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Skills and Professions in build 31


Zorak

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Hello

 

I am probably as exited as you are about upcoming build 31, but a have a few concerns about Professions and skills at current state. Right now as we can lvl up all skills without much problem its not a big deal, but if you have to choose only one 2 or 3 professions, some of them might be way better than others. There already was a nice drama about carpentry and rain barrels but I think that’s not the only problem.

The question is how many of you would choose maintenance or cooking over a carpentry or  farming over foraging or fishing. You can balance that by increasing cost of “cool skills” or we can shake thing up a bit and make all professions and skills really interesting and instead of being “nice to have” turning them into “great to have”. Having a lot of professions is a great thing only if the choices are hard and all of them are useful.

Here is my opinion on some of the skills and suggestions how we can make them more interesting/valuable

Carpentry – not much to say about the first one, IMO it’s the most interesting skill, rain barrels building walls and furniture’s, repairing items. After many hours in multiplayer a high level carpenter is the biggest asset for a group.

 

Cooking – apart from using rotten food at level 4+ I don’t see cooking worth picking Chef Profession. My suggestion would be making food conservation only available with cooking levels. Make jars lids etc much more common (right now, we all can preserve food in jars but there are so uncommon that it’s a lot easier to get a new fresh food. Also make the well feed buff bigger deal (http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/12299-food-quality/)

 

Farming – right now I don’t have much problem with farming at level 0. Having more info about plants is nice but not necessary. Farming is the longest way of getting food. I was thinking about making plants disease much more common and level in farming would help us to recognize problem much faster and “suggest us” how to deal with it. Fertilizer, composts and “take care action”, the active ways to maintain your plants and by doing so we will get more and bigger veggies.

 

Fishing – I like the way it is – you get more and bigger fishes and its lowering change or loosing fishing equipment. Perhaps the more active way of fishing like the World of Warcraft system when you bobber will go down and you have to click it at that time to catch the fish.

 

First Aid – TBH I never leveled it more than 1 level and I still was able to treat all kids of injuries without any problems. Less pain and less disinfectant usage is cool but again not that good to choose it over carpentry or fishing. I was thinking about introducing minor illness/sickness like flu, food poisoning, headache etc. The wont kill you but will make your life much harder (debuff system like lowered accuracy with headache etc). Then we add some new medicines each will be good vs differed kind of that illness and you can overdose them. The person without first aid will get only sick moodle without any details, so only high level doctor will be able to recognize what type of illness you have and what pills to take to get rid of it. Blood transfusion, making medicines from herbs etc.

 

Foraging – I like the skill, the things I would change are finding chipped stone and stone requires some levels in foraging so you have to take that skill in order to craft axes and hammers. Add herbs and spices that you can find. Doctor can make some meds from herbs not as good as pills but still better than nothing, and spices are to boost cooking meals.

 

Maintenance – You can repair items using your maintenance skill instead of carpentry. You have bigger % chance for repair and you will repair “more” with each skill apart from what maintenance currently offers. At higher levels add option to improve weapons increasing its damage and/or durability. You can trade those improved weapons to other players and repair their gear.

 

Guard – lower the endurance cost for pushing back zombies.

 

 

Its all from my point of view, I want to hear your opinion about how the new build will affect your profession and skill choices. What your planning to pick and why that instead of other possibilities.

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Food:

I think to take only one "food gaining"-skill would be wise than two or more. It will depend on your base location: At the river (or lake) it will be usefull to take fishing, in the woods foraging/hunting/trapping, in the open field farming. Fishing has a downside because you'll need cooking (fresh uncooking meat), but I think even with a mere multipicator (without books) of 0,33 you can maybe reach the first four stages (of ten). In RL I'm also no master chief and managed not to die from my cooking skills :) . Ingame you just have to watch your exp when cook something and it won't burn. Maybe there will be in the future cooking restrictions for food (with stage 1 you can barely make a sandwitch and with stage 3 you can make a 5 minutes soup)

 

You can also live from nonperishable food (if you settle down in the city) and if you are a nomad than take forageing.

