The new perk system is a downgrade

[RazPootis]

An hour in to A17 and I'm already disappointed with the new skill/perk system.

They kept the ability to buy perks, which I have no problem with, and having them all require just 1 point makes progress much more consistant. But why did they have to remove the skills that can be leveled through their usage?
I'm talking about all of the skills that required you to use them if you wanted to improve your performance. The ability to improve your skills over time by using them and leveling them up felt natural and was satisfying. For example, It made sense that if you used only bows for a couple days that your skill with these items would improve, both on your own skill and your characters skill. leveling up your archery allowed you to do more damage with bows. The bonus damage didn't make you overpowered, but it became helpful after a while. Same thing with using other weapons and tools. Even the ability to heal more lifepoints with a high level in the medicine skill was helpful.

The old system was dynamic and it kept you with a sense of progression. It passively rewarded you for your hard work. The new leveling system feels static and clunky. It makes no sense that I improve my ability to mine by killing hundreds of zombies, even if i've never touched a pickaxe.

I don't hate the new system, but it feels dead without the ability to progressively improve your skills naturally. And you shouldn't feel dead in a game where you are suppossed to be surviving.
Maybe if they had never had that old leveling system in the first place, it wouldn't be so bad, but for me, It's a huge downgrade in gameplay quality.

[Explicitly Offensive Cuneiform]

It needs some refinement, like a lot of it.

I have not tried using a land claim block to steal things from the pois, because i have not survived a trip inside a poi yet...

[Wrothbog]

hit things with a stick. survival rate climbs quickly.

just half raided the missile silo POI before hitting encumbrance issues. land claim wont stop zeds that were already spawned and you'd need to dump it in the middle of the poi so the poi should have been filled before that could happen

[StevenT475]

Went from Skyrim to Fallout lol. Before you got better at things by doing them. Now you just dump points into them and have basic things locked behind them. Previous way made more sense even if it did make things easier through grinding and other methods. You make an axe a number of times you get better at making them so the quality increasing. Now you kill some zombies and spend some points. Then from that you know how to make bacon and craft high quality gear.

[Syotos]

I agree , the old system was a little better and rewarding. Mayber you Unlocking the certain "Perks" of said weapons or or skills should cost the 1 point , but otherwise i think the system of lvling them up and becoming more profecient with them was and is a better way.

[Macdallan]

Yep, generally prefer the previous system as well. I prefer skill improvement through use. They could expand this into the current system. Want to get better at sneaking? Sneak. Better at headshots? Aim for the head. Better at chopping wood? Chop wood.

I really don't like how much is locked behind attributes and I am not a fan of the new attribute based perk system at all. It's ridiculous that you must unlock a skill to boil water and add things to that water. It's apparently so complex you don't start off with that basic knowledge. I'd rather they had a "recipe" book where you could start off knowing some random recipes and as you go through the game you could find more and add them to the book. Same with blueprints for other things. Have a mechanical book and a blueprint book. You should be able to use some paper along with ink or charcoal and share blueprints and recipes with other players. *sigh* Too much to hope for, maybe.

Anyway, I think they could have gone with a hybrid skill use/perk system similar to what they had and, if they felt it was necessary, add attributes that affect those skills but aren't required to unlock them. I mean it makes sense that a bigger, stronger person can carry more without being "encumbered" or a fast, healthy person can run faster and work for a longer period of time before becoming tired.

I'm hoping they move toward a system where you create your character instead of everyone being the same at the start, where you can choose from a list of professions and modify some attributes before you get in the game. I think it might be fun that some people may start off with a very tehnical back ground and have some perks unlocked from day 1, but maybe aren't as suited to fighting as, say, an infantry soldier. Imagine being able to make yourself in the game with your actual profession and some of your skills reflected in your character? Now that would be cool.

[Zynthetic]

I have to agree, the old perk system was better. You'd learn by doing, rather than automagically improving at something. Mining a lot and improving at it over time feels better than killing a bunch of zombies and then selecting a perk from a list.

It's even weirder when you kill zombies, gain a perk point, and then use that to learn something completely unrelated, like how to build a bicycle or cook bacon and eggs. Some of the new perks are nice and fill in various niches, but overall the old system was better imo.

