader and their rewards: By day 40 I usually swim in money I have no use for. Without having maxed out the respective perks. 

 

Any melee/Firearm Skill: The melee/firearm in any tree, even knuckles, are good enough if maxed. In the end game you need to use firearms more and more, at horde night especially. But any melee weapon works quite well when doing quests and beating zombies one on one.

 

Jump height: I love that perk, but I have played a lot of runs without it and still got to the end.

Health regen: Just don't get hit so much and use health kits. I usually put just one point into that perk because it is too slow for combat healing anyway and otherwise just heals me very slowly over time.

All-weather: The alternative is the right clothing and one or two mods. And at the moment the disadvantage of freezing or overheating is just that you need more water or food.

 

The game does not allow you to be best-in-all, not without a lot of effort. All the RPGs I played did not allow that. 

 

OH WAIT, so you wanna say that 7 days to die is also RPG?

Like not an Zombie Apocalypse Survival Sandbox as i wished? Its not a damn RPG to make this. Like cmon man, i had enough bull@%$# from "open-world rpg's" that just ridiculous at this point.

[8_Hussars]

26 minutes ago, Unamelable said:

I play solo, and I again - have to do everything at once. I go through the game to see all the content so I can go multiplayer. After all, I am already familiar with the mechanics of the game and understand who I can go to play for.

 

- Traders and their reward. It is a skill of the first necessity as the main part of the game is tied to it

- Any melee/firearm skill. Because Bows or Knuckles are ineffective against hordes

- And personal upgrades that greatly increase mobility and survivability. (Jump height, health regeneration, all-weather endurance, reload on the go, etc.)
- And the style of armor, whether Light or Heavy.

To be fair, this is the RPG flavor baked into the game.  Players have to make choices and those choices have trade offs.  Not all skill trees have to be maxed to get use out of them.

- Traders are not required.

- Knuckles are OP, and bows can manage a horde.

- A single point (without investing in the main tree) in all those skills mentioned is more than enough.
- personal preference.  Once a player has Urban combat #6 armor type is irrelevent.
 

[Riamus]

1 hour ago, Unamelable said:

I play solo, and I again - have to do everything at once. I go through the game to see all the content so I can go multiplayer. After all, I am already familiar with the mechanics of the game and understand who I can go to play for.

 

- Traders and their reward. It is a skill of the first necessity as the main part of the game is tied to it

- Any melee/firearm skill. Because Bows or Knuckles are ineffective against hordes

- And personal upgrades that greatly increase mobility and survivability. (Jump height, health regeneration, all-weather endurance, reload on the go, etc.)
- And the style of armor, whether Light or Heavy.

 

45 minutes ago, Unamelable said:

OH WAIT, so you wanna say that 7 days to die is also RPG?

Like not an Zombie Apocalypse Survival Sandbox as i wished? Its not a damn RPG to make this. Like cmon man, i had enough bull@%$# from "open-world rpg's" that just ridiculous at this point.

 

In A20, I would use 2 trader perks and max them right away, though I didn't focus solely on those.  In A21, there's no need for one of them and the other one I can take or leave.  You really don't get much from them besides money that you don't need.  I'll put a point or two into my main melee weapon skill in the beginning but mainly to get the magazine drop increase.  It isn't necessary to max that right away.  And no need to go into a gun skill in the first couple of weeks.  I always do parkour right away and max it as quickly as I can but not because of survivability - this game isn't really all that difficult - but because I like jumping higher.  I'll rarely do health regen until I have maxed out everything else that I like in all of the perk trees (i.e. very late game) because it's completely unnecessary.  It also wastes a ton of food and water when it is healing you.  A bandage is a far better option, imo.  Weather perks are completely pointless.  Fast reloads in the early game aren't necessary... just use melee to begin with.  And armor really isn't important either.

 

The point being, there's no reason you need all those perks maxed right away.  They are designed to be maxed out only with time and you can max them all out, which isn't true in most games that have skill trees.

 

And, yes, this game has had RPG elements for a long time.  You're not going to avoid that if you want to play the current version of the game.

[Roland]

5 hours ago, Unamelable said:

 

Did you read what i wrote? 16 points per 1 branch, that's what kills the versatility of the tree. And is an unnecessary limiter at worst. The game has 5 skill trees where "drum roll" you need 80 skill points to be able to pump skills to the highest level. I can still accept that the player could use the style of two skill trees. But not having at least any way to discount their spending is weird.

 

For example a player spends 32 points on 2 skill trees. Then he will have to spend 13 instead of 16 points, after the third tree 10, on the last tree also 10. In this case, you can set up a system of pumping so that players do not frustrate halfway through the game because they can not take specific skills from different skill trees.

In this case we instead of 80 points (it is equivalent to 80 levels). We reduce it to 65. Of course it will be hard to unlock other skills as usual. but at least it won't be artificially stretched to that. Because it will at least be possible. Of course you can play up to level 150 in the game, but I think by that point you'll be sick of playing 7DTD.

 

I can agree that players can create an "uber-mega meta build" where they can take all the essentials and play with it because, it has all the best qualities. And then there is no point in taking other skills unless you have extra skill-points.

 

It would be logical if in the world creation menu you could put a personal number of skill points, because this number is easily modifiable in the config files of the game. Moreover, I can give the example of Unturned where you can modify literally all the settings of the game, when the same 7DTD has a limited pool of world settings, which can be changed as you want manually.