 

Weapons:

Specializing at one melee weapon skill. Most prefer clubs, some knifes. Choose one and stick with it. This is one of where I'll spend points to reach the 1 multiplicator. There are enough zombies to push your skills. Markmanship is interesting because of the limitaion of ammo I would prefer a higher multiplicator to reach a higher skill with less shooting. Melee weapons can be repaired but to craft ammo is impossible. Reloading... not if you using a handgun.

 

Physical:

I think here are the skillpoints for good use. Sprinting is a good one. Running/sneaking from a horde is better to fight it.

 

Crafting:

Capentry with multiplicator 1 would be good if you aim for the rainbarrels and other stuff (there are books to push the multiplicator). If you want build castles then spend more points into capentry :) .

First aid is... I don't know. Maybe on multiplayer useful, if you got shot. If you got bitten by a zomie and you are zombified the first aid won't help you. It's wise not to get scratched, bitten or hurt in this game, so its hard to train this skill: so either spend many points in this skill or none.

 

Edit: I want the new proffession/trait update! :D

Edited by Sieben
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Cooking – apart from using rotten food at level 4+ I don’t see cooking worth picking Chef Profession. My suggestion would be making food conservation only available with cooking levels. Make jars lids etc much more common (right now, we all can preserve food in jars but there are so uncommon that it’s a lot easier to get a new fresh food. Also make the well feed buff bigger deal (http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/12299-food-quality/)

I like the suggestion about food preservation. Make it a cooking-skill dependent thing and then, please, raise the drops of jars and lids. It has been discussed in an other thread. Drops are too low for these items.

If it would require 7 points in cooking (or so), it wouldn't become too overpowered, i think.

 

In my current playthrough, I have a large stockpile of nearly everything, except these items.

I've lootet half of muldraugh in about one and a half month and found 1 jar in a kitchen and 1 lid at the mccoy logging corp.

 

Farming – right now I don’t have much problem with farming at level 0. Having more info about plants is nice but not necessary. Farming is the longest way of getting food. I was thinking about making plants disease much more common and level in farming would help us to recognize problem much faster and “suggest us” how to deal with it. Fertilizer, composts and “take care action”, the active ways to maintain your plants and by doing so we will get more and bigger veggies.

I have to agree. Farming needs further revision. It's a bit too easy at the moment.

Well, we have to wait for the current class and trait revamp, but i guess even then: there should be more action needed to get food out of it. More not in a "more frequent" way but, as suggested, maybe more of fighting diseases here and there.

But I don't know if that would add any more fun to farming... :???:

 

What came to my mind lately (but it's not really fleshed out or completely thought trough):

Cabbages are harvestable a lot sooner than other vegetables, so maybe they should yield a lower amount (like 2-4). It would fit a bit better to the short time span they need.

 

As a lone survivor, I'm not able to eat/cook 8 cabbages before they get spoiled, anyway.

 

But thats my opinion and maybe not really completely thought through...

 

(I repeat myself a lot, am I? ^^)

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Aim: Would be nice to see this more useful then just guns, say having the ability to throw things to make a distraction *would give you a reason to also carry around worthless items with no purpose*  Be nice if they added in bows and arrows into the game as well so someone with points into hunting would have a quiet way of killing deer or something without making every zombie in a 2 mile radius come knocking at the door.

Cooking: instead of just jarring as food preservation add in root cellars *would require a carpenter to make but a cook to maintain / use*, the ability to smoke meat and fish, the ability to take meat and turn it into jerky, drying out veggies to use them later *I know I personally have a entire shelf of dried corn, peas, etc to just cook with*, etc so forth so that it's actually worth having the skill at a at least 1x multiplier. Maybe also make it that you only know when food goes bad depending on your cooking level as well : P
 

Foraging: making it so the higher levels you have of this the better your make shift weapons are.  ATM in game I've never had a reason to use a spear or a stone axe or hammer.  And honestly the few times I have, I've always felt like they break way to fast and it's just faster to go find a good axe somewhere else and less of a headache, especially the spear.  You're better off punching a zombie to death then use that thing. 

