A veteran players view on current vanilla

[Scyris]

2 minutes ago, meganoth said:

 

 

What I don't get is how you first say the game is not difficult enough unless one puts restrictions on the gameplay. But then you say guns should do more damage and "it is not fun doing an infested tier3 quest on day 6 and getting two radiated bikers"? What now? Is the game too easy or too difficult?

 

 

Well I didn't place any restrictions on combat, just mostly trader use, as if I was to go all in with the trader the game would be even more of a joke than it already is in vanilla since item progression is locked to magazines for the most part, having full access to those makes it stupid easy to get overgeared fast.

 

Also I never did really complain about zombie difficulty, its just kinda annoying to deal with radiated zombies that early when all you have is pipe guns, they just have to much health is all. I did kill them though, with some wood spike and melee/gun useage. Wooden spikes are great for stalling zombies and doing a decent bit of damage, can even kill non-ferals on their own, well unless its Big momma, the bowler or biker anyway. I always have some on my toolbar as they are great for slowing down zombies in a doorway so you can get some free shots on them, or need time to get away. I blame the stat system though for part of the problems with guns, I am sure they are fine once you have the stat/perks, the problem is, getting those stats and perks and not having it feel like you waste skill points to do so. As I said the stat/skill system really shows its major flaws when you play single player and nothing is being done to address those flaws, as some stats are just far more viable/useful than others. Its why I always go str early, I feel lockpicking is garbage, so I go str for miner 69'er to get steel tools fast, I usually have ql 1 steel tools by day 3-4. Only steel tool I make early is the pickaxe. Plus it has shotguns and clubs, both fairly good weapons, mind you shotgun is kinda garbage till you get the pump shotgun, thats the only problem with it. As the pipe shotgun is just trash due to its long reload time, and the same issue with the double shotgun, reload and the fact 2 shots is prob not even going to kill a feral if you somehow land all pellets on the head. Only time I pull out guns is when I have several zombies after me at once with 2+ of them being feral, otherwise I just melee.

[Dtfauss]

Lots of subjectivity based on people's personal gamestyle, settings, and how 'they' want to play. I gave up long ago on developers adjusting games to suit how I want to play. I play within the confines of the game, and really appreciate games that have toggles, sliders and such on settings (and mods). Might as well enjoy life; you only get one (aside from you reincarnationists out there).

[Krougal]

10 minutes ago, meganoth said:

 

 

What I don't get is how you first say the game is not difficult enough unless one puts restrictions on the gameplay. But then you say guns should do more damage and "it is not fun doing an infested tier3 quest on day 6 and getting two radiated bikers"? What now? Is the game too easy or too difficult?

 

It can be both I guess. Some parts might be too difficult, some too easy.

Of course a lot of it comes down to personal preferences.

 

Myself, I hate bullet sponges, which is why I tend to play on lower difficulties. I thought default was 100%/100%, I guess I do up it a notch or two, but then I use a headshot mod that makes most any headshot 1 shot, 1 kill even on higher difficulty. I know the engine will never support large hordes and so making individual zeds tougher is the only viable choice, but I don't like it. I like my slow shambling Romero/TWD zeds. Before someone says, but yeah what about "big daddy" all the movies done after Romero as homage to Romero did their own wacky things; they don't count to me.

 

Now my recent bout with insane/nightmare, yes, you can make the game pretty hard. Now granted the guy in the vids I been watching has perfect situation awareness and reflexes I guess, because I have never seen him get hit. Me, some of it is getting old and slow but I swear zeds spawn right behind me and the first time they make a sound being when they are already eating my face. It is not for lack of experience or skill on my part.

[Scyris]

1 hour ago, Krougal said:

See now I hear this from a lot of other players, but I suck at abusing the trader as it seems I am always a day late and a dollar short for whatever I want to buy. I have trouble saving up enough to buy expensive items. I probably buy too many consumables and don't sell enough crap.

 

Now I feel the opposite about LP, I find it useful and I generally use it. I also hate the Bethsoft way (actually that orginated in Thief I think) and in Fallout4 I started using a mod to bypass it, I am so bored to tears with it. I mean the first time it is like "wow! this is cool!" and then the it gets to be old, by the time it gets to be ancient...well, you mod it away. I think the way 7DTD does it is adequate. I also see a big difference in how fast I go through picks with or without the skill.

