As part of the game balancing we are reviewing the scavenging again but would like to hear your thoughts before doing so. Scavenging is a major source of valuable items and weapons if you do it systematically.

Thus it’s also a major reason for the imbalance for higher level players (saving up too much money from the looting) and even makes some generic locations more attractive than the “points of interest” (green dots on the map).

So it’s time for an update but before doing so we would like some comments on the planned initiative.

1. Most generic locations currently have 10 scavenging containers.  We plan on changing this to varying from 4-8 scavenging containers
   
2. Less probability of finding high value items (finding high grade weapons such as a M16 in a military vehicle currently have the odds 1/1000 – this will be reduced to 1/10000)
   
3. Lower the probability of finding items overall (the current chance of actually finding something is about 50-80% and will be lowered to about 30%).
   
4. More standard and less unusual containers. In other words the cars will be more frequent and the APC and SWAT cars less frequent.
   
5. New containers will be added including: a fire engine, burned out vehicle, a hearse, a tank, a chopper, a limo among few others.
6. Containers matching locations. No more trucks in backyards etc.
7. We will be adding new items including suitable junk for barricades to support the "build your clan safehouse" concept. Having more items to choose from will lower the chance of the more valuable items additionally.

Posted By Mike Westen on 09-08-2010 01:52 AM
also, a couple of days ago i scav'ed a pile of left behind stuff and found junk suitable for barricading, didnt pick it up because its useless right now, less useless crap please?

The devs are allowing you to stock up on these Barricade Junk so that you can create your own safehouses when the update rolls over.

Posted By admin on 04-08-2010 11:13 AM

Thus it’s also a major reason for the imbalance for higher level players (saving up too much money from the looting)

Latest status on the scavenging update:
http://blog.zombiepandemic.com/Blog...nline.aspx

Posted By JJBenson on 15-08-2010 03:11 AM
I Will Put My Input I Say If You Search A hummer You Should Have A 1/3000 Chance Of Finding A Military Service Weapon.
That is All.

Posted By Rhys on 16-08-2010 12:10 PM
I really don't know.
It is my personal belief that nerfing the scavenging system so much makes it obsolete. I don't see the point in scavenging if you have only a 1 in 3 chance of finding a piece of random crap, let alone something useable.
I can see the 1/10000 loot chance becoming rapidly very frustrating and detrimental to the general game atmosphere. As I said, I think scavenging is useless with such astronomically low chances of finding anything of use, and I'm sure alot of people will discontinue it's use alltogether.

Posted By Rhys on 16-08-2010 12:10 PM
I agree with Fizco. I've never been able to use scavenging as an adaqeute source of money, and have almost always relied exclusively on killing zombies. I agree that there is an imbalance but I don't think filing away at scavenging in this way will help.
My suggestion, as mentioned before by JJbenson, is to keep the odds of finding a weapon / useful item as they currently are, but vary the containers in which they are found. For example, you will have a much higher chance of finding a military weapon in a tank or APC, whereas you are more likely to find stim packs in ambulances or food in trucks. Similarly, junk (bowling balls, traffic cones, etc) could be found in containers such as dumpsters, cars, etc.
The solution then is simply to make tanks and APCs, SWAT trucks, police cars and helicopters, very rare; ambulances, trucks, other such semi-useful loot spots, somewhat more common; dumpsters, cars, other mundane (aka, junk loot spots) very common.
This negates the need to universally destroy looting chances across all containers. In short, I believe the container should be the influencing variable upon the loot chance,and the containers themselves should balance this by having a rarity heirachy. The rarer (and therefore more valuable) the loot spot, such as a helicopter, the higher the chance of finding something good. The more common the loot spot, the greater the chance of finding junk.