 

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It very much depends how exactly they are going to manage the whole transferance to 10 skill levels instead of 5.

 

Either way, with there being a lot more character customisation it will offer more opportunity to test different combinations of traits and proffesions so that you can personaly establish which ones are important to you and which ones arnt.

 

Remember..  Your not always looking for "The perfect build"  because... well, the perfect build just makes the game easier, right?  and in recent months I for one have been testing various handi-caps and negative traits so see exactly how bad they are, and to see exactly "how good at Project Zomboid" I actually am lol

 

Like for example, recently I have chosen to NOT pick 'Construction Worker' :o :o  and yea.. that 'thick skinned' makes a big difference

 

I've also tried 'High Zombies'  + Uniform...  and thats just a bit too hard for me with Extremly rare loot,  although High Zombeis + Uban Focus, is just about manageble.

 

If you find that some skills are making it a bit too easy or boring.. just dont taken them ;)

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The old system needed to be gone. Everyone pretty much used the same builds.

 

My only worry about the new system is, as it really encourages co-operative play, its going to make single player REALLY difficult until the fabled NPCs return to flesh out our worlds.

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The old system needed to be gone. Everyone pretty much used the same builds.

My only worry about the new system is, as it really encourages co-operative play, its going to make single player REALLY difficult until the fabled NPCs return to flesh out our worlds.

I have a feeling you will need more of a generalist in single player, like unemployed. Taking a specialization in Single Player will likely be hard until NPCs show up.

Looking forward to the revamp but I'd be willing to wait if we could get more skills added. I'd like to see Lockpicking. Plumbing would go great with a water revamp. Fire Control would be a good one to see with a revamp of fire.

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The old system needed to be gone. Everyone pretty much used the same builds.

 

My only worry about the new system is, as it really encourages co-operative play, its going to make single player REALLY difficult until the fabled NPCs return to flesh out our worlds.

 

Playing a carpenter doesn't mean you'll instantly die if you leave your house :) , it takes only time and training to get better in other skills. If you find a baseball bat you can sure kill around 50+ zombies until it breaks, maybe you'll need 3-4 hits for a single zombie, but you won't be defensless.

 

An allrounder survivor (or unemployment like Jatta mentioned) will maybe a better option for surviving, but I think that a survivor without any skills (all multiplicators at 0,25 like RJ corrected) won't die easily if playing correct. It'll be harder but not impossible.

 

And even with the mythological beings called npcs it's not guaranteed, that you'll find the right one with the skills to relieve your cons. Maybe the first one you'll met is an insane master marksman and pointing his gun at you ;)

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The old system needed to be gone. Everyone pretty much used the same builds.

My only worry about the new system is, as it really encourages co-operative play, its going to make single player REALLY difficult until the fabled NPCs return to flesh out our worlds.

I have a feeling you will need more of a generalist in single player, like unemployed. Taking a specialization in Single Player will likely be hard until NPCs show up.

Looking forward to the revamp but I'd be willing to wait if we could get more skills added. I'd like to see Lockpicking. Plumbing would go great with a water revamp. Fire Control would be a good one to see with a revamp of fire.

 

 

Depends what you intend to do on your playthrough though tbh. The burglar profession could probably be stacked with some interesting traits to make a rather survivable Nomad style character that doesn't really rely on Farming, Cooking, Carpentry as he just moves from one spot to the next.

 

I often wonder how long one could survive on non-perishable foods if one were able to gather every piece of it from the entire map.

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I'm pretty concern with the new update because for those that leveled up their carpentry, cooking and farming to level 4, do we have to start all over again after we update our game?

 

This is my first play through and I would hate it if I have to restart all over again.

 

The new change look nice. I just hope I don't have to deal with high chance of getting mildew or those devil thingy on my plants.