 

Yeah, the weapons are a joke. A .22 LR would still rip through a zombies skull like butter. I use a headshot multiplier mod to deal with what I consider a bad design choice.

 

I actually sell very little to the trader, I get almost all of my dukes from just quest rewards. I only buy food/water if I am desperate, which does not happen often. In fact my food bar rarely goes below 60%. First trader tier complete reward I take is always the bicycle, as I usually do not have one till then, the 2nd time I take the 5000 dukes, which on top of the 2000-5000 the base tier up awards, thats a easy 7000-10000 dukes right there. If you save up from previous quests you can have 15k for a crucible by the time you unlock tier 3 quests, I usually unlock t3 quests on day 6, so by day 6 I can already craft the endgame material, its why the game needs a tier above steel badly, and this tier of material has to only be avail in like the wasteland, with some special requirements to harvest it so its properly progression gated. Darkness Falls does this, titanium, plutonium and uranium is used in the top tier items, it only is avail in the wasteland, but the wasteland has a radiation death cloud that kills you in seconds if you do not have 100% radiation resist (Hazmat suit, Mods on armor, or top tier Powered armor) Its even cheaper to buy the crucible if you happen to have barter perks/buff items. I play with a 60 slot backpack mod and a 15 slot toolbar mod mainly, and even a 60 slot inventory is still too small to carry much back to the trader to sell. I've never exploited the trader by selling like stones, or crafted items to them in mass quantities to make easy dukes. I mean 6000 iron which if you have a steel pickaxe does not take that long to mine even with 0 in motherload just 4/5 miner 69'er, sells for 1200 dukes. There is stuff you can make that sells for thousands a stack that often aren't hard to make, don't know what this item is in a22 but its prob one of them. It usuallly gets price nerfed once its found out which one it is, or the stack size gets massivly lower so its far less profitable, as traders can only have 3 copies of a item, or 3 stacks before they will outright refuse anymore till they restock and cycle it out.

 

I actually exploit the trader far less than I could be, since I do not buy most things they sell, as I said first thing I buy is a cooking pot, then a steel tool part, just a single one for a ql1 steel pickaxe later, other than that I buy the odd mod, or maybe food/drinks, and thats about it, isin't really anything else I buy. I don't buy books or magazines from the trader either, I only accept them as quest rewards or in loot. If I was to fully exploit traders I'd have far higher craft skills. But at the same time, this means I get bored faster, so I don't buy those magazines/books from traders to slow down the progression craft wise. Might have to change this rule though in a22/1.0 as traders no longer give gear for quests and in a21.2 thats where alot of my equipment came from was the trader quests. Now that its gone, and looting is garbage even in the desert (Still only find pipe weapons on day 9 in t3 poi's in the desert). Means I am not going to find any real upgrades there, I might be forced to start buying magazines off the trader. Which i've never done yet.

20 minutes ago, Krougal said:

It can be both I guess. Some parts might be too difficult, some too easy.

Of course a lot of it comes down to personal preferences.

 

Myself, I hate bullet sponges, which is why I tend to play on lower difficulties. I thought default was 100%/100%, I guess I do up it a notch or two, but then I use a headshot mod that makes most any headshot 1 shot, 1 kill even on higher difficulty. I know the engine will never support large hordes and so making individual zeds tougher is the only viable choice, but I don't like it. I like my slow shambling Romero/TWD zeds. Before someone says, but yeah what about "big daddy" all the movies done after Romero as homage to Romero did their own wacky things; they don't count to me.

 

Now my recent bout with insane/nightmare, yes, you can make the game pretty hard. Now granted the guy in the vids I been watching has perfect situation awareness and reflexes I guess, because I have never seen him get hit. Me, some of it is getting old and slow but I swear zeds spawn right behind me and the first time they make a sound being when they are already eating my face. It is not for lack of experience or skill on my part.

