B42: aren't the new skills a bit redundant?

[PK_Ultra]

Why do we have 3 different skills dealing with stone when they could all be one skill? Is there really that many ways to sharpen a rock to warrant its own skill? Why did farming get split off into two skills when farming is already struggling with being useful? Couldn't Woodcarving be part of Carpentry?

In other games, when you level up a skill in crafting, you unlock better and stronger recipes that give better exp so you keep progressing and leave behind old recipes. Not so in PZ, instead you dismantle watches forever if you want to level up Electrical for the soul purpose of being able to fix generators better. Maybe this will all be put to rest in B42's massive crafting overhaul.

But right now it just doesnt seem justified. If anything they need to be shrinking the crafting skills pool considering how redundant some skills are. Electrical could easily be merged with Mechanics in terms of player utility, the same can be said with First aide and tailoring. Welding IS literally a part of metalworking but its going to be its own skill?

Unless they show us more how crafting and recipes progress for each skill..that it wont be dismantling watches or, crafting chipped rocks or something, for 10 levels, then i dont know about these new skills..

[maeharaprojekt]

Using femurs and antlers to knap flint. chert, and obsidian is exactly the same as carving granite, sandstone, and marble with a mallet and selection of hardened steel chisels. /s

[PK_Ultra]

Nguyên văn bởi maeharaprojekt:

Using femurs and antlers to knap flint. chert, and obsidian is exactly the same as carving granite, sandstone, and marble with a mallet and selection of hardened steel chisels. /s

i feel like that could go under an umbrella survival skill. Same with tracking and foraging.

[maeharaprojekt]

I will wait for B42 and see how it plays before I make any sort of judgement.

[PK_Ultra]

Nguyên văn bởi maeharaprojekt:

I will wait for B42 and see how it plays before I make any sort of judgement.

do you really want to risk it? Part of being an early access game is listening to feedback. Couldn't they have shown us what we could do with the new crafting skills? What if I'm right and its something tedious like sharpening rocks for 10 levels? And how have the older skills been expanded to warrant new categories instead of trying to fit them into existing skills or simplifying skills even more? At the very least I'd like for these concerns to be addressed in the next thursdoid. Im invested in PZ succeeding and I want to see that these problems are already dealt with before b42 drops.

[DerFinneAT]

Nguyên văn bởi PK_Ultra:

In other games, when you level up a skill in crafting, you unlock better and stronger recipes that give better exp so you keep progressing and leave behind old recipes. Not so in PZ,

That is why I consider PZ more interesting, than other games.

Nguyên văn bởi PK_Ultra:

Nguyên văn bởi maeharaprojekt:

I will wait for B42 and see how it plays before I make any sort of judgement.

do you really want to risk it? Part of being an early access game is listening to feedback.

Major part of feedback is, having an informed oppinion. Unless I am hands on, I don't have that.

Nguyên văn bởi PK_Ultra:

If anything they need to be shrinking the crafting skills pool considering how redundant some skills are. Electrical could easily be merged with Mechanics in terms of player utility, the same can be said with First aide and tailoring. Welding IS literally a part of metalworking but its going to be its own skill?

One of us will sooner or later have to rely on mods, to have their taste covered, if the sanbox settings don't cover our needs.

Our taste regarding skills, and their depiction are diametral.

We have about a gazillion games on steam allone, where the main loop is "bash stupid zombies head", level something, get loot.
We have another gazillion of games, where I can build a sky-scraper with what I happen to have in my pocket after learning how to do so for 20 ingame days.
We have a fair amount of games, that are a mix of those two.

But we have this one single game, that decided to do things differently to also cater to those, who have a different taste.

For once, I want to have one game, where you don't get omnipotent by design, and that depicts gaining skilled in an area being actually something that takes time and effort (of my toon).

And as part of the agency the game gives me, it is the decissionmaking where to I allocate my time-ressources and on what I want to focus.

In the long-long run we wil be jack-of-all-trades probably anyway.
But I rellay appreciate it, if that happens as late as feasible.

[mw00]

CDDA solves this by splitting each skill into theoretical knowledge and practical skill. Theoretical knowledge is easy to level up, and unlocks enough recipes that leveling up practical skill isn't all that grindy and boring. Plus some higher level recipes are unlocked right away by knowing the theory, but you might have a high chance of failing to craft the item.

