A17 Feedback -- REMOVE the Skills/Perks Menu

[GaiusFalkus]

Pardon the long post, this is one of my favorite games that I’m passionate about. In my opinion, the skill menu itself is a lazy feature and a substitute for creativity and in-depth gameplay. It contains skills, attributes, perks, and recipes -- all things they've already proven they can put into the game world. Too much of the game has been shifted out of the game world and into a point-and-click menu. With a little creativity, it can all be in the gameplay itself, and just mitigate the downsides of that system. It is an uncommon RPG mechanic, which was refreshing in previous Alphas. State of Decay 1 and 2 do it quite well, and I hoped they would go to town with it here. Skill menus IMO are tired, cliche RPG mechanics and I really feel they abandoned something that could've been great. It needed improvement sure, but there are ways to mitigate and offset the downsides. The journey and adventure part of this game is fun and interesting; clicking around in some menu is not.

 

The Skill Menu is basically 2 things -- "ability" and "knowledge". "Ability" is your skills/perks, while "knowledge" is the actual recipes you know. Any recipe should require both of these things in order to craft; so we separate these two mechanisms and put them out in the world. If you somehow learned a recipe ahead of your skill level, you can't build it just yet. So, if you unlock the solar panel recipe, for instance, great! But woops, you're still too clumsy with electronics to be able to do it just yet (too low a level). Or if you become a really high level in a skill, great! You're quite an adept craftsman now, but you still need to find the recipes/instructions to be able to build those things.

 

Learning recipes and schematics was one of the things that endeared me to A15. It was a journey of apocalypse learning. It was finding puzzle pieces. I feel that recipes have no business being learned from a menu. It always struck weird to me and pulled me out of the immersion, because where did it actually come from? In A15/A16, they were halfway in the world and halfway in the skill menu, as if they couldn’t decide if they want you to find recipes, or click a button to learn them. All recipes should have to be discovered, and I mean EVERYTHING. You should start out with barely stone implements, fiber clothes, basic cooking, basic woodworking, and that's it. It’s time to start learning, survivor. RNG can be frustrating, so get rid of all (or most) 1-time use recipes/schematics. Replace them with generic books/magazines that cover the different categories of recipes, so like 4 or 5 categories. Cookbooks, Gun Mags, DIY, Prepper Monthly, Electronics, etc etc. And each one teaches you a random recipe from that category, and maybe on a tier system. So that you don't learn how to build a solar panel before you understand how a light switch works. But now you are always learning something new and we’ve cut down the number of loot items, as far as schematics are concerned. So consolidate the recipes, make them a little more available (like you can find cookbooks in kitchen cabinets, etc), and now we’ve made it a journey for knowledge, we have eliminated the stacks of useless schematics that get stockpiled (have you ever seen a schematic laying around in real life? Me neither), and we’ve mitigated the frustration of RNG screwing us out of that one needed schematic. It’s all in those books, you just have to keep reading and learning. When you learn all recipes from a category, only then is the book finally useless after many, many uses. Or perhaps it can now give you a simple +1 to intellect or gun-handling or electronics, something like that.

 

We’ve previously seen that organic skill leveling is alive and well in the world of gaming. Bring it back and make it better. The attributes system is a great new addition -- now tie those to actions again. Strength to melee/mining, agility to walking/running, intellect to reading/looting, etc etc. There is no reason to have buttons to click, they’ve already proven they can do it organically. There is so much to do in the world and activities that you will do thousands of times, that could all contribute to character development. Players have complained that this is too grindy, so simply make it less grindy and tedious. When you level up, you can get a +1 to a random attribute or something. Tired/bored of mining over and over? Go do a quest or two that will boost your mining skill instead. The bottom line is, the grindy-ness is not gone, it’s simply shifted completely over to zombie killing now. You must kill hundreds of zombies in order to get better at … mining? Electronics? No, I believe you should mine to get better at mining. Or do a quest. Or read a book. Or for example, electronics – we end up with stockpiles of resources, a lot goes unused. You know, when am I ever going to craft and use a certain type of lighting or device that I learned? Maybe the traders need someone to produce 10 relays or switches, whatever. You have excess materials, so go do the quest, and in return you get +2 bump to Electronics in addition to the organic leveling you gained from crafting them. Do you see what I mean? We’re now putting to use craftable items that we might otherwise never ever use ourselves in the game and get a bonus for it, so that we get high enough to finally build that generator, or whatever we’re trying to attain.

