Which profession do you think needs an overhaul the most?

[8hoursofsleep]

I wish Engineers were useful. There's a lot of untapped potential there.

[Quill]

Doctor

Anyone can heal. First Aid just makes bandages and what not last longer before needing to be replaced. That's it

[Undefined]

Originally posted by 8hoursofsleep:

I wish Engineers were useful. There's a lot of untapped potential there.

There is, but they're not useless.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfYzIU-rk8U

[Undefined]

Anyway, I was just looking through the occupations, and here's some other candidates

Metalworker: you pay 6 points for +3 Metalworking? Yikes.

Electrical: pay 4 points for +3 Electrical and so you don't have to find the generator magazine. That's it.

Even with the XP leveling bonus from starting with +X, I don't think they're worth it.

While not useless, I think the ones that make you pay for Carpentry / Cooking are not worth it at all. Those are some of the easiest to level up. Even Farmer, that gives you +3 Farming and 2 Skill Points, is meh.

[8hoursofsleep]

Originally posted by Undefined:

Anyway, I was just looking through the occupations, and here's some other candidates

Metalworker: you pay 6 points for +3 Metalworking? Yikes.

Electrical: pay 4 points for +3 Electrical and so you don't have to find the generator magazine. That's it.

Even with the XP leveling bonus from starting with +X, I don't think they're worth it.

While not useless, I think the ones that make you pay for Carpentry / Cooking are not worth it at all. Those are some of the easiest to level up. Even Farmer, that gives you +3 Farming and 2 Skill Points, is meh.

Reading a book in Farming and harvesting a few crops yields 2 levels, so farming is useless atm, imo. I'm hoping that in B42 they'll add the specialization thing and have all professions be useful, interesting and not doable by everyone, so you'd need a farmer/animal husbandry, a mechanic and so on to keep a small community working, instead of 2 guys with maxed stats.

[teleamachus]

i go unemployed and sometimes don't take perks. but usually fast reader, lucky, and the one that lets you transfer stuff faster

[william_es]

The best thing about professions is the permanent +xp boost to certain skills. Those xp boosts are WAY more useful then the extra levels in that skill you get at start.

I started as a repairman with +short blunt xp, and I had level 4 short blunt before I even reached level 1 with long blunt. It made a huge difference. Just popping zombie's heads with a hammer.

[Terranical]

Veteran role makes no sense, if you've used a gun as a former military soldier, you should at least have 4+ Aiming and Reload, not lower than Police Officer. They are active duty soldiers before, thus their points taken when choosing that profession out is justified.

[Ykario]

I think all profession traits don't give nearly enough skill level in their respective profession. A carpenter for instance, that can't even make a basic box that looks decent ? Bro, have you been sleeping on the job all this time ?

They should give more skill points, but maybe less XP. After all, it's your job. You're supposed to be good at it, and not have much more to learn. So that would be logic to not get bonus XP because you already know what you're doing, but starting at a better level.

To me, the whole profession system, skill tree, trait system etc needs a deep rework to make it more impactful. Some are already quite impactful, but others are really lacking and not worth taking for what they give / take from you.

[Undefined]

Originally posted by 8hoursofsleep:

Originally posted by Undefined:

Anyway, I was just looking through the occupations, and here's some other candidates

Metalworker: you pay 6 points for +3 Metalworking? Yikes.

Electrical: pay 4 points for +3 Electrical and so you don't have to find the generator magazine. That's it.

Even with the XP leveling bonus from starting with +X, I don't think they're worth it.

While not useless, I think the ones that make you pay for Carpentry / Cooking are not worth it at all. Those are some of the easiest to level up. Even Farmer, that gives you +3 Farming and 2 Skill Points, is meh.

Reading a book in Farming and harvesting a few crops yields 2 levels, so farming is useless atm, imo. I'm hoping that in B42 they'll add the specialization thing and have all professions be useful, interesting and not doable by everyone, so you'd need a farmer/animal husbandry, a mechanic and so on to keep a small community working, instead of 2 guys with maxed stats.

I think the problem is, like most games, they don't design differently for single player vs multiplayer.

In the scenario that you described, it would work well for MP, but SP needs the ability to do it all. Maybe that changes when NPCs arrive.

[hardy_conrad]

Single player and multiplayer are radically different experiences, I'm sympathetic to the difficulty of making something that's equally effective in both. Engineer is an interesting case, I wonder if the reason generator magazines are so rare is an attempt to make the career worth more. After all, what's exactly the point of a high electrical skill? Slightly better at repairing generators, but given that scrap electronics drop randomly from about one in three zombies that's completely useless. There's also hotwiring but once you pass the skill threshold there you've got no reason to go beyond.

I guess if you look at careers in terms of direct game impact you'll be disappointed. Might be better to just think of them as a bit of flavouring for the game, so to speak.

[Oragepoilu]

IMO all the profession are wonky in one way or another and probably need some adjustment - assuming balance is something they would want (or care, or able to achieve). Doesn't seems to be the case so far.

However, if I had to pick one, I'd say doctor. Since the first aid skill is useless. That's 6 point (+8 => +2) for 1 skill on small blade, probably the worse weapon skill.