[stevasaur]

TBH, if there's one skill I'd purge, it'd probably be Mechanics.

Virtually everything in Mechanics also requires levels/tools from other skills (aside from installing/uninstalling car parts), and it's kind of silly that reinstalling the lightbulbs and radios in cars over and over again teaches you to fix engines.

I'd just divide up everything that's currently handled by Mechanics between Metalworking and Electrical and call it a day (maybe use tailoring for things like repairing seats w/ cloth).

[maeharaprojekt]

Nguyên văn bởi PK_Ultra:

Nguyên văn bởi maeharaprojekt:

I will wait for B42 and see how it plays before I make any sort of judgement.

do you really want to risk it? Part of being an early access game is listening to feedback. Couldn't they have shown us what we could do with the new crafting skills? What if I'm right and its something tedious like sharpening rocks for 10 levels? And how have the older skills been expanded to warrant new categories instead of trying to fit them into existing skills or simplifying skills even more? At the very least I'd like for these concerns to be addressed in the next thursdoid. Im invested in PZ succeeding and I want to see that these problems are already dealt with before b42 drops.

The issues you feel are important, and speculative feedback on changes that we haven't yet played with, might be quite low on Indie Stone's priority list for B42. You can dislike that all you want but you are not the game's director or a team lead at Indie Stone.

There are lots of things that I would love to see in B42. Since i am also not the director or team lead at Indie Stone, I also don't get to decide what they work on or how they go about it.

After B42 is released into the wild and after we play the eff out it, that is when we tell them what we think of the latest changes and how these affect gameplay we became accustomed to in B41. The active modders will adapt their prior work to the new build or create new mods that will remove or add features they feel are necessary.

Indie Stone will most likely have all manner of internal discussions, work their butts off, answer questions, respond to or ignore accusations -- and the cycle continues.

[Kaia]

Nguyên văn bởi maeharaprojekt:

I will wait for B42 and see how it plays before I make any sort of judgement.

Exactly, same here. I have big doubts about the crafting system rework, but i think it's largely futile and pointless to issue judgments made out of ignorance. We don't even know the details and specifics of that system yet. And even if we did. Plenty of times i have had negative attitude towards some game mechanics up to the point where i've had sufficient time playing around with them to get to a point where i could recognize their value and potential weak points to improve upon.

But being staunchly criticizing the system when you don't have any idea of how it works yet because it's just not there yet, or have had a chance to play with. Well that's just silly, sorry not sorry.

Wait until you get to toy around with it. Then provide your feedback. Much, much more sensible imo.

[Lancer]

Nguyên văn bởi DerFinneAT:

Nguyên văn bởi PK_Ultra:

In other games, when you level up a skill in crafting, you unlock better and stronger recipes that give better exp so you keep progressing and leave behind old recipes. Not so in PZ,

That is why I consider PZ more interesting, than other games.

Nguyên văn bởi PK_Ultra:

do you really want to risk it? Part of being an early access game is listening to feedback.

Major part of feedback is, having an informed oppinion. Unless I am hands on, I don't have that.

Nguyên văn bởi PK_Ultra:

If anything they need to be shrinking the crafting skills pool considering how redundant some skills are. Electrical could easily be merged with Mechanics in terms of player utility, the same can be said with First aide and tailoring. Welding IS literally a part of metalworking but its going to be its own skill?

One of us will sooner or later have to rely on mods, to have their taste covered, if the sanbox settings don't cover our needs.

Our taste regarding skills, and their depiction are diametral.

We have about a gazillion games on steam allone, where the main loop is "bash stupid zombies head", level something, get loot.
We have another gazillion of games, where I can build a sky-scraper with what I happen to have in my pocket after learning how to do so for 20 ingame days.
We have a fair amount of games, that are a mix of those two.

But we have this one single game, that decided to do things differently to also cater to those, who have a different taste.

For once, I want to have one game, where you don't get omnipotent by design, and that depicts gaining skilled in an area being actually something that takes time and effort (of my toon).

And as part of the agency the game gives me, it is the decissionmaking where to I allocate my time-ressources and on what I want to focus.