 

Perks should be considered those bonuses to activities, such as more resources from mining or higher chance for headshot/kills. For example, aiming and hitting zombies in the head should have like a 1% chance to grant you the ‘Headcrusher’ perk, and then a chance to boost the perk thereafter to max level. It does not need to be a button in a menu, it can be tied to action. Hitting arms and legs has a 1% chance for the “Dismemberment” perk to pop, etc etc. For less common activities, and therefore fewer chances for the perk to arrive, simply mitigate that using quests or magazines. Such as farming, instead of the sole option of planting and harvesting hundreds of times to gain the perk, maybe you can also learn how to farm better from a book in addition to the activity itself. Or it can be passed down from an NPC quest, a “trade secret” if you will, that he agrees to teach you, and now you gain the perk or the perk levels up. Again, I’m just reiterating that there are ways to offset the downsides of tedium and keep improving the mechanic, without abandoning it altogether.

 

The Skill Menu’s only remaining function now, is to simply see what level your skills are and what recipes you know. If you’re missing something, then get out there and find it. If you’re lacking in a skill, go perform those actions or do quests. But please please please, remove the point-and-click aspect of this immersive survival game. I know you guys can do it.

[RawGage]

Well Gaius, this is where I have to gently disagree. I'm a D&D fan and love the stats system style of specialization in a character. I like how the menus give you the personal choice to change up your game style and, ultimately, make you a better player.

 

Sometimes what feels mechanical is just a slice of a bigger picture that can excite the imagination to dream bigger and better. Take the Strength attribute for example, I prefer stealth over tanking... but, without being able to tank a feral zombie, you die way too easy once they catch up to you. So, I've been learning how to ramp up my tanking abilities in order to deal with running feral zombies and fell in love with the steel axe! I hated the axe as a weapon in the A16 and didn't even consider it in A17 until I had the option to game proficiency with heavy metal weapons and knock them to the ground. Totally not my usual style of play but very effective and exciting!

 

I'll challenge myself to get better at tanking where the zombies seem to be able to take a bit more of a beating now and will keep my sneaky stealth style for night time shadow attacks without spending points in it.

 

Thank you for this post and I hope you hear my side with a gentle smile; It's just how I feel is all. You're not wrong in anyway for seeing this the way you do.

[ImB_Yipman]

A post worth reading!

And I agree - with some alternative ideas to the implementation of your idea (I hope i interpreted your post correctly)

 

I would like learn by doing too.

Also like that there is a chance of getting a perk while performing an action - like you said: You have a slight chance of getting the head crusher perk if you kill alot of zombies - or simply hit zombies in the head alot (which I would prefer personally!)

 

 

To me I'd like to have book's and magazines act like in Project zomboid:

- By reading them they boost your learning ability in a discipline by 1-2% (or whatever) value.

 

This reflecting that knowledge gives you ideas how to perform an action more effectively.

 

I dont think you should need schematics at all:

 

You can pretty much craft anything - however without having any accumulated knowledge about let's say crafting a gun, you might fail at crafting it entirely or the result will be a very low quality weapon!

Reading a book about it - will increase your chance at putting it together properly.

 

Cookbooks and such will do the same - it will simply increase the chance of succeeding at a higher quality meal - while lack of knowledge will risk buring or spoiling the food..

 

I will not elaborate more on my idea here...

But I think we are heading the same direction with our wishes!

[GaiusFalkus]

I like your ideas too. Anything to make the game more immersive, I'm all for. Again, I feel like clicking and spending points is a tired old mechanic, especially when this game has proven potential for so much better. I would be all for my very first meat stew after barely learning the recipe, being level 1 or poor quality, etc. But it's all good, because these are actions you'll end up doing hundreds of times, so you WILL get better at them. In A17, I do hate that I hack away at things, zombies, earth, etc and my character does not learn anymore. To me, the journey of learning was the best part. The game has no real end, so if there's no more "journey", or the journey is no longer fun, or if the journey is over too soon, then the game stops being fun.

 

I want the wondrous POI's of A17 and the gameplay of A16. And I want them to improve mechanics and mitigate for the criticisms; not abandon things altogether. This is a completely different game now. I've reloaded to A16.4 because I miss the journey.