Shotgun messiah factory / skyscrapers / high skull POI stupid BS

[Submarine]

I was at the shotgun messiah factory for a fetch / clear mission and the quest failed when I was all the way at the top of the POI. The courier satchel was there at the top and the quest failed when I looted it. The courier satchel was EMPTY and the quest failed... What a really great game. I probably would've had to spend another 30 minutes trying to find the rest of the zombies to complete the clear portion anyways.

HERE'S WHAT TO DO TO FIX THE GAME, NOT-FUN PIMPS:

#1: Fix the bug that makes the White River Supplies disappear when looting courier satchels...

#2: Make ALL CLEAR MISSIONS only required you to kill 75% of the zombies or make the location indicators of the zombies show up WAAAAAY sooner. It's seriously incredibly stupid that you've killed hundred of zombies at a POI, but you need to get down to the last 2-3 of them for the location indicators of the remaining zombies to show up. Zombies get ragdolled / jump off tall buildings and they fxing disappear... OR the really dumb scripted zombies don't trigger and are hidden behind a wall. Running around a huge labyrinth looking for the remaining zombies is NOT FUN.

Obviously this makes stealth totally useless since you WANT the stupid scripted / hidden zombies to come after you so you can actually complete a clear mission. If you implement features like stealth, you need to be smart with the game design and not make it totally useless.

#3: High skull POI's have drastically more enemies, but not drastically more loot. What's the point of doing them if you only get slightly more loot, but have to fight way more and tougher enemies??? And once you get to a really high loot stage, it seems particularly pointless. You should be able to get improved versions of guns / armor in the highest loot stages. Make a tier 7 version (5 mods slots and better stats) of guns / armor that can only be looted.

#4: Change how 'stay in the area' works for ALL missions. There's a barely visible red boundary line in a mission area that you can easily cross and fail a mission. This is just poor game design. Make the boundary line more visible and give players 10 seconds to return to the mission area if they leave.

#5: Add ALT looking, so you can look around yourself while continuing to move in the same direction.

[Macdallan]

#1 - Yeah, if that's got a bug they need to fix it.

#2 - 75%? It's a CLEAR mission, not a "clear most of them" mission. Don't find it fun? Don't do high tier clear missions. You don't have to do them. No mission is required. Yes, the scripted trigger point zombies are silly and not fun, plus theymostly kill the stealth approach unless you heavily spec into stealth and have the sneaky armour set at a pretty high tier, only then can you can still effectively use stealth despite the poorly designed trigger point system.

#3 - Yep, the loot doesn't seem to ramp up to match the number of threats we have to deal with, and sometimes we will burn through way more ammo and other resources than you will gain. Perhaps TFP figured that our reward for doing the high tier POIs is not only more kills and thus more XP but a higher chance at loot drops from the zeds due to the increased number? Who knows... and, as above, you aren't required to do any specific POI if you don't want to do.

#4 - Yeah, that system is poorly designed and could use some tweaks to make it a bit more forgiving if we accidentally stray a meter too far from the POI. Shouldn't be an instant fail and the red barrier ought to show up a lot sooner than it does. I biked through one recently and had no chance to stop in time, it showed up basically as I was a half second from passing through it. Due to fatigue I had forgotten it wasn't just a "clear" mission but a "clear and fetch" mission - my bad of course but should I have failed the mission just because I went a few meters too far especially after fully clearing the POI? I say no.

[william_es]

I've never seen that happen. ever.

Agreed, the loot sort of plateaus at a certain point. Past level 4 POI's it's sort of a waste of time. What you get for the time investment doesn't seem worth it. Now if the insanely high tier missions dropped things like quality 6 level solar panels (value of something like 64000+) that would be a gamechanger.

If you step outside the boundary, the mission marker used to start pulsing as a warning.

[Pain Weasel]

#2 - Honestly I'd like it if we got credit for the amounts we did clear even if we didn't complete the entire quest.

