Loving A20 except the way loot is COMPLETELY BROKEN

[nostalginator]

I'm almost convinced this game has a mechanic where it will choose one uncraftable item to never give to you under any circumstances.

Back in A19, I had a game in which I could not loot or buy a single pumpkin seed, at all, for any reason-- and I had discovered all the traders on the Navezgane map. Eventually I progressed to the point that I didn't need the pumpkin cheesecake discount buff at the trader. That this happened made me so resentful I deleted that save and started over.

 

Well, now it's beakers. I've found nine traders over 26 days and visited most of them at least twice. I'm level 50,  just started Tier IV quests and am at loot stage 58 in the pine forest. I actually found a chemistry station for sale, and I could've bought it but I decided not to because that would have been most of my cash, and also because I was convinced that as soon as the traders' inventories updated a beaker would become available (it didn't).  I already had the five acid (and then some) necessary to get this done.

 

I've already found an auger and a drone, and have crafted a level 5 chainsaw-- and I'm considering walking away from this whole thing.  Back in A19 you could accumulate a surfeit of beakers without even trying. Now? I've looted pile after pile after pile of medical supplies and have yet to see a beaker.  But by my first Blood Moon, I had acquired 62 fishing weights, after which I stopped counting.

I'm starting to become annoyed.  I cannot think of a legitimate reason why loot works like this now.

[Krougal]

It's very hit or miss. I restarted fresh for A20 release and while it has been a little better (It's actually been pretty good to me so far, although just did first horde). I've got 2 beakers. A20 dev I don't think I had any at level 50, day 36 and looting like mad, thankfully I got a chem bench as a reward. 

 

One thing that annoys the @%$# out of me is that I feel like if I find 1 of something, I will find 10. So I get the same books and recipes over and over. I was selling t6 pipe weapons like they were going out of style but I couldn't find really any decent normal weapons or bows. Was still using the prim (t6 at least, again tons of them). I had t3/4 AKs and 1 TAR from quests, but it just didn't make sense to swap out the t6 pipe MG for either of them because 4 mods seems to trump better weapon of lower tier. Shotguns and pistols pretty much non-existant. I think I found 1 each, low tier. T6 Stun batons I was selling I get so many. Stacks and stacks of the same @%$#ty books; tech nerd, brawling and spear FFS, none of which I use - and still couldn't even complete those collections.

[Mounty]

I caved and bought the chemistry station, I had plenty of beakers but only one acid. I spent an in game week searching POI's and a half dozen traders with out finding even one more bottle.

 

Maybe they need a quest that lets us negotiate the reward before hand, we can choose anything but what we choose determines the difficulty level of the quest.

[Krougal]

8 hours ago, Mounty said:

I caved and bought the chemistry station, I had plenty of beakers but only one acid. I spent an in game week searching POI's and a half dozen traders with out finding even one more bottle.

 

Maybe they need a quest that lets us negotiate the reward before hand, we can choose anything but what we choose determines the difficulty level of the quest.

There are worse things you could spend your Dukes on for sure. 5 acid is tires for a motorcycle and a gyrocopter, and there is certainly not an excess of acid.

 

That would be pretty awesome if they could pull it off.

[meganoth]

Or you could jiust accept that the game throws random difficulties at you. Not having a chem station is severe blow to your ammo production, but you can buy ammo and blackpowder in adequate quantities, you can manage and that will be a unique playthrough.

 

But not getting the cheesecake buff leading to a rage quit?? There are worse things that can happen.

 

[ChickenWings]

9 hours ago, Krougal said:

 

One thing that annoys the @%$# out of me is that I feel like if I find 1 of something, I will find 10. So I get the same books and recipes over and over.

 

lol I see this happens to other people besides me, get all happy to find a bookcase and open it to find a repeat, yay!

[Rince]

Well done gang! We caught the elusive beaker!! But let's gonna see who is really under the mask, shall we?

 

*dramatic unmask*

 

Oooooh!!! It was "Forge Ahead" all the time!!!!

[Krougal]

42 minutes ago, meganoth said:

But not getting the cheesecake buff leading to a rage quit?? There are worse things that can happen.

 

LIES!

[meganoth]

24 minutes ago, Krougal said:

LIES!

 

Ok ok, not finding the santa hat is actually worse.