 

On the current build, I always create 2 plants of the same kind to save water and one of them always get disease, particularly carrot and its not easy finding fresh milk to make a cure.

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I'm pretty concern with the new update because for those that leveled up their carpentry, cooking and farming to level 4, do we have to start all over again after we update our game?

 

This is my first play through and I would hate it if I have to restart all over again.

 

The new change look nice. I just hope I don't have to deal with high chance of getting mildew or those devil thingy on my plants.

 

On the current build, I always create 2 plants of the same kind to save water and one of them always get disease, particularly carrot and its not easy finding fresh milk to make a cure.

Your structures and items will stay where they were when you died after you do. Your skills reset as always. Remember this is a game of how you died. You're new and you're going to die. A lot. That's the spirit of the game.

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In short, as discussed in the carpentry debate, we have numerous ways to balance the system. It'll likely stay in IWBUMS for a good while as we see how character builds tend to go and balance to make them as diverse as possible.

Re cooking / crafting etc, we have plans for a major crafting / books / skills overhaul post 31 that ties into the direction we're going with traits / professions. We have a plan and it very much includes a great deal of new recipes and survival techniques tied into new skills and more focus on profession/trait/book recipe acquisition.

And if a few professions get picked rarely outside MultiPlayer / prior to NPCs, as long as SP still have a ton of choice, I don't see this as a problem personally. There is still a significant gain in character customization in 31 over 30.

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Re cooking / crafting etc, we have plans for a major crafting / books / skills overhaul post 31 that ties into the direction we're going with traits / professions. We have a plan and it very much includes a great deal of new recipes and survival techniques tied into new skills and more focus on profession/trait/book recipe acquisition.

 

Sounds like the numerous bugs/issues with cooking are gonna finally be fixed then :D

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It's my personal belief that now we have professions / traits modifying the XP gain speeds, XP multiplying books should be a thing of the past and books should be exclusively recipe acquisition based. I know others in the team disagree and think they still have a place, but that's what I'd like to see. I think it'd make the books feel more special and unique, and have quite a significantly unique effect on the game, instead of just an XP boost. Also would get rid of the issue on MP of people having to stand still reading for 20 minutes.

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It's my personal belief that now we have professions / traits modifying the XP gain speeds, XP multiplying books should be a thing of the past and books should be exclusively recipe acquisition based. I know others in the team disagree and think they still have a place, but that's what I'd like to see. I think it'd make the books feel more special and unique, and have quite a significantly unique effect on the game, instead of just an XP boost. Also would get rid of the issue on MP of people having to stand still reading for 20 minutes.

Why not both? I mean we already have a functioning system as is. If you add the recipe books, you can cut back on the numbers of the xp books. This way it creates variety in both gameplay and actual content. And no one feels like they're forced to grind too much etc. There are after all books that cover general fields and more specific ones.

 

EDIT: for example, I'm reading a book on audio engineering in general and I have a bunch of tech books that explain different equipments, how they work and how to work with them. Both offer totally different knowledge on basically the same subject.

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It's my personal belief that now we have professions / traits modifying the XP gain speeds, XP multiplying books should be a thing of the past and books should be exclusively recipe acquisition based. I know others in the team disagree and think they still have a place, but that's what I'd like to see. I think it'd make the books feel more special and unique, and have quite a significantly unique effect on the game, instead of just an XP boost. Also would get rid of the issue on MP of people having to stand still reading for 20 minutes.

 

That actually has a LOT of potential, even for skills that you might not normally think about being "recipe" based. For example, foraging books could allow you to loot specific items that could have any number of effects from shortening colds to relieving small amounts of exhaustion. I'm fine with skill books going away (as long as professions will let you get an equivalent boost). Will make for interesting single player games as well as making multi-player more team-based and less of a "shoot every survivor you see".

 

 Fire Control would be a good one to see with a revamp of fire.

 

 

Its a known fact that the citizens of Knox County have no experience with fire. There's not even a single fire station in the town!