 

Naw that does happen, the zombies are coded to basically not spawn in the players view, so they often spawn to the side/behind you in the wild, and often close enough that by the time you realize one is there its already hit you as it spawned extremly close to you and didn't make a sound till it attacked, it happens to me all the time. Its really annoying too when you look around 360 degress see no zombie in sight/clip range, then second you turn back forward the way you were going you suddendly get hit when there was nothing there 5 seconds or less earlier. It just feels fake, kinda like the zombie rage system and how many cheapshots it allows the zombies to often land. Its worse with runners, as they often run INTO the player and glitch into you so you can't even hit them back. Its been something I been noticing once they allowed zombies to attack when moving, In old alpha's they had to stop every other animation before they could swing, this is not the case for the last few alpha's and it results in alot of cheap hits on the player some of them with the zombie having 0 attack animations as they don't play during the other animation, often happens when it stumbles towards you, it can hit you with 0 animation during the stumble, as its not programmed properly so it cannot start an attack animation while that one is playing. Darknes Falls has a mod as part of the overhaul that actually fixes this, and blocks zombies from attacking during their stumble animations since TFP seems to not wanna ever fix it. It looks a bit jank at times though, but it does help solve the cheapshot problem a bit.

Edited July 31 by Scyris (see edit history)

[Krougal]

41 minutes ago, Scyris said:

 

I actually sell very little to the trader, I get almost all of my dukes from just quest rewards. I only buy food/water if I am desperate, which does not happen often. In fact my food bar rarely goes below 60%. First trader tier complete reward I take is always the bicycle, as I usually do not have one till then, the 2nd time I take the 5000 dukes, which on top of the 2000-5000 the base tier up awards, thats a easy 7000-10000 dukes right there. If you save up from previous quests you can have 15k for a crucible by the time you unlock tier 3 quests, I usually unlock t3 quests on day 6, so by day 6 I can already craft the endgame material, its why the game needs a tier above steel badly, and this tier of material has to only be avail in like the wasteland, with some special requirements to harvest it so its properly progression gated. Darkness Falls does this, titanium, plutonium and uranium is used in the top tier items, it only is avail in the wasteland, but the wasteland has a radiation death cloud that kills you in seconds if you do not have 100% radiation resist (Hazmat suit, Mods on armor, or top tier Powered armor) Its even cheaper to buy the crucible if you happen to have barter perks/buff items. I play with a 60 slot backpack mod and a 15 slot toolbar mod mainly, and even a 60 slot inventory is still too small to carry much back to the trader to sell. I've never exploited the trader by selling like stones, or crafted items to them in mass quantities to make easy dukes. I mean 6000 iron which if you have a steel pickaxe does not take that long to mine even with 0 in motherload just 4/5 miner 69'er, sells for 1200 dukes. There is stuff you can make that sells for thousands a stack that often aren't hard to make, don't know what this item is in a22 but its prob one of them. It usuallly gets price nerfed once its found out which one it is, or the stack size gets massivly lower so its far less profitable, as traders can only have 3 copies of a item, or 3 stacks before they will outright refuse anymore till they restock and cycle it out.

 

I actually exploit the trader far less than I could be, since I do not buy most things they sell, as I said first thing I buy is a cooking pot, then a steel tool part, just a single one for a ql1 steel pickaxe later, other than that I buy the odd mod, or maybe food/drinks, and thats about it, isin't really anything else I buy. I don't buy books or magazines from the trader either, I only accept them as quest rewards or in loot. If I was to fully exploit traders I'd have far higher craft skills. But at the same time, this means I get bored faster, so I don't buy those magazines/books from traders to slow down the progression craft wise. Might have to change this rule though in a22/1.0 as traders no longer give gear for quests and in a21.2 thats where alot of my equipment came from was the trader quests. Now that its gone, and looting is garbage even in the desert (Still only find pipe weapons on day 9 in t3 poi's in the desert). Means I am not going to find any real upgrades there, I might be forced to start buying magazines off the trader. Which i've never done yet.

 

See now that is very interesting about Darkness Falls and how you feel about tiering and progression.

People rave to me about Darkness Falls and I'm like, it sounds terrible. I absolutely despise arbitrary tiers and hard gates.

What makes it so interesting though is that you and I tend to agree more often than not in various discussions over the years.

I guess we agree what's broken but not how to fix it lol.

 

T3 on D6 is pretty aggressive though. Especially with the daily limit. I assume you disable it.

You don't think you are grinding out quests like a madman and then saying, "Somebody stop me!" 

 

I rush the bicycle but then I slow down to probably like 2 quests a day, and then T5/T6 seems like 2 days a quest of course I am driving myself insane jack-assing all over the map from trader to trader and POI to POI.