Edited December 23, 2021 by meganoth (see edit history)

[GrifterMan]

Well, not saying this is the case here (as I don't know obviously) but I remember other games where the random loot tables had coding issues where it should have been more random, but the code had errors that would send each RNG task off a particular path (or two) more often statistically than the rest of the decision paths.

 

Programming AI and (seemingly clever) scripting is fraught with pitfalls and traps. My expectations have gotten very low over the years, so I don't get too stressed about it.

Edited December 23, 2021 by GrifterMan (see edit history)

[GlyphGryph]

I do think that for some of the "absolute must haves" to progress down certain gameplay trees, it would make sense to have some "guaranteed spawns" for the item in various POIs if there's no associated skill that gives you a recipe to make it. Need a beaker? Well, the pill factory will ALWAYS have one if you want to brave it. Need the robotic turret schematic to give a point to the god knows how many points you invested in the skill? Well, there's some level 5 poi that has one of those too. The shotgun messiah factory will always guarantee at least one of each gun part, so eventually you WILL be able to build the gun you want.

 

In a way it feels like we already have some of this, due to certain containers pretty much only containing one type of loot. The drums in the above-mentioned pill factory, for example, are pretty much a guaranteed source of gasoline. It's not like it would be without in-game precedent.

 

I think something like that would make a lot of sense, honestly. Although the idea of negotiating with traders is great - rather than tie it to missions, why not implement something the traders say already exists in their dialogues? Specifically, placing special orders. Tell them what you want, pay a premium as a finders fee for them to get it, and after a certain amount of time they'll be guaranteed to offer one for sale... although it may be twice the normal price, since they know you want it.

Edited December 23, 2021 by GlyphGryph (see edit history)

[meganoth]

55 minutes ago, GlyphGryph said:

I do think that for some of the "absolute must haves" to progress down certain gameplay trees, it would make sense to have some "guaranteed spawns" for the item in various POIs if there's no associated skill that gives you a recipe to make it. Need a beaker? Well, the pill factory will ALWAYS have one if you want to brave it. Need the robotic turret schematic to give a point to the god knows how many points you invested in the skill? Well, there's some level 5 poi that has one of those too. The shotgun messiah factory will always guarantee at least one of each gun part, so eventually you WILL be able to build the gun you want.

 

In a way it feels like we already have some of this, due to certain containers pretty much only containing one type of loot. The drums in the above-mentioned pill factory, for example, are pretty much a guaranteed source of gasoline. It's not like it would be without in-game precedent.

 

I think something like that would make a lot of sense, honestly. Although the idea of negotiating with traders is great - rather than tie it to missions, why not implement something the traders say already exists in their dialogues? Specifically, placing special orders. Tell them what you want, pay a premium as a finders fee for them to get it, and after a certain amount of time they'll be guaranteed to offer one for sale... although it may be twice the normal price, since they know you want it.

 

I don't like it. Guaranteed beaker there and as soon as a beaker is needed nobody would continue to loot and hope for a drop, but just search for that POI, break a wall and ninja-loot that beaker.

 

In other words, your safety fall-back would be the primary method to get it.

 

If you really need to have safety and comfort for your game, use creative menue and be done with it. No need to pretend you want to see what detriments the survival game throws at you, you just want to cross off the needed items in orderly fashion and not deal with problems or calamities.

 

Edited December 23, 2021 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Boidster]

23 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Guaranteed beaker there and as soon as a beaker is needed nobody would continue to loot and hope for a drop, but just search for that POI, break a wall and ninja-loot that beaker.

 

Playing devil's advocate, what if it was just a POI-level guarantee, not an always-in-this-exact-container guarantee? Maybe you'll get lucky and find it in the first loot box, maybe you'll have to go through nearly the entire POI before you find it. But you'll never know exactly where it is.

[Justinus]

Deterministic loot in a survival game will take a lot of the fun out of the game in the long run, at that point you are looking for an action rpg, not a survival game.

[DiegoLBC1]

Specific item in specifc POIs, but without guarantee maybe?

 

EG: more chance/probability (or no) to find any weapon parts in Messiah.

