the skill magazines are balanced so oddly...

[Limdood]

So the magazines effectiveness is just so wildly different between different types that it feels like some of them are an utter waste of time. I realize that the players have been being "encouraged" by the devs....for a great many alphas....to loot more, and not just mine and craft like a different game whose name I can't think of...

...but crafting needs to be doable and SOMEWHAT worthwhile.

right now, some skill magazines are essential and feel like the true measure of progress in getting comfortably set up. Some magazines drop in such obscene amounts that you feel like you're finished with crafting progression in that field at the end of day 2. And finally, some crafting magazines are so absurdly slow that the only way you WON'T get as good or better item than you can craft is by ONLY looting bookshelves and ignoring all other loot.

Since you only ever need to craft one of an item, finding a Q5 or 6 of the highest tier....or even just the very common happenstance of finding an item about 4 levels past where you can currently craft (say, you can craft a Q3 iron spear and you find a Q1 steel spear)....it makes all the work and all the sense of progress you felt while finding those specific books feel hollow. It actually UNDOES the previous good feeling of progressing up the crafting tiers.

But this is mostly about how the magazines are so wildly different.

Group 1, the "hard or impossible to loot these better than I can craft these" magazines. You've got electricity, traps, and vehicles....workstations COULD be included just because getting those first few unlocks on workstations are so critical to doing ANYTHING else in the game. These feel like the game's true progression in terms of crafting. Looting traps and electricity stuff is way too rare to actually be able to consistently live off of, so you're stuck getting the books, at least up to 25 on both....but that's the thing....the gaps in these big "progression" series are MASSIVE! 24 of the books do absolutely NOTHING, but that 25th one...that teaches you everything!

Group 2, the "why even gate this at all?" magazines. Cooking is the big culprit here, and seeds and medical are close behind. I don't think I've yet gotten a single crafting tree to 40 before I had cooking at 100. It levels RIDICULOUSLY fast....but after the first 30 levels, which you can have on day 2 easily, it's just luxuries. In fact after boiled meat, or maybe bacon and eggs, it hardly feels necessary.

Group 3, which is the big problem, is EVERY weapon and armor....but ESPECIALLY firearms, robotics, and armor (the melee weapons are somewhat tolerable)....If you do trader quests, you'll absolutely have much MUCH better weapons and armor than you could ever craft. There are gobs of posts in this forum about people being able to craft mid range T1 weapons and the trader gives them a Q5 or 6 top tier weapon....welp...it will never break, so that crafting is instantly a non-issue....and it makes you feel like there's nowhere to go.

But wait....of course traders are the top tier loot pinatas. Devs have been pushing them for ages, ramping up their rewards and benefits to insane levels. Just....don't use them, right? So I tried. Started a new game, default settings (but 90 minute days, because I felt I might need more time to be ready for night 7...i was wrong). By day 14, EVERY PIECE OF EQUIPMENT I was using, except for my stun baton (so, every piece of armor, every harvesting tool, knife, salvaging tool, and ranged weapon), was looted, not crafted. Because I regularly found items better than I could craft....no trader intervention required. Meanwhile I could cook Gumbo, craft first aid kits and potato seeds....



In short:
- electricity, traps, vehicles and workstations magazines feel roughly good for progression (vehicles could use a boost...), BUT they feel terrible with HUGE, 20+ magazine gaps between unlocks.
- Medical, cooking, seeds progress crazily quickly through the ranks, and it feels like you've maxed or learned everything you could care about by day 7. I'm not a fan of needlessly gating such basic things, but why even have books for these when it feels like you're done without doing anything?
- weapons and armor, and guns in particular, feel pretty much worthless to learn. It seems an INCREDIBLY rare thing to hit a point where you're crafting better weapons and armor than you're finding or being rewarded with.

[Darren]

Originally posted by Limdood:

In short:
- electricity, traps, vehicles and workstations magazines feel roughly good for progression (vehicles could use a boost...), BUT they feel terrible with HUGE, 20+ magazine gaps between unlocks.

i think here are subcategories or something like that needed. So you can speci one of them. electrical trapcs etc. should be somewhere at the end of the line i think, because they are comfortable doing "your work" for you and need to set up the whole electric thing first. it would make the progress smoother or more "natural" to start with some lamps and end with blade traps and automatic gunning stuff. and this is something for an electrician-type, not an "engineer" working with a forge or an mechanic.

for the vehicles theres the problem. if you choose to play the walking sim (Navezgane) you "need" vehicles. I think it should have an alternative way to get them. So Buying them is one, but as i read often now the chance is really small to get one from trader so, maybe like other games do it, the possibility to get parts as a mechanic and repair one or something.