[FARQuNer (PL) - PC]

one point per level is not enough

but you can edit 1 point by changing it in file :

\Steam\SteamApps\common\7 Days To Die\Data\Config\progression.xml
skill_points_per_level="1"

to

skill_points_per_level="5"

[yoursdoom]

ALL a17 IS A DOWNGRADE !
the building is much more interesting

[bobgibbs]

"Streamer friendly" I believe is the reasoning behind sucking all the grinding fun out of this. Grinding was the game streamers and let's players number one complaint. The overclocked nearby-random-zombie-generator mechanic is what's currently making it unplayable for me. That's also intentional from the game devs, to stop underground and mountain top bases. Yeah, doesn't make any sense to me either. So... not a bug, but a ""Feature"".

[Syotos]

Originally posted by Macdallan:

Yep, generally prefer the previous system as well. I prefer skill improvement through use. They could expand this into the current system. Want to get better at sneaking? Sneak. Better at headshots? Aim for the head. Better at chopping wood? Chop wood.

I really don't like how much is locked behind attributes and I am not a fan of the new attribute based perk system at all. It's ridiculous that you must unlock a skill to boil water and add things to that water. It's apparently so complex you don't start off with that basic knowledge. I'd rather they had a "recipe" book where you could start off knowing some random recipes and as you go through the game you could find more and add them to the book. Same with blueprints for other things. Have a mechanical book and a blueprint book. You should be able to use some paper along with ink or charcoal and share blueprints and recipes with other players. *sigh* Too much to hope for, maybe.

Exactly like i said , Have some of the Bonus's they put in the current "perk system" as things you need to spend points to buy to activate when you reach said skill levels (5/25/50/75/100 for example)

and YES i'd love to have a book with recipes that you add to with paper and ♥♥♥♥ being locked from having basic knowledge, and what not is just rediculous. They tried to go to "new and intriguing" even though many of the fan base during developement was like 'god no , please no' and now look even more people who are hands on with it concur how its not a good system!

[=Sarsante=]

New system allows more customization.

A16: if you played long enough all chars were almost the same.

[Noxious]

unfortunately the currrent system boils down to kill as many zombies as you can at 700 a pop. Crafting or gathering is like 20 to 50 times slower. Then level up and invest points rinse repeat.

[Solid Snake]

I dont mind the perk system as is as a whole. My problem is that everything is essentially level gated so you cant really focus on anything, and the requirements are so damn high for intellect for no real reason. You have to be level 20 JUST to make iron tools. You cant use ANY of the craftmenship perks (except master chef) until either 20 or 30. Cant even make first aid bandages until lvl 30.

Thats kinda crazy.You cant even start progress in any of them at all until then, even if you wanted to focus on doing it. Starting the game cant even have a group have a dedicated crafter because they have to wait all the way to lvl 20 to actually start making anything. Regular tools and stuff you can make just from raising intellect do not improve just the durability you make them.

Its kind of counter intuitive as the system for at least intellect (I dont mind the other trees really) pretty much forces you to just go do something else for 20 levels and ignore the tree. The magazines dont help cause you still hard capped on lvl requirement.

I think either the lvl requirements for the base stats should be reduced by 10 lvls per rank, or lower the requirements for the craftmenship a rank ie: intellect 6 to 5 and intellect 5 to 4.

[Reignswolf]

I kind of like the new system.

By the time I found a suitable place to start building I was level 18 and already compiled a decent amount of resources. Before that I didn't even think about the Forge, but knowing I had only 2 levels to go I simply killed a bunch of zombies while looting and bam!, learned Forge.

The pacing could probably use a bit of adjustment, I agree. Only because it took me a while to finally find somewhere I liked in Random Gen. If I found the spot a lot earlier it might've been frustrating. I'm also XP sharing with a teammate, so that may be helping a bit too.

So far though, I really like it. The difficulty is SPOT on, almost perfect.
The new animations, etc, are great.
The perk tree could use some improvement, as you say, but luckly it's only been out for a day! So we'll see where that brings us in the future.

[RawCode]

instead of letting player to specialize from level 2, they pushed this step to level 20 that need 3 hours of nonstop grind to reach.

unfun kind of grind.