Maybe have 4 checkpoints in those large POIs and you get some kind of reward for each with a bonus for completing all 4. If you don't get a 100% completion but still managed to clear 3 of the 4 checkpoints you could get something. Less than full quest completion credit but still not 0, smaller reward, whatever.

It would certainly be better than just wasting a few hours and getting nothing. Of course quests would need a big overhaul to make something like that work but they need one anyway imo.

Meh, just tossing out ideas.

[Submarine]

Originally posted by Macdallan:

#1 - Yeah, if that's got a bug they need to fix it.

#2 - 75%? It's a CLEAR mission, not a "clear most of them" mission. Don't find it fun? Don't do high tier clear missions. You don't have to do them. No mission is required. Yes, the scripted trigger point zombies are silly and not fun, plus theymostly kill the stealth approach unless you heavily spec into stealth and have the sneaky armour set at a pretty high tier, only then can you can still effectively use stealth despite the poorly designed trigger point system.

#3 - Yep, the loot doesn't seem to ramp up to match the number of threats we have to deal with, and sometimes we will burn through way more ammo and other resources than you will gain. Perhaps TFP figured that our reward for doing the high tier POIs is not only more kills and thus more XP but a higher chance at loot drops from the zeds due to the increased number? Who knows... and, as above, you aren't required to do any specific POI if you don't want to do.

#4 - Yeah, that system is poorly designed and could use some tweaks to make it a bit more forgiving if we accidentally stray a meter too far from the POI. Shouldn't be an instant fail and the red barrier ought to show up a lot sooner than it does. I biked through one recently and had no chance to stop in time, it showed up basically as I was a half second from passing through it. Due to fatigue I had forgotten it wasn't just a "clear" mission but a "clear and fetch" mission - my bad of course but should I have failed the mission just because I went a few meters too far especially after fully clearing the POI? I say no.

In the wasteland, for example, dozens of other zombies are usually surrounding the POI and could come wandering in. So it makes no sense for it to be 100% completion.

[Submarine]

Originally posted by Pain Weasel:

#2 - Honestly I'd like it if we got credit for the amounts we did clear even if we didn't complete the entire quest.

Maybe have 4 checkpoints in those large POIs and you get some kind of reward for each with a bonus for completing all 4. If you don't get a 100% completion but still managed to clear 3 of the 4 checkpoints you could get something. Less than full quest completion credit but still not 0, smaller reward, whatever.

It would certainly be better than just wasting a few hours and getting nothing. Of course quests would need a big overhaul to make something like that work but they need one anyway imo.

Meh, just tossing out ideas.

I think it would be pretty simple. If you complete 1/2 objectives, you get 50% of the reward. That's the most simple and easy coding they could do. I think the game already keeps track of how many zombies you kill in each POI, so the percentage completion of that would be very straight forward too. For example, if you kill 50% of the zombies and pick up the supplies, you'd get a 75% reward.

[Macdallan]

Originally posted by Cyrus:

In the wasteland, for example, dozens of other zombies are usually surrounding the POI and could come wandering in. So it makes no sense for it to be 100% completion.

It makes perfect sense for it to be 100% completion because you're being hired to clear the POI of all the zombies, not most of the zombies or some of the zombies of whatever percentage you feel like you want to clear. Again - you don't have to take the mission if you don't want to but if you take a clear mission you have to clear the POI.

Yes, some zeds might wander in and to be fair those should also count toward the POI being cleared or not... but they don't. You only have to kill the POI spawns but that's because the system isn't robust enough to count any wandering zeds.

Originally posted by Cyrus:

I think it would be pretty simple. If you complete 1/2 objectives, you get 50% of the reward. That's the most simple and easy coding they could do. I think the game already keeps track of how many zombies you kill in each POI, so the percentage completion of that would be very straight forward too. For example, if you kill 50% of the zombies and pick up the supplies, you'd get a 75% reward.

Goodness no. You either finish the job or you fail the job. Game holds hands and spoon feeds players enough already, we don't need missions to give us rewards for whatever we felt like doing at the time...

[Submarine]

Originally posted by william_es:

I've never seen that happen. ever.