In the long-long run we wil be jack-of-all-trades probably anyway.
But I rellay appreciate it, if that happens as late as feasible.

your comma placement is whack

[katsuragi]

Well let's see... they made PZ which is a game like no other and we have you worried about your imagined risk you'll be taking by not voicing your completely uninformed opinion.

Yeah... as always... I'm going to go with what the devs think they should do. After all, it's brought us to here and it is their game.

[Nordil(Hun)]

Nguyên văn bởi katsuragi:

Well let's see... they made PZ which is a game like no other and we have you worried about your imagined risk you'll be taking by not voicing your completely uninformed opinion.

Yeah... as always... I'm going to go with what the devs think they should do. After all, it's brought us to here and it is their game.

Well seems i have nothing to say again:P

[RDecline]

Nguyên văn bởi stevasaur:

TBH, if there's one skill I'd purge, it'd probably be Mechanics.

Virtually everything in Mechanics also requires levels/tools from other skills (aside from installing/uninstalling car parts), and it's kind of silly that reinstalling the lightbulbs and radios in cars over and over again teaches you to fix engines.

I'd just divide up everything that's currently handled by Mechanics between Metalworking and Electrical and call it a day (maybe use tailoring for things like repairing seats w/ cloth).

Funny enough I'd cut metalworking (as it currently it exists if I had to get rid of one of those.)
"Mechanics" as a concept would cover things like radio installs, headlight installs, and engine work. Yes it is silly that replacing bulbs teaches the whole over arching Mechanics skill but Electrical wouldn't really give you a spectrum of car knowledge either. Not sure what you mean about levels/tools from other skills. Mechanics has an entire thing of it's own tools. Chargers, lug wrench, jack, airpump.
Metalworking, apart from when used for body work, seems to really be more like just welding. (Granted welding is a skill in itself but for the results being produced in zomboid, it doesn't seem like exactly skilled labor.) When metalworking is applied to fixing cars in zomboid I imagine the cars all eventually looking like the car Geoff.

[Foster]

I'm perfectly fine with it because they have made it very clear that they want the progression to feel less like other games where you can become a flying god of amazingness that can do everything flawlessly and instead have the players specialize a lot more.
They're breaking up skills like this not because they're just trying to diversify the number of skills purely for the sake of doing it, but because they want it to feel more impactful that you've decided to sit down and hardfocus everything involved with a specific group of interworking skills instead of trying to do everything all at once.

If they do it right, this can even work in favor of what your gripes with the idea are in the first place, because if done right it means they'll offer means for you to achieve everything even if you don't specialize into it while still giving value to the skills that are specialized for it by having late game recipes that are drastically superior.

Being a mechanic with metalworking skills will matter more when it's what you're good at and you get to leverage it better in exchange for not having the same kind of self-sufficiency that hard focusing survivalist skills would. You can scavenge a hell of a lot better if you're able to go further distances in the safety of your car, but you'll HAVE to scavenge more than other playstyles.
Being a crazy survivalist who's able to build a base in the woods and keep it self-sufficient with hunting and farming will matter more when not every playstyle lets you do that and you have to give up some survival skills for the comforts provided by electric gadgets and proper plumbing.

You can reach sustainability by any means, but if they pull off the changes to the system properly, the way you reach that sustainability will fundamentally alter how you play the game and offer replayability and more longterm engagement for individual playthroughs.
I'd personally be more invested in my character's safety than what I am currently if instead of going "damn it now I have to grind carpentry out to 10 again" I was actually interested to see what the end-game was like for this specialized playstyle this build has going on because I chose to make this character a carpenter and focus in on it specifically.
It would also make continuing in the same world more of an actual viable and enjoyable option because instead of the objective best way to do that being to go off and just take over your old base and get all your loot back, it would actually be to start anew properly and leverage the skills your new character has.
You also wouldn't be basically forced to go retrieve your old base and loot at that, because your previous character won't have dismantled all furniture and electronics in a 500 mile radius.

And this is before getting into what they envision for NPCs.
Once they get NPCs in with B43 you'll have NPCs working with the same skill system as you to offload specialties onto and thus have a fully functioning community when your skills are all built up together and working in tandem, not much unlike Rimworld or Dwarf Fortress in many ways.