Many crafting-recipies should be basic stuff like grill some meat or make coffee, if you can find the coffee powder seriously everyone should be able to put some hot water on it. if you have a handful useful but not really effective recipies magazines wouldnt be such a pain and could be a nice thing, but this means an complete overhaul and im sure this will not happen.

[Mithrandir]

I mostly agree OP.

My frustration with the new crafting progression is about your group 3 indeed. No matter what I do, I rarely can craft any armor/weapon I've perked into without first finding way better as quest reward or loot.

[minisith]

It does need balancing. There is more balancing to be done overall IMO but I want A22 first then balancing after to account for bandits and hopefully some kind of story. I am still not sure if survivor NPCs was still being planned for this game. I hope so. But understand if not or it will be some future DLC so not to postpone the Gold release.

[templar_ths]

It seems like they are rebalancing and changing up the systems to find the right mid point for players, overall its very easy to max out your skills by buying books, quest rewards and looting letter boxes and book stores, this has been far easier than A20.

[IamGood]

nnew system is ♥♥♥♥♥ and they made game much worse

[MoistGamer]

Originally posted by IamGood:

nnew system is ♥♥♥♥♥ and they made game much worse

Eh - I like lots of aspects of the new build. The new POI features are nice. The doors are nice though not being able to craft them was a decision made by a turd. I'm also a fan of the fragility of vehicles, the need to use more medicine, and water not being free (except they need to completely remove the water helmet mod from the game). There's a lot of nice new stuff.

They did destroy crafting and if I had to guess nobody tested this release for a full 40+ day playthrough. Cuz at the end of 40+ days you've still crafted nothing except maybe a vehicle or two, food, water, and ammunition. Tool, armor, gun, and melee weapon crafting is more useless than its ever been.

Perhaps they'll take the word crafting out of the games tagline I'm not sure.

[Slainpessimist]

Originally posted by dnelson135:

As I understand it, the magazine drop rate is based on what skills you have selected. I was able to craft a bicycle by the end of day two even though I had no bench or place to put a bench yet.

That's how it's meant to work, but certain magazines seem to be scripted in a way or guaranteed drops, others not at all.
Weapon perks make a big difference, but I have purposely rushed points into engineering and lockpicking, verses no points at all and it makes no difference at all for example.

[Limdood]

Originally posted by minisith:

It does need balancing. There is more balancing to be done overall IMO but I want A22 first then balancing after to account for bandits and hopefully some kind of story. I am still not sure if survivor NPCs was still being planned for this game. I hope so. But understand if not or it will be some future DLC so not to postpone the Gold release.

The problem is that this is at LEAST the FOURTH major crafting overhaul that this alpha game has had (crafting grid and forge molds, Learn by doing, level based crafting unlocks, now magazines). Rather than putting in the content, then fiddling with it, they're endlessly fiddling with the SAME content over and over....then when they finally add some new content, they go back and revisit everything and rebalance everything all over again (see traders, and how trading, and then later quests caused them to rebalance everything they'd already done, multiple times over again).

Bandits have been coming "soon" since at least A16.

Frankly this game continues to be bare bones and unfulfilling past a few in game weeks each new alpha. The game DESPERATELY needs some interaction. You've got traders with STORES opening and closing...but no one to patronize those stores. "The Duke" has been in the story almost from the beginning. The "white river settlements" have been in the story since the starter quest got added. There was a nutjob guy who existed in the lore for a while that was the source of the random paper quests you'd find....they apparently wrote him out, all without ever actually being added.

The devs have established there are NUMEROUS NPCs in the world. They made that a part of the world....this isn't "The Forest" where you're the only thinking, talking human in the game world....the Devs have made the choice to have an entire dystopian, post-collapse society and the various struggling factions that entails. They really need to follow through on that. Instead they scrap and re-invent the crafting system over and over. Maybe in alpha 23 or 24 we'll get crafting system #5!


JUST F***ING LEAVE IT ALONE AND FINISH THE GAME FIRST