Agreed, the loot sort of plateaus at a certain point. Past level 4 POI's it's sort of a waste of time. What you get for the time investment doesn't seem worth it. Now if the insanely high tier missions dropped things like quality 6 level solar panels (value of something like 64000+) that would be a gamechanger.

If you step outside the boundary, the mission marker used to start pulsing as a warning.

So the devs made de-quality of life changes? Very high value items and the tier 7 schematics would be great. The "legendary" tier 6 gear doesn't really feel that legendary to me, so tier 7 could require something like 20 legendary parts. I'm on week 4, I already have 50 legendary parts.

[Trooper Bri]

Never heard of that fetch bug. Not in 1000's of hours. Verify your files, or do a complete uninstall, making sure to delete the lingering 7D2D folders.

Shotgun Messiah factory was probably why I used to also stop at the T4 quests. Mostly due to how long it took. There's other T5 POIs you can clear out quicker.
Now that I'm back to the game, and playing it differently, I'm taking quests in all T5's, just to see all the changes that were made. And Shotgun Messiah still is the worst. Zombos falling down into the factory sucked. It's like herding cats.

At the end of the day, if you fail it by boundary the loot is still there. Go get it. Now that trader rewards are nerfed the only thing you missed out on was a Blueberry Pie, or a bandage.

[Macdallan]

Originally posted by Trooper Bri:

At the end of the day, if you fail it by boundary the loot is still there. Go get it. Now that trader rewards are nerfed the only thing you missed out on was a Blueberry Pie, or a bandage.

But.. but... I like blueberry pie.

You're right. They were seriously nerfed, it's pretty silly to finish a tier 5 or 6 POI mission and get a handful of bottom tier junk as possible rewards. The end of POI treasure trove is much better than anything you get from the mission completion rewards even though they give you cash and XP on top of a choice between a few items.

[Submarine]

Originally posted by Macdallan:

Originally posted by Trooper Bri:

At the end of the day, if you fail it by boundary the loot is still there. Go get it. Now that trader rewards are nerfed the only thing you missed out on was a Blueberry Pie, or a bandage.

But.. but... I like blueberry pie.

You're right. They were seriously nerfed, it's pretty silly to finish a tier 5 or 6 POI mission and get a handful of bottom tier junk as possible rewards. The end of POI treasure trove is much better than anything you get from the mission completion rewards even though they give you cash and XP on top of a choice between a few items.

I took 1 point in The Daring Adventurer on day 1 and I've got a bundle of books about 50% of the time. The other rewards have mostly been ammo or small amounts of resources like 100 gunpowder. Sometimes I got 5,000 fuel as a reward option. The reward options seemed to be worse when I did tier 4+ missions TBH...

[Macdallan]

Originally posted by Cyrus:

Originally posted by Macdallan:

But.. but... I like blueberry pie.

You're right. They were seriously nerfed, it's pretty silly to finish a tier 5 or 6 POI mission and get a handful of bottom tier junk as possible rewards. The end of POI treasure trove is much better than anything you get from the mission completion rewards even though they give you cash and XP on top of a choice between a few items.

I took 1 point in The Daring Adventurer on day 1 and I've got a bundle of books about 50% of the time. The other rewards have mostly been ammo or small amounts of resources like 100 gunpowder. Sometimes I got 5,000 fuel as a reward option. The reward options seemed to be worse when I did tier 4+ missions TBH...

Yep. Sometimes the rewards are fairly good but it seems like more often than not when doing higher tier missions you'll get nothing but a bunch of junk items to choose from. A few grilled meat, a blueberry pie, or a small amount of a resource you don't need and can easily acquire like coal or cobblestone seem to come up more often than they should for higher level missions. I don't think we always need amazing rewards but if I do a tier 3 mission I probably shouldn't be offered a couple pieces of grilled meat or some cobblestone rocks as a reward option...

[Trooper Bri]

Originally posted by Macdallan:

But.. but... I like blueberry pie.