[Undefined]

Originally posted by El Pulpy (Ykario):

I think all profession traits don't give nearly enough skill level in their respective profession. A carpenter for instance, that can't even make a basic box that looks decent ? Bro, have you been sleeping on the job all this time ?

lol touche

Originally posted by El Pulpy (Ykario):

To me, the whole profession system, skill tree, trait system etc needs a deep rework to make it more impactful. Some are already quite impactful, but others are really lacking and not worth taking for what they give / take from you.

There's a rework coming in B42, I think.

I just hope they've had an epiphany on how much irrational grinding a lot of the skills require, how boring some of them are to level up, and how some skills/occupations are not good.

I almost quit playing because of it. I had survived for 3 months, died, then when I thought about all the work it would take to get back to where I was, I was devastated. I started looking for mods and found Skill Recovery Journal. I went into debug mode, boosted my character back to where it was, then began using the mod.

I can imagine a lot of people would've quit if not for mods like Skill Recovery Journal. And I would abandon the mod today if the leveling system was more reasonable or perhaps just fun.

Perhaps the worst part of having to start over is reading all those damn books. Even in SP, recovering your levels involves about a week of IG time of reading + cooking/eating. It's so frigging boring.

Anyway, rant over, I hope we get something exciting when the rework comes out.

[Chilli Dog Dave]

as someone thats been following zomboid since the early days of bob and kate first aid is the skill with the biggest need of a rework, its considered a useless skill in most cases because of 2 factors.
1: theres not enough ways to get injured, sure this will change if you PvP or NPC's start whacking and shooting you but even that wont be enough, having thorn bushes, sunburns and nettle rashes from roaming around unprotected along with adding in creams for said issues would help add more basic first aid and then they need to add more wound types.
my idea for wound types for examples would be to expand current ones so you'd have 3 ranks of each wound;
Scratches:
light scratch would give a very meager 2.5% infection chance, doesnt cause bleeding and causes a slight amount of discomfort(i'll explain this later) and can speed up healing with either a bandage or disinfectant cream/ointment
moderate scratch (current one) nerf infection to 5% and reduce pain slightly and add a slight discomfort
deep scratch would be your 7% infection chance, gives slightly more pain than moderate and more discomfort, stitches can help heal it but not required
lacerations:
light laceration would be a 10% infection chance and have half the impact of moderate (current one)
moderate laceration would be your current one, nerfed to 17% infection chance, stitches would help speed it up but not required, requires a tight bandage (higher grade bandage) if no stitches
deep laceration would be the 23% infection and have more impact than moderate, etc.
bites:
weak bite would have the damage of a moderate scratch but only have an infection chance of 30%
moderate bite would be current bite and be a 65% chance of infection
a deep bite would be your 100% chance infection, has the impact of a deep laceration, your dead anyways so might as well make it hurt.

factor 2 is that the treatment stuff isnt that expanse, theres a lack of drugs, herbal toxins that dont = food poison, some psychedelic toxins, high grade pain killers, etc could go a long way to padding out the more impactful wound types and ease pain or discomfort.

discomfort as i mentioned earlier would impact your move speed and action speed very mildly but having tons of uncomfortable injuries would stack up (so 2 broken legs and a ton of moderate lacerations is definitely going to slow you down) but with higher grade painkillers, better bandages, better first aid and loose clothing could ease this.

i love playing the support or doctor type but in zomboid even with multiplayer it feels mediocre at best, more wound types, advanced treatments and even managing blood levels like needing to administer blood transfusion due to to much bleeding would go a long way to making a first aid/doctor more viable, maybe just give the doctor occupation a unique perk where treatments they apply have a slightly better impact than anyone else so a doctor with lvl 10 first aid will still be better than some rando with lvl 10 but i'd personally hate this and want them to have access to unique treatments similar, hell ALL occupations should have a unique bonus.

i'd love to be proven wrong and shown that first aid is super powerful be my guest but as it stands first aid is considered a pointless skill even on PvP servers, more wound types as well as passive minor injuries would add to the game along with all those new things i suggested.

[Undefined]

Originally posted by Oragepoilu:

However, if I had to pick one, I'd say doctor. Since the first aid skill is useless. That's 6 point (+8 => +2) for 1 skill on small blade, probably the worse weapon skill.

The funny thing about Short Blade is that, IMO, you're really only supposed to use it for the Jaw Stab / Back Stab. And because of that, a Kitchen Knife or Bread Knife is pretty comparable to a Hunting Knife.

At least Meat Cleaver has utility with its damage to trees and doors.

The only other use Knives have in this game is to make Crafted Spears. That's arguably the best reason to keep one in your inventory.

So, yeah, Short Blade is a pretty useless skill. I also read in a mod description that the critical chance of a Short Blade weapon is just the chance of doing the Jaw Stab animation; it has no crit for combat.

[Armagenesis]

Rather than the profession itself, I really wish there's more use to electrical skill. Maybe combined with carpentry to create a shock spear from spear+knife+car battery or something similar.