 

Hmmmm...maybe I like the idea of the quests giving crap rewards so I can go back to ignoring them like the old days. It has been fun in my current playthrough not doing any quests at all, everything I've done in this first week has been driven by survival needs and construction of 1st base. 

[IrishManJMo]

2 hours ago, Dtfauss said:

Lots of subjectivity based on people's personal gamestyle, settings, and how 'they' want to play. I gave up long ago on developers adjusting games to suit how I want to play. I play within the confines of the game, and really appreciate games that have toggles, sliders and such on settings (and mods). Might as well enjoy life; you only get one (aside from you reincarnationists out there).

I agree. That's why in my original post I tried to not include things such as my difficulty level or personal play styles outside of what I felt were true criticisms of the balance of the fundamentals of the current vanilla. I really do think for many years TFP have had a lot of good or at least interesting ideas but poor solutions to how to balance them. 

[Krougal]

3 hours ago, Dtfauss said:

Lots of subjectivity based on people's personal gamestyle, settings, and how 'they' want to play. I gave up long ago on developers adjusting games to suit how I want to play. I play within the confines of the game, and really appreciate games that have toggles, sliders and such on settings (and mods). Might as well enjoy life; you only get one (aside from you reincarnationists out there).

Well, it's pretty hard to be objective about it.

Still, you are right. I have to remind myself frequently that I have gotten a lot of enjoyment out of this game over the years and I probably only payed like 10 bucks, even if I don't agree with a lot of the decisions made over the years, I have certainly gotten my entertainment for the price of admission and then some.

It is just in the nature of sandbox games that we will @%$# about their flaws, we tend to put many more hours in them and as they say "familiarity breeds contempt"

 

Take a triple A game like Days Gone or Dying Light where I have gotten like 120 hours (if that because Steam doesn't know when I went and watched TV with the wife for a few hours and then went to bed but forgot to shut the game down) out of them but paid probably $60 for and yet I think happy thoughts about them. They had a start and an end. I played through once or twice and put them aside. I didn't have a lot of time to sit and examine their flaws or think about their balance. Yet, the fact that they are finished products vs ongoing development might factor in as well.

[Riamus]

2 minutes ago, Krougal said:

Well, it's pretty hard to be objective about it.

Still, you are right. I have to remind myself frequently that I have gotten a lot of enjoyment out of this game over the years and I probably only payed like 10 bucks, even if I don't agree with a lot of the decisions made over the years, I have certainly gotten my entertainment for the price of admission and then some.

It is just in the nature of sandbox games that we will @%$# about their flaws, we tend to put many more hours in them and as they say "familiarity breeds contempt"

 

Take a triple A game like Days Gone or Dying Light where I have gotten like 120 hours (if that because Steam doesn't know when I went and watched TV with the wife for a few hours and then went to bed but forgot to shut the game down) out of them but paid probably $60 for and yet I think happy thoughts about them. They had a start and an end. I played through once or twice and put them aside. I didn't have a lot of time to sit and examine their flaws or think about their balance. Yet, the fact that they are finished products vs ongoing development might factor in as well.

You make an excellent point.  A lot of people want to have the game continue to add things and get better so they can play forever and not get tired of the game as if it was a service game like an MMO.  A big part of that is because the game has been in early access for so long and gotten many updates over the years.  But it is still just a regular game.  But without a real end to the game, people just keep staring over and that will make any game get stale.  And when something changes that people don't like, it just gets all the more frustrating because they have put so many hours into the game with the old way.  It is very different if you have played 50 hours and something changes versus playing for 1000 hours and something changes.

[binf_shinana]

Overhaul mods always come up in these kinds of discussions, but I think it's probably not the balance of the mod that's important.
Some mods build on old systems, and the fact that they can look fresh against new versions shouldn't be underestimated.

 

I also create overhaul mods (although since Japanese is my first language, they're only popular among Japanese speakers).
My mods remove magazines from the game, so the more magazines become commonplace in the vanilla game and in many overhaul mods, the more the "absence of magazines" is cited as a reason for their high ratings.

 

My conclusion is that vanilla makes big changes every time to keep things from getting boring, so they get replaced with new elements before the balance is adjusted.