You're right. They were seriously nerfed, it's pretty silly to finish a tier 5 or 6 POI mission and get a handful of bottom tier junk as possible rewards. The end of POI treasure trove is much better than anything you get from the mission completion rewards even though they give you cash and XP on top of a choice between a few items.

Some of these city T5 POIs I don't get quests for, so you wind up crawling through one just to eat up a day, smash, and be a loot goblin.
Even more fun when you don't have red dots as a babysitter, and no worries of a random vulture you never triggered, or the Yellow Dot of Doom™. Which I've only gotten once.

It sucked. No Blueberry Pie...

[Macdallan]

Originally posted by Trooper Bri:

Originally posted by Macdallan:

But.. but... I like blueberry pie.

You're right. They were seriously nerfed, it's pretty silly to finish a tier 5 or 6 POI mission and get a handful of bottom tier junk as possible rewards. The end of POI treasure trove is much better than anything you get from the mission completion rewards even though they give you cash and XP on top of a choice between a few items.

Some of these city T5 POIs I don't get quests for, so you wind up crawling through one just to eat up a day, smash, and be a loot goblin.
Even more fun when you don't have red dots as a babysitter, and no worries of a random vulture you never triggered, or the Yellow Dot of Doom™. Which I've only gotten once.

It sucked. No Blueberry Pie...

Absolutely, and not travelling back and forth to turn in and pick up missions saves a bit of time that you can spend looting.

[Trooper Bri]

Originally posted by Macdallan:

Absolutely, and not travelling back and forth to turn in and pick up missions saves a bit of time that you can spend looting. :prospectorthumb:

I don't want to drag this off-topic, but the first quest in the game for Rekt is why you should NEVER do quests if you're new and trying to survive the first day or two. It's like he's trying to kill you.

Here's a T1 stone shovel, go walk 400 meters or so to dig up 1 murky water and a moldy sandwich <--- spoiler alert. Walk 400 meters back and He'll spit into your hand for a reward. Keep the shovel, and good luck [expletive].

[Razorfish]

Originally posted by Cyrus:

I was at the shotgun messiah factory for a fetch / clear mission and the quest failed when I was all the way at the top of the POI. The courier satchel was there at the top and the quest failed when I looted it. The courier satchel was EMPTY and the quest failed... What a really great game. I probably would've had to spend another 30 minutes trying to find the rest of the zombies to complete the clear portion anyways.

HERE'S WHAT TO DO TO FIX THE GAME, NOT-FUN PIMPS:

#1: Fix the bug that makes the White River Supplies disappear when looting courier satchels...

#2: Make ALL CLEAR MISSIONS only required you to kill 75% of the zombies or make the location indicators of the zombies show up WAAAAAY sooner. It's seriously incredibly stupid that you've killed hundred of zombies at a POI, but you need to get down to the last 2-3 of them for the location indicators of the remaining zombies to show up. Zombies get ragdolled / jump off tall buildings and they fxing disappear... OR the really dumb scripted zombies don't trigger and are hidden behind a wall. Running around a huge labyrinth looking for the remaining zombies is NOT FUN.

Obviously this makes stealth totally useless since you WANT the stupid scripted / hidden zombies to come after you so you can actually complete a clear mission. If you implement features like stealth, you need to be smart with the game design and not make it totally useless.

#3: High skull POI's have drastically more enemies, but not drastically more loot. What's the point of doing them if you only get slightly more loot, but have to fight way more and tougher enemies??? And once you get to a really high loot stage, it seems particularly pointless. You should be able to get improved versions of guns / armor in the highest loot stages. Make a tier 7 version (5 mods slots and better stats) of guns / armor that can only be looted.

#4: Change how 'stay in the area' works for ALL missions. There's a barely visible red boundary line in a mission area that you can easily cross and fail a mission. This is just poor game design. Make the boundary line more visible and give players 10 seconds to return to the mission area if they leave.

#5: Add ALT looking, so you can look around yourself while continuing to move in the same direction.

Yep.. sorry , I was there just before you....
popped in to see your mom on the way down...