 

All this boils down to is that you want to max the skills faster than you presently can. We already get enough skillpoints to max out everything eventually. The expense of the skill trees simply regulates how quickly it can be done. You want to max out sooner rather than later.

 

As I said, gift yourself as many extra skillpoints at the beginning to make the game enjoyable. Give yourself 80 points to start so you can clear out all the attribute ladders and then for your playthrough all of the perks will be of equal price and you will be able to purchase whatever you want regardless of where it is.

[theFlu]

3 hours ago, Unamelable said:

- Traders and their reward. It is a skill of the first necessity as the main part of the game is tied to it

- Any melee/firearm skill. Because Bows or Knuckles are ineffective against hordes

- And personal upgrades that greatly increase mobility and survivability. (Jump height, health regeneration, all-weather endurance, reload on the go, etc.)
- And the style of armor, whether Light or Heavy.

While I actually agree with a lot of your frustrations, the skill "tree" in 7dtd is the weirdest one I've seen anywhere.. it's not even a tree, more like a hedgerow (it doesn't grow "up", it grows .. thick?). But this list is mostly a list of the least important aspects of the skill trees..

 

- Traders are brokenly powerful even without spending points to boost them.

- Any weapon skill; yes you probably want one, but Any single one of them will do (you might need a different base design for snipers and shotguns). No need for two skills - so whatever tree you chose to 10/10 is good.

- Run & Gun is great - almost necessary - and the 2m jump is nice. Combined with the above, I tend to play a lot of Agi builds...

- HP reg, weatherproofing and whatnot are pointless. Food and meds are so abundant, esp solo that I just don't want any of the points even if I have extra.

- Armors .. the talents are pointless, giving essentially just durability to an item that only gets damaged when I mess up. Spending 2 extra repair kits per playthru isn't worth the points.

Edited May 7 by theFlu (see edit history)

[Unamelable]

I think the topic has gone off-topic 

1 hour ago, Roland said:

 

All this boils down to is that you want to max the skills faster than you presently can. We already get enough skillpoints to max out everything eventually. The expense of the skill trees simply regulates how quickly it can be done. You want to max out sooner rather than later.

 

As I said, gift yourself as many extra skillpoints at the beginning to make the game enjoyable. Give yourself 80 points to start so you can clear out all the attribute ladders and then for your playthrough all of the perks will be of equal price and you will be able to purchase whatever you want regardless of where it is.

I speak for what comes with the game "out of the box". That is, if I go to the server I will not be given 80 points to open all the branches. That's why I'm writing about the fact that the main skill for each tree takes too many points and time

[Riamus]

15 minutes ago, Unamelable said:

I think the topic has gone off-topic 

I speak for what comes with the game "out of the box". That is, if I go to the server I will not be given 80 points to open all the branches. That's why I'm writing about the fact that the main skill for each tree takes too many points and time

And probably most the players on the server won't want to be maxed out on skills by the end of a couple of weeks.  What you want is not what most people will want.  That makes it something that falls into the category of a mod.  Any server can be set up to use any mod.  Find people who also want a faster leveling experience and a server who will use a mod that offers that.  It isn't something they will change in vanilla.

[meganoth]

2 hours ago, Unamelable said:

I think the topic has gone off-topic 

I speak for what comes with the game "out of the box". That is, if I go to the server I will not be given 80 points to open all the branches. That's why I'm writing about the fact that the main skill for each tree takes too many points and time

 

"out of the box" you can start your own server on your PC and do anything you like. If you have a good internet connection (or you rent a server) you can even invite your friends. If you instead want to play with randoms on the net you have to accept the disadvantages that come with it.

 

5 hours ago, Unamelable said:

OH WAIT, so you wanna say that 7 days to die is also RPG?

Like not an Zombie Apocalypse Survival Sandbox as i wished? Its not a damn RPG to make this. Like cmon man, i had enough bull@%$# from "open-world rpg's" that just ridiculous at this point.

 

Not sure whether you doubt this is also an RPG or whether you want to say an RPG would not have rather separate classes. But in case of the former, this sentence is on the store page of 7 days to die: "7 Days to Die is an open-world game that is a unique combination of first-person shooter, survival horror, tower defense, and role-playing games."

 

 

Edited May 7 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Javabean867]

On 5/7/2024 at 12:26 PM, theFlu said:

 

- Armors .. the talents are pointless, giving essentially just durability to an item that only gets damaged when I mess up. Spending 2 extra repair kits per playthru isn't worth the points.

I really like the stamina penalty and movement penalty reductions these skills give, but i only put points into them if i already have my build where i want it, or i am focusing on 1 skill tree for that run.

[theFlu]

8 hours ago, Javabean867 said:

I really like the stamina penalty and movement penalty reductions these skills give, but i only put points into them if i already have my build where i want it, or i am focusing on 1 skill tree for that run.

I'm not going to say it's "wrong" to take those, but early game there's a dozen better options, and late game you'll have the Urban combat -book to remove the movement penalty in combat. My normal armor upgrade path is full Padded until Q5-6 Military parts, so I don't suffer from the movement penalties early either way.

[Javabean867]

15 hours ago, theFlu said:

I'm not going to say it's "wrong" to take those, but early game there's a dozen better options, and late game you'll have the Urban combat -book to remove the movement penalty in combat. My normal armor upgrade path is full Padded until Q5-6 Military parts, so I don't suffer from the movement penalties early either way.

Early game totally agree with you.  The bonuses from the armor perk are not worth it.  Heck even late game, but i do luke them.  Those perks really need buffed to make them worthwhile though.  That and the pack mule perk.