Alpha 19 looting and weapons/armour/tools degradation..

[Mutt]

I've been playing this game for a while now and the new looting system in A19 generally....sucks........

I always loved the fact that you can find an upper tier weapon/armour/tool in random places early game stage.

To bring back that randomness, how about item degradation not only reduces the durability but also reduces the tier?

Repair kits could be nerfed to only repair the durability in that tier, and if it drops, only the relevant *parts* can repair back up the tiers.

This would make item parts more valuable and necessary, instead of cluttering up the storage boxes doing nothing.........

Makes that early find in the game more important since you can't repair it fully unless you've accumulated the necessary spare parts or bought the tier 1 items from the trader to scrap.

Just a thought.......

[Kyle]

I’d like to point out that just because loot was random in the past doesn’t mean the devs have ever intended to leave it that way. It is far easier to get player feedback on all the game’s items by allowing access to every item.

Leaving it random with assigned tables was also much less work than assigning tier groups in those loot tables as well. Those would need to be changed for every update that added a new tool/gun. It was simpler to leave it random for most of development.

They have decided it is time to focus on the loot progression, which means it is time for the system to be introduced. I wouldn’t expect random loot to ever come back. I do hope they change the pacing to please as many people as possible.

[Shurenai]

Originally posted by Kyle:

I’d like to point out that just because loot was random in the past doesn’t mean the devs have ever intended to leave it that way. It is far easier to get player feedback on all the game’s items by allowing access to every item.

Leaving it random with assigned tables was also much less work than assigning tier groups in those loot tables as well. Those would need to be changed for every update that added a new tool/gun. It was simpler to leave it random for most of development.

They have decided it is time to focus on the loot progression, which means it is time for the system to be introduced. I wouldn’t expect random loot to ever come back. I do hope they change the pacing to please as many people as possible.

With all that said, You actually CAN still find higher tier equipment even with a low gamestage- It's just actually Rare now. You won't always find something great before you get to the gamestage where you would start finding it now.

With that said as well, The current system is in it's infancy and will be expanded. For example, New low tier pipe gun weapons like a pipe rifle and pipe pistol will be introduced to flesh out the early game loot pool so you dont find ONLY blunderbusses. And maybe the length of each loot tier will be shortened or lengthened; MAybe certain things will be moved down or up a tier.. It is very much going to change as we move forward in development.

[aY227]

I agree, it suxx - now. But don't worry, they plan for loot system is imho really really good.
If you want to know more - https://community.7daystodie.com/topic/21228-looting-progression-plan/ (just ignore this pointless pool, read the post).
Introducing this now was in my opinion mistake, it only divided community :( But on the other hand, they can't see future.

Want alternatie? Check for example Darkness Falls overhaul - gamestage loot with reasonable (higher than 0.001%) chances to get something better if you loot a lot. Also there is specyfic loot for killed zombie type (ammo/guns from army zombie, meds from nurse zombie and so on) with much higher zombie loot chances.

[SkepticJoker]

Originally posted by Mutt:

I've been playing this game for a while now and the new looting system in A19 generally....sucks........

Yeah it's not great, I haven't looted any crates or gun bags, I'm waiting for my gamestage to increase to at least 50.

Originally posted by Mutt:

I always loved the fact that you can find an upper tier weapon/armour/tool in random places early game stage.

Yeah it made sense, me and my friends never questioned it or thought it was unbalanced.

Originally posted by Mutt:

To bring back that randomness, how about item degradation not only reduces the durability but also reduces the tier?

I don't like the sound of that.

Originally posted by Mutt:

Repair kits could be nerfed to only repair the durability in that tier, and if it drops, only the relevant *parts* can repair back up the tiers.

It sounds like a problem for me because I don't like playing with loot respawn. Plus purple weapons dropping to blue tier sounds annoying.

Originally posted by Mutt:

This would make item parts more valuable and necessary, instead of cluttering up the storage boxes doing nothing.........

It sure would. Or you could craft your parts into guns and sell them or something. Its nice to have spare guns too, in case you die and your backpack somehow gets destroyed or lost forever.

Originally posted by Mutt:

Makes that early find in the game more important since you can't repair it fully unless you've accumulated the necessary spare parts or bought the tier 1 items from the trader to scrap.