[BFT2020]

Right now, here are the chances of finding the beaker in the game

 

• Spoiler

  • veryLow - in groupChem01 which is in the chemical piles we see (small, med, large - 1,2,3 items)
  • veryLow - in groupChemistryStationLoot3 which this group has a low probability overall when you find a broken chemistry station
  • 0.4 probability - in the Medical Air drop lootgroup
  • Quest2Prob - in the groupQuestMedical as a potential reward from trader missions (Tier 2 or higher on all but you can get this reward bundle on T1 dig quests - just don't expect a beaker)

   

  • veryLow = 0.05 probability
  • Quest2Prob = 0.33 probability at loot level 3, 0.42 probability at loot level 4 - learning probabilities right now so not sure what loot level 3 and 4 reference to, maybe the Tier level of the quest?  If so, that would mean running T3/T4 quests and choosing the medical bundle as a reward will improve your chances of getting the beaker

   

•  

[GlyphGryph]

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

I don't like it. Guaranteed beaker there and as soon as a beaker is needed nobody would continue to loot and hope for a drop, but just search for that POI, break a wall and ninja-loot that beaker.

 

In other words, your safety fall-back would be the primary method to get it.

 

If you really need to have safety and comfort for your game, use creative menue and be done with it. No need to pretend you want to see what detriments the survival game throws at you, you just want to cross off the needed items in orderly fashion and not deal with problems or calamities.

 

Huh. Kind of an @%$# response, but okay. But note that I only said it had a guaranteed spawn in the POI (or, hell, even just make it a high chance to spawn) not that it had to be in any specific container, and there are plenty of places in most t5 POIs where you definitely aren't going to be ninja looting stuff by breaking a wall.

Also, not finding a beaker isn't a "problem" or a "calamity" it's a "mild annoyance that makes the game less fun" because a lot of stuff is weirdly gated behind in a way that makes very little sense from either an immersion or survival perspective.

 

1 hour ago, Justinus said:

Deterministic loot in a survival game will take a lot of the fun out of the game in the long run, at that point you are looking for an action rpg, not a survival game.

 

I'm not sure if you've noted, but this game is significantly more on the action-rpg side of things than the survival side of things. Subnautica, meanwhile, is a VERY survival-oriented game, moreso than this one, without any action-rpg elements, and its loot is completely deterministic.

So I'm not sure I buy this argument. It doesn't make much sense. Plus the game already has a fairly big chunk of deterministic loot.

[Mahnogard]

3 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

Ok ok, not finding the santa hat is actually worse.

You joke, but I'm *this close* to putting in a mod request to make them craftable. Especially since in my new save, I found a beaker on Day 1 in Jen's chem bench, which pretty much guarantees that I won't find the Santa Hat because there's no way the game is going to let me have both coveted items. 

[Krougal]

3 minutes ago, Mahnogard said:

You joke, but I'm *this close* to putting in a mod request to make them craftable. Especially since in my new save, I found a beaker on Day 1 in Jen's chem bench, which pretty much guarantees that I won't find the Santa Hat because there's no way the game is going to let me have both coveted items. 

You know, now that you mention it, I had 3 during devtest, I think day1 I was wearing it but I have yet to find 1 since stable restart.

I'm going to rage quit now, thanks @meganoth 😛

[Zombull]

How about a craftable beaker that has a chance to break in crafting? Would require some new tech, obviously, but it'd fill the gap between no beaker and forever beaker.

[meganoth]

25 minutes ago, GlyphGryph said:

Huh. Kind of an @%$# response, but okay. But note that I only said it had a guaranteed spawn in the POI (or, hell, even just make it a high chance to spawn) not that it had to be in any specific container, and there are plenty of places in most t5 POIs where you definitely aren't going to be ninja looting stuff by breaking a wall.

 

Not sure what was $$&% about the response. Guaranteed is guaranteed even if you need to loot a full poi. I don't have any problems looting a POI, so the same argument applies. T5 needs a full day on average, sure, but again, who will NOT do it for a guaranteed item he needs.

 

25 minutes ago, GlyphGryph said:

Also, not finding a beaker isn't a "problem" or a "calamity" it's a "mild annoyance that makes the game less fun" because a lot of stuff is weirdly gated behind in a way that makes very little sense from either an immersion or survival perspective.

 

Ok, call it a mild annoyance. It still makes that item sought after and that is one of the core elements of the game. You don't have something, you go looking for it and are super happy if you find it. I'm not speaking against specific items being more common in specific places, like med kits in hospitals, ... . But if it is a guraranteed find we can as well remove it from the game.

