All fitted clothing is overpowered

[KA101]

Youtoo may find the game insufficently challenging, and even have ideas to fix this that I’d rather not happen, but I think a group point & laugh is unwarranted. No need to alienate new folks, nor experienced players either.

That said, yeah, I think the current system works OK.

[EkarusRyndren]

A problem we’re more and more likely to run into in general is experienced players finding the game too easy. Let’s face it, once you know everything about the game, it becomes simple. But if you rebalance what makes it simple so that it’s difficult for the experienced players it becomes too difficult for new folks.

It’s a delicate balancing act that could make or break the game.

[infectedmochi]

One way to make the game for challenging for experienced players is to make the end game more difficult through relevant but separated gameplay mechanics (mutations, CBMs, late game monsters, late game locations, secret,…) so we can keep early game relatively newbie-friendly.
Easier said than done though.

[deadmerits]

[quote=“EkarusRyndren, post:9, topic:4011”]A problem we’re more and more likely to run into in general is experienced players finding the game too easy. Let’s face it, once you know everything about the game, it becomes simple. But if you rebalance what makes it simple so that it’s difficult for the experienced players it becomes too difficult for new folks.

It’s a delicate balancing act that could make or break the game.[/quote]

This basically sums its up as far as I’m concerned. I felt alittle weird about how much stuff I was able to carry with no encumbrance, but it makes sense when everything is fitted and put on in the proper order. A good set of fitted gear should be good, no problem with that.

[Zireael]

[quote=“infectedmochi, post:10, topic:4011”]One way to make the game for challenging for experienced players is to make the end game more difficult through relevant but separated gameplay mechanics (mutations, CBMs, late game monsters, late game locations, secret,…) so we can keep early game relatively newbie-friendly.
Easier said than done though.[/quote]

I agree completely.

[axujen]

i think you can put on too much fitted clothing, get too many pockets and extra armor with too little encumbrance loss. anyone else agree? its a bit ridiculous.

And thats why we need to be able to fit clothes after they are reinforced, its not OP enough

[Dominae]

lol just thought I’d bump this, because I found myself laughing at my survivor this morning …

This isn’t even fully equipped or kitted out, either. This is just my “I’ve been alive for a week or two” outfit she wears while fighting swarms of free meat animals as she works on her RV.

A couple more levels of Tailoring, and a couple more good drops and I’ll probably be pushing 250 volume at near zero encumbrance while unstoppably armored.

[GrizzlyAdamz]

Oi, near-zero != 4

Also, that’s a pretty counter-productive build- can you even reach the 250 volume limit without first hitting weight/items? Your clothing is taking up ~half the items, and it does seem you’re at your weight limit with 97 volume left.

Also, only one pair of boots? Are you even trying?

[KA101]

[quote=“Dominae, post:14, topic:4011”]lol just thought I’d bump this, because I found myself laughing at my survivor this morning …

This isn’t even fully equipped or kitted out, either. This is just my “I’ve been alive for a week or two” outfit she wears while fighting swarms of free meat animals as she works on her RV.

A couple more levels of Tailoring, and a couple more good drops and I’ll probably be pushing 250 volume at near zero encumbrance while unstoppably armored.[/quote]

As GrizzlyAdams, plus
0) Brian Lefler has working code to eliminate the item limit I think it’s been merged but haven’t had time to try it. 75 is no longer a hard cap.

1. Radiation badges really don’t need duplicated. Further, being disposable, there’s no point to reinforcing them. That plastic would have been better used on the safety & ballistic glasses.
2. No point to the swimming gloves with the rest of that on. You’d need hella skill or the full Fish line and good ST to swim with that much gear.
3. you need all that armor because you’re at 4 torso/leg encumbrance. You’ve got about -4 Dodge & Melee there. Not good.

[EkarusRyndren]

Just gonna say this, the MBR vests, they look strong but they’re not catch-alls. And unfitted they are very encumbering.

[FunsizeNinja123]

No more item cap?

YEEEEEEESSSSSS

[GrizzlyAdamz]

[quote=“FunsizeNinja123, post:18, topic:4011”]No more item cap?

YEEEEEEESSSSSS[/quote]
This

Also, 5 belts isn’t nearly enough.

[Dominae]

[quote=“KA101, post:16, topic:4011”]As GrizzlyAdams, plus
0) Brian Lefler has working code to eliminate the item limit I think it’s been merged but haven’t had time to try it. 75 is no longer a hard cap.

1. Radiation badges really don’t need duplicated. Further, being disposable, there’s no point to reinforcing them. That plastic would have been better used on the safety & ballistic glasses.
2. No point to the swimming gloves with the rest of that on. You’d need hella skill or the full Fish line and good ST to swim with that much gear.
3. you need all that armor because you’re at 4 torso/leg encumbrance. You’ve got about -4 Dodge & Melee there. Not good.[/quote]

My post wasn’t “look how awesome my character is”, but “look how ridiculously you can layer things” as the OP’s point was, I assume.

SHOULD we be able to wear 2 fanny packs, 4 belts, etc etc etc etc? I mean, realism be damned because this is a zombie apocalypse game … but … at a certain point its just crazy. No person can trudge around wearing that much stuff and feel “un-encumbered” can they? lol

I’ll address comments about the load-out though, I guess …

As I said, this was just my “thrown together as I ran around” armor the first few days of surviving. Some of it I put on that I don’t regularly have her wear just to show how crazy layering is. This loadout is obviously FAR from optimal, and optimal is always changing with new item additions. Again: it wasn’t a “look at me brag about something” but more a “look how ridiculously layered you can get in here” post.

