PSA for Devs - Survival Techniques Balance Changes from PUP

Hello everyone. I was working on a Survival Techniques video the past 2 weeks or so, and I was able to publish it today. Coincidentally, the patch notes from the PUP March 2022 proposed significant changes to not only hunting, but also Survival Techniques. For those of you who don’t know, here’s the section I’m referring to:

Economy

  • Villager hunted meat carry capacity increased from 10 to 25.
  • Survival Techniques hunted meat carry capacity bonus removed.
  • Survival Techniques hunted meat harvest rate increased from 10% to 15%.
  • Survival Techniques research time reduced from 75 to 45 seconds.

Now, I’m not opposed to the overall villager hunted meat carry capacity changed overall, as I have to test it out thoroughly first before I can have an opinion on it. However, I can tell you that Survival Techniques will become a much, much weaker technology that will be rarely picked up unless there’s a custom map filled with boars and deer. It won’t work on any other map with the typical 1 boar and 1 or 2 deer camps per player. Survival Techniques’ value came mostly from the minimized walk time caused by the higher carry capacity. Hence, I’d rather have the gather rate at the original 10% and reduce the bonus carry capacity from 25 down to 5 or 10 or something along those lines and balance the tech around that. This change pushes Survival Techniques to a niche.

For those interested, here’s the analysis video on Survival Techniques in its current state. I think the balance of this tech is surprisingly good compared to some of the other eco techs in the game. Happy to discuss with anyone who ran tests on the new changes (as I haven’t) and proves me wrong.

TLDR: Please reconsider the changes for Survival Techniques, as it will make the tech otherwise useless in most scenarios if implemented. If this is the approach you’d still like to take, then you have to adjust the resource cost of the technology, as research time alone is not enough. Cheers!

4 Likes

This is the first thing I thought of when I saw that change! A 10% gather rate boost that only affects hunts, at that cost, is going to be hard to find a use for.

The cost of the economic upgrades in general seems very mysterious as it currently stands.

Laughs in Imperial Age.

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For sure! If devs really want to buff it, they should decrease its cost. Modification on the chase logic of boars is also important.