 

Imagine you need some item in the game and the trader has it guaranteed and for free. Would be just a meaningless action to get this item.

 

 

25 minutes ago, GlyphGryph said:

I'm not sure if you've noted, but this game is significantly more on the action-rpg side of things than the survival side of things. Subnautica, meanwhile, is a VERY survival-oriented game, moreso than this one, without any action-rpg elements, and its loot is completely deterministic.

So I'm not sure I buy this argument. It doesn't make much sense. Plus the game already has a fairly big chunk of deterministic loot.

 

Subnautica has almost no replayability, it doesn't matter that the loot is handpicked. Play it multiple times and I'm sure the difficulty and tension drops into bottomless regions.

 

11 minutes ago, Krougal said:

You know, now that you mention it, I had 3 during devtest, I think day1 I was wearing it but I have yet to find 1 since stable restart.

I'm going to rage quit now, thanks @meganoth 😛

 

I'm here to jinx 😁

[Boidster]

1 hour ago, BFT2020 said:

veryLow = 0.05 probability

 

I'm unsure if it still works this way, especially with the addition of the "force_prob" attribute on some loot rewards, but in any case it used to be that "0.05" probability did not actually mean 5%. For example in groupChem01, you have a whole bunch of choices:

 

    <item name="resourceGlue"/>
    <item name="resourceOilShale" count="25,50"/>
    <item name="resourcePotassiumNitratePowder" count="25,50"/>
    <item name="resourceCoal" count="25,50"/>
    <item name="resourceScrapLead" count="25,50"/>
    <item name="drinkJarRiverWater" loot_prob_template="med"/>
    <item name="drinkJarBoiledWater" loot_prob_template="med"/>
    <item name="resourceOil" loot_prob_template="med"/>
    <item name="resourceAcid" loot_prob_template="low"/>
    <item name="resourceTestosteroneExtract" loot_prob_template="low"/>
    <item name="resourceSilverNugget" loot_prob_template="veryLow"/>
    <item name="resourceGoldNugget" loot_prob_template="veryLow"/>
    <item name="toolBeaker" loot_prob_template="veryLow"/>

 

If it works the way it used to, every item without an explicit probability counts as probability 1.0. The engine then adds them all up and the true probability of any single item is its probability divided by the total. Using the above example:

 

1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 0.5 (med) + 0.5 + 0.5 + 0.2 (low) + 0.2 + 0.05 + 0.05 + 0.05 = 7.05

 

So the true probability of toolBeaker - if it still works like it used to - is 0.05 / 7.05 = 0.007 (7 tenths of 1 percent).

 

[nostalginator]

2 hours ago, Justinus said:

Deterministic loot in a survival game will take a lot of the fun out of the game in the long run, at that point you are looking for an action rpg, not a survival game.

I'm not even asking for deterministic loot.  I'm asking for something between "deterministic" and "62 fishing weights in 7 days."
 

5 hours ago, meganoth said:

Or you could jiust accept that the game throws random difficulties at you. Not having a chem station is severe blow to your ammo production, but you can buy ammo and blackpowder in adequate quantities, you can manage and that will be a unique playthrough.

 

But not getting the cheesecake buff leading to a rage quit?? There are worse things that can happen.

 

There are!  In that moment, however, I did not care.  As I saw it, there was absolutely no real reason for pumpkin seeds to be absolutely unavailable beyond poor programming.  I will resent whatever I choose to resent however I choose to resent it. 

Anyway, since making this post I've found three additional traders, and none of them have beakers OR chem stations.  I've already moved past that save, as Day 28 was shaping up to lead to a disastrous horde night.

Edited December 23, 2021 by nostalginator (see edit history)

[Krougal]

Fishing weights are for making bullets, I don't know why you're counting scrap items. You get a lot of them in the trash, because before the apocalypse everyone threw out all their fishing weights because there were no rivers to fish in. If you didn't get them you'd have to mine lead yourself, hell I never mine lead, I just melt down fishing weights.

 

 

 

 

 

[Kosmic Kerman]

RNG is RNG. The lack of the guaranteed loot is one of the best parts of this game, IMO. Loot RNG  has the potential to make one playthrough significantly different from the next. But if not having something is rage inducing just use the creative menu and spawn it in. You can pick the day you think you should have looted it by and spawn it in.