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It's my personal belief that now we have professions / traits modifying the XP gain speeds, XP multiplying books should be a thing of the past and books should be exclusively recipe acquisition based. I know others in the team disagree and think they still have a place, but that's what I'd like to see. I think it'd make the books feel more special and unique, and have quite a significantly unique effect on the game, instead of just an XP boost. Also would get rid of the issue on MP of people having to stand still reading for 20 minutes.

Why not both? I mean we already have a functioning system as is. If you add the recipe books, you can cut back on the numbers of the xp books. This way it creates variety in both gameplay and actual content. And no one feels like they're forced to grind too much etc. There are after all books that cover general fields and more specific ones.

Yeah I should clarify - the others position IS to have both not to not have recipe books. just saying personally I'd be in favour if ditching XP multiplying books completely and rebalancing it all around professions / skills.

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Yeah I should clarify - the others position IS to have both not to not have recipe books. just saying personally I'd be in favour if ditching XP multiplying books completely and rebalancing it all around professions / skills.

 

 

There's also the problem of some skills not having profession books (foraging, first aid, any of the physical/firearm skills). Now that I think about it.......the fact that some professions start with bonuses in maintenance/guard/blunt/blade/firearms means they get an XP multiplier while everyone else is getting penalized? If so, that makes professions/traits with access to them EXTREMELY powerful. Unless of course those skills remain like they are with no multipliers ever applied to them.

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Yeah I should clarify - the others position IS to have both not to not have recipe books. just saying personally I'd be in favour if ditching XP multiplying books completely and rebalancing it all around professions / skills.

 

 

There's also the problem of some skills not having profession books (foraging, first aid, any of the physical/firearm skills). Now that I think about it.......the fact that some professions start with bonuses in maintenance/guard/blunt/blade/firearms means they get an XP multiplier while everyone else is getting penalized? If so, that makes professions/traits with access to them EXTREMELY powerful. Unless of course those skills remain like they are with no multipliers ever applied to them.

 

 

That why each profession has its own cost, some comes with bonus points to spend, some comes penalties to counter-balance with negative traits !

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It's my personal belief that now we have professions / traits modifying the XP gain speeds, XP multiplying books should be a thing of the past and books should be exclusively recipe acquisition based. I know others in the team disagree and think they still have a place, but that's what I'd like to see. I think it'd make the books feel more special and unique, and have quite a significantly unique effect on the game, instead of just an XP boost. Also would get rid of the issue on MP of people having to stand still reading for 20 minutes.

Can I just say this idea is fucking brilliant? Not only does this do all of the things you mention, but it also provides an amazing template for modding in new crafting recipes.

This is genius. I am speechless.

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Yeah I should clarify - the others position IS to have both not to not have recipe books. just saying personally I'd be in favour if ditching XP multiplying books completely and rebalancing it all around professions / skills.

Ah, well it comes to opinions and implementation then. :) Still, great things coming either way!

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It's my personal belief that now we have professions / traits modifying the XP gain speeds, XP multiplying books should be a thing of the past and books should be exclusively recipe acquisition based. I know others in the team disagree and think they still have a place, but that's what I'd like to see. I think it'd make the books feel more special and unique, and have quite a significantly unique effect on the game, instead of just an XP boost. Also would get rid of the issue on MP of people having to stand still reading for 20 minutes.

Can I just say this idea is fucking brilliant? Not only does this do all of the things you mention, but it also provides an amazing template for modding in new crafting recipes.

This is genius. I am speechless.

We've been super inspired by C:DDA lately, and it made us kind of realize how much further we could go with the crafting and character creation in our game, it kind of dwarfs our game by comparison in that regard so we're not going to claim any genius there :D but you're right! Pretty sure recipe skill books have been suggested on the forums by others before too and IIRC Ringo mentioned recipe books a long time ago and ofc RJ's likely had a ton of things he's wanted to do on crafting for a long time too. But we've got some other ideas we've been talking inside the team about for a while related to all this. :)

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