Well you do have some points and good ideas. The current loot system is flawed if you ask me, but I've learned to tolerate it. How about, if early game you would mostly find tier one or tier two guns, and the catch would be that they break fast, have poor accuracy, and you have to use gun parts to repair them. Another catch would be that gun parts are uncommon to find early game and become common late game. And you couldn't be able to find any of the new end game guns, like the auto shotgun or the dessert eagle. It would make sense that we have to use gun parts to repair guns. It makes more sense then using duct tape and iron.

We would at least have guns back, but be encouraged to use primitive weapons, and save the guns for though situations. That was always the case for me early game anyway, I hardly used all the guns I found, and saved their ammo and durability for later. The loot was a little over the top sometimes, but the new system is too far under top, so to speak.

Although, I'm excited to get my hands on these early game pipe guns. I've heard they are coming to A 20, maybe they will balance out the situation.

[glythe]

Repair is fine how it works now.... and making items degrade would really suck.

[Operation40]

wish they'd go back to non-progression loot.
the objects in a container shouldn't change cause I killed a zombie or picked a flower

disclaimer: just my opinion; your mileage may vary; what I enjoy out of the game isn't necessarily what you enjoy, etc etc etc

[aY227]

Originally posted by glythe:

and making items degrade would really suck.

I was on your side and now Im playing with this :)
It can be done correctly.
They added crafting perks to prevent degradation below some level - but you can't be good with everything. So you decided to specialize in firearms crafting - ok, but that lucky find with hi quality iron pickaxe wont be so cool for long. Or maybe you decided to completely ignore crafting? Ok, you will be finding stuff on your game stage, but better loot a lot or it wont last long.

Decisions, decisions - this is what I like - not current "here is you stone axe - thanks for reaching top of Dishong tower.

[Zergit]

I wish they'd go back to not making this game about stacking boxes to get to the top of a tower for loot. Now it's stacking boxes to get to the top of a tower for ♥♥♥♥♥♥ but still better than what you have loot.

Used to recall the good old days when you were heading towards night time, in a wicked panic trying to set up enough spikes around your wooden hut to ensure you didn't get fed on, hoping that the 30 arrows you had was gonna be enough for whatever finds you in the night.

Now, you don't even need a base. You just spawn, do the beginner quests, take quests from traders while giving yourself loot/trader perks, so you can amass so much money you don't need to worry about gear because you can just buy the best of everything, you buy every vehicle, and then go building a structure because you're sick of looting, then realise 7 days has one of the most lacklustre building simulators out there.

They need to dump this loot obsession focus and get back to making it so servers can accommodate bases being overwhelmed with dozens of zombies, people having to team up and hoping to survive the night, let alone the blood moons. The best servers seem to be incapable of more than 120 zombies, and even then, blood moons split zombie numbers up so that if you've got more than 4 people on a server you'll be lucky to get a stream of 2 - 3 zombies.

Remember when this was a zombie survival game? it's currently a loot simulator.

[SylenThunder]

Originally posted by Zergit:

Now, you don't even need a base. You just spawn, do the beginner quests, take quests from traders while giving yourself loot/trader perks, so you can amass so much money you don't need to worry about gear because you can just buy the best of everything, you buy every vehicle, and then go building a structure because you're sick of looting, then realise 7 days has one of the most lacklustre building simulators out there.

This only works because the traders are currently ignoring loot progression. That's not going to be the case for much longer.

Remember, this game is still in development, and core things like this are still subject to change.

[Mutt]

It might help if I explain my game play: survivalist/insane, permadeath, 32 to 64 max horde, air drop markers off & no loot respawn.

I also handicap myself with crafting in that I can't make anything unless I find/buy the recipe.

Because of this my build tends to go max INT as soon as possible with the emphasis of getting max daring adventure/better barter, (apart from the mandatory 1 point in "Shrexy Rhexy" at start-up.

With the damage buff/debuffs to zombies/myself finding that better tier/class weapon has a bigger impact on survival. aY227 send it best...... Maybe there could be an ingame troll item/T shirt that reads "I survived Dishong Tower and all I got was this lousy..................."

At least with linear loot progression they increased the amount of ammo, A18 was heartbreaking when your ammo/resource expenditure in completing the quest/looting was just not worth it, (imagine A19 now with similar ammo finds).