0 - Yeah, I’m playing the experimentals, so no more item cap. It removes the “omg I have too much clothing on and its using up too many of my 75 items” problem that used to exist. I used to limit my layering because I’d end up hitting the 75 cap too soon, now you can just dump items into your inventory like mad without hitting a weird artificial “I can only fathom 75 individual items existing in a space around my body” limit.

1 - One rad-badge burned out, so I tacked on another. Dunno’ why I didn’t remove the first. As for reinforcing it, I reinforce everything just because “why not”? Plastic bags and bottles rain from the sky so chunks of plastic are never in short supply.

2- The swimming gloves were because they caused me no encumbrance and I hadn’t found something laying around with better armor rating. I wore 2 wetsuits for some of the first couple days on a character for the same reason really.

3 - “Moderate” torso encumbrance (~3-4) doesn’t really matter to me much after the first couple of days surviving. -4 dodge & melee don’t mean a thing when you’re healthily over those skill levels in melee and dodge. The encumbrance hit just feels like a small hurdle to get past and then its not an issue. It almost feels like an attempt to limit layering that falls flat on its face. Picking a quick weapon with decent + to hit feels like it negates the missing, and dodging isn’t too big a factor if you just maneuver your shopping cart between you and the target (its like a mobile bush!).

GrizzlyAdamz -

Weight was high in the screenshot because I just left an area I was looting, so I was bogged down with junk I saved (think it was a science lab). I dropped enough of it to get out of the red but hadn’t unloaded everything yet. Weight is an issue of course wearing all this stuff (what good is 200 empty volume if carrying more ‘stuff’ makes you over weight limit). … but, as I said, isn’t “optimal”, was just a “look at all the layers” picture.

Could you wear more than 1 boots before? I don’t remember that. Thought boots and helmets were always unstackable.

–

With a little tailoring and a couple more drops, I’m at 254 volume and 2 encumbrance in torso, the rest is 0-1. Armored enough where I could duck into a house and put a shopping cart between her and a Hulk and, despite taking some hits, lost zero hitpoints and just had to quick-sew/solder a little armor damage up.

If I want to bump up to 3 torso encumbrance I’m pushed to 314 volume and I’m still a couple encumbrance-less items short of a full set.

Weight is an issue, sure. With just basic tools and a backup firearm I only have around 30 weight to play with, that is the downside to layering heavily I guess. I haven’t looked for lighter-but-high-volume items really, or dug through the json files too much to optimize either, I’m sure theres a lot better combinations out there for someone way more anal about it than I am.

My point was, again, to agree with the OP about layering being out of control. You can layer yourself nigh invulnerable. You can layer yourself with the volume of a shopping cart (and push around the cart too!). Feels really unrealistic.

[Bonevomit]

I’m so OCD about how much clothing my character is wearing that this is never an issue for me.

I don’t know how Dominae doesn’t scratch his eyes out having to see that mess constantly.

Though in my opinion a good dodge skill removes most of the need for armor. The most encumbering thing I ever have on me is a duffel bag if I’m going looting. All armor is really good for is storage and warmth for me.

[Hyena_Grin]

It used to be that you could stack a lot more. You used to be able to get into the negatives if you wore multiple fitted clothing. Now it just kinda counteracts a point here and there and stacking multiple fitted clothing doesn’t result in a net negative.

So no, I think it’s fine. Actually I think it models clothing and movement pretty well. The really protective stuff is really encumbering no matter what you do with it. So it balances out well.

When stamina gets in I’d like to see stamina drain implemented in the place of (or complimenting the reduction of) hard skill/movement penalties.

[Binky]

Yeah this is pretty ridiculous really, and that screenshot captures it. I think stacking fitted clothing should cause a negative (it fits you, not fits you over armour), and that it doesn’t counteract anything. If this is ‘too hard for the new players’ just have clothing be better, not just be so counter-intuitive that you need to stack stuff.

I think it’d make much more sense however (especially for new players who everyone is constantly going on about) and be simpler if everything you put on caused at least one or more encumbrance, but that the encumbrance levels were much higher (so you’d need four points of encumbrance to be the equivalent of encumbrance 1 with the current system). This would be a much, much simpler system for new players to understand.

[Hyena_Grin]

Ehhh. I like it the way it is.

Just because it’s a long list doesn’t mean it’s ridiculous. Most of that list is stuff that wouldn’t actually encumber you that much. It’s not hard to wear multiple belts, for example. It’s not like he’s layering eight shirts and five pairs of pants.

I don’t think it’s unintuitive, either. You get immediate feedback as you layer clothing and it’s obvious on the face of it that fitted clothing encumbers less than unfitted clothing.

Also I would never encumber my torso and legs to 4. The best defense is always the best possible armor value for the best possible dodge value.

[Brian_Lefler]

5 vests counting the chest rigs. It’s also not the wearing of 5 belts so much as benefiting from it volumewise. Cata assumes all clothing is worn in a useful fashion.

I suspect the two big flaws here are that chest encumbrance gets halved (which gets absurd when taken to extremes) and that there was an explosion of no-location items that counter intuitively stack.

It seems like those could both be fixed by making the half encumbrance gravy train stop at some point, and replacing no location items with some kind of limited exception instead unlimited (I.e., the first two waist items skip encumbrance, but penalize torsonormally after that).

[GrizzlyAdamz]

Ya run the risk of making the mechanics opaque & mystifying though.

[Brian_Lefler]

Yeah, hard to express it.

Possible proposal: double encumbrance so people can see the halves being currently added due to fitted 0 encumbrance clothes. Don’t halve chest but make penalties very low at first so you can effectively wear more. For no slot items instead have a description message like “You can wear this on your back. Two items there wouldn’t encumber you at all.”