It sounds like gameplay is going to get more linear in loot progression, how is this going to impact on perk selection? No point going automatic weapons early on since the likelihood of finding that AK/AR is almost unlikely? Or is this where pipe weapons come in as a stop-gap?

Anyhow that was my 2 bits, loot size is not one shoe fits all and ultimately zombies don't care. I will now return to my horde nights with my stun baton and nerd tats.. ;)

[-=EDF=- Kouta Seto]

uhm sorry, but i didnt notice anything since A18. IF they realy changed it, then i didnt notice OR dont need stuff instantly (thou a sniper rifle would be nice on the first day, as would be a lvl 6 machine gun with like 2k ammo). So deal with the fact that you need TIME and PATIENCE to find the good stuff, something wich people from the west cant because grinding(aka Farming) is ment for asian gamers, not those casuals who claim they have no time and want stuff quick.(or why do you think the 0.00001% drops where erased for most MMO's out there safe asian ones?)

[aY227]

Originally posted by -=EDF=- Kouta Seto:

You TOTALLY missed a point, also please curb your racism a little - patience is not asians exclusive virtue.
Grinding is also not only for asians. (ah Path of Exile... typical asian game)

Point is that over here your doing same thing WITHOUT ANY chance to get something better. You could do nothing for 30 game days, and than loot 1 PoI to get 100 times better stuff than a person looting milion PoIs but before he will reach certain gamestage he will get a QUARANTEED ♥♥♥♥.

There is no grinding in 7dtd now... it's just waiting for gamestage to rise.

[Kyle]

It all comes down to game balance. Finding overly powerful equipment early is too random and unpredictable. Some people want that in their survival games, which is ok.

Right now, the devs want to work on a loot progression system. Let them. They will either add in options later to let people choose their own pacing, or mods will do it.

Originally posted by aY227:

Point is that over here your doing same thing WITHOUT ANY chance to get something better. You could do nothing for 30 game days, and than loot 1 PoI to get 100 times better stuff than a person looting milion PoIs but before he will reach certain gamestage he will get a QUARANTEED ♥♥♥♥.

There is no grinding in 7dtd now... it's just waiting for gamestage to rise.

The moment you die, you lose those days for the consideration of your gamestage. It’s “Days Alive” not just day count. You need to grind to stay alive long enough for your gamestage to rise.

I understand not wanting to loot a container until you could potentially find better objects, but that’s exactly why respawning loot is an option. The default timeframe isn’t even that long. You could simply mark or remember the loot locations and come back later to get better loot.

I don’t even play with respawning loot since I’m solo, and I gladly loot everything I come across. The only problem is an excess of blunderbuss, which is already being addressed by new upcoming weapons.

[Howlin' Mad Murphy]

It's really cool after clearing a hardware or gun store and opening up the pristine pre-apocalypse shipping crates you find stone tools. Gets me so immersed. When are they actually going to finalize the skill trees or do they need another nearly 10 years dev time for that too?

[Mutt]

I'm all for game balance, (in the sense of character development, skills etc.), but I guess I'm more for the "random and unpredictable", aspect that I liked, and originally drew me to this game.

I admit I'm not a fan of linear "you must grind this long for this XXXXX" and then you must grind longer for this........ I've done enough hours in asian pvp mmorpgs grinding for mats to complete quests to get upper tier weapons etc.

I'd love it if the Devs put in an option where you would get XXX points at start for you to build your character and that's it.... Progression is you dismembering the world to find the weapons/recipes you need to survive the oncoming hordes.

Loot respawn is not me, once I've cleared a POI that's it, (besides isn't the loot respawn function bugged? If you go within the chunk or near the POI it resets the timer?). I rely on the Tier 5 quests to reset when I've pretty much checked/cleared out the larger POIs and nothing much else remains. By that time it's end game for me as I'm only preparing for the next horde night and I tend to restart, (usually right after I've gone god mode, loaded up with dynamite and just carpet bombed everything....).

I may try some mods but I'm a vanilla kind of guy, i've got over 4k hours in this game over several alphas so I reckon i got patience to tag along for the ride and see what the Devs come up with.

Nothing I've said here should be viewed as an attack or a complaint against the Devs, it's just my criticism which I hope(d) would be viewed positively&constructively....

Cheers All.