New spear two levels higher, but worse

[Riamus]

I get that stars vary and there is overlap, especially between different quality of items (stone, iron, steel).  But to have a level 2 steel spear and get a level 4 steel spear in quest rewards and thinking that I have an upgrade only to find out the level 4 is quite a bit worse than the level 2 was upsetting.  Oh well.  Hopefully they balance the stat levels before gold.

[ElCabong]

I've had this problem with pistols. The first yellow pistol I made was much better than the green one I got as a mission reward. The yellow iron crossbow I made did more damage than the yellow compound crossbow I bought for 10K. 

[Rotor]

So far, may be bad luck, but almost 100% of my looted weapons are worst than what I can craft a level lower or equal.  So, I only use until I can craft better.  I.e. loot a lvl4 bow, but my crafted lvl3 is better.

[pApA^LeGBa]

Yeah it´s so annoying. I get that stats should be random. But at least make is so that it can´t be worse than a lower quality. Yeah i get it, they want to keep us motivated to go out and loot, but tbh it´s simply frustrating nothing more.

 

You want to make sure people go out regulary? Repair kits should need mechanical parts. Way less frustrating and you constantly need to go looting.

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

Yeah it´s so annoying. I get that stats should be random. But at least make is so that it can´t be worse than a lower quality. Yeah i get it, they want to keep us motivated to go out and loot, but tbh it´s simply frustrating nothing more.

 

You want to make sure people go out regulary? Repair kits should need mechanical parts. Way less frustrating and you constantly need to go looting.

 

Random stats overlapping has nothing to do with the motivation to loot. Random stats would be an incentive, but not the overlapping you are critizising here.

 

I can only guess at the reasons for the overlapping. But it might just be a desire to have players always having to evaluate the real quality of a weapon instead of automatically taking the weapon that has a better color.

 

And a bigger random range is more opportunity for really lucky finds, i.e. the random range is a randomness on top of the randomness of the weapons you can find at all with your loot level.

 

 

 

[Gamida]

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

 

Random stats overlapping has nothing to do with the motivation to loot. Random stats would be an incentive, but not the overlapping you are critizising here.

 

I can only guess at the reasons for the overlapping. But it might just be a desire to have players always having to evaluate the real quality of a weapon instead of automatically taking the weapon that has a better color.

 

And a bigger random range is more opportunity for really lucky finds, i.e. the random range is a randomness on top of the randomness of the weapons you can find at all with your loot level.

 

 

 

 

 

ah ok so it is a feature and not a bug

 

[ElCabong]

2 hours ago, Gamida said:

 

 

ah ok so it is a feature and not a bug

 

It is a bug.

I just got a green iron crossbow for a quest reward and it does 59 damage

My yellow iron crossbow does 77.9 damage.

 

You cannot see what the stats are on the item you are buying from a vendor nor can you see what they are BEFORE you accept it as a mission reward.

 

The worst green item should be the high end of a yellow item with some  overlap giving you the chance for only a slight better yellow not a piece of junk only fit for scrapping like I just got.

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, ElCabong said:

It is a bug.

I just got a green iron crossbow for a quest reward and it does 59 damage

My yellow iron crossbow does 77.9 damage.

 

You cannot see what the stats are on the item you are buying from a vendor nor can you see what they are BEFORE you accept it as a mission reward.

 

The worst green item should be the high end of a yellow item with some  overlap giving you the chance for only a slight better yellow not a piece of junk only fit for scrapping like I just got.

 

What I very often forget when comparing weapons is that the ammo defines a lot about how much damage a weapon does. That green crossbow likely has a stone bolt loaded while you probably already use iron bolts. Hence you see much bigger damage on your yellow iron crossbow. And any mods in your yellow crossbow add damage as well.

 

The bug is in the UI which does not take ammo in consideration when displaying the values. Probably the UI should be split so that you see damage of the bolt/arrow separate from the weapons bonus.

 

I'm not sure, but when you directly compare the crossbow's values (having one bow selected and moving the mouse to the other bow) then you probably can see their real difference without any influence from mods AND ammo.

Edited September 26, 2022 by meganoth (see edit history)

[theFlu]

34 minutes ago, ElCabong said:

You cannot see what the stats are on the item you are buying from a vendor nor can you see what they are BEFORE you accept it as a mission reward.

Umm, yes you can. Just click on the item, the stats are shown pretty normally. Comparison is a little iffy, that's all.

[Uncle Al]

Careful judging bow damage as a newly found bow will be displaying stats for stone ammo, and you probably have something better in the bow you're using.  You need to load the new bow with whatever you're actually shooting (iron/steel) before you can make a fair comparison.

 

I'm sure I've seen a dev post that removing the overlap is planned, so the bottom of Q3 stats can never be lower that the top of Q2 etc. but I can't remember where I saw it.  Was this Alpha, i.e. probably planned for A21.

[Gamida]

2 hours ago, ElCabong said:

It is a bug.

I just got a green iron crossbow for a quest reward and it does 59 damage

My yellow iron crossbow does 77.9 damage.

 

You cannot see what the stats are on the item you are buying from a vendor nor can you see what they are BEFORE you accept it as a mission reward.

 

The worst green item should be the high end of a yellow item with some  overlap giving you the chance for only a slight better yellow not a piece of junk only fit for scrapping like I just got.

 

My comment was meant as a joke to roland. Just repeating what is out there about developers hearing about a bug and suggesting it is not a bug but is an intended feature

[BFT2020]

2 hours ago, ElCabong said:

It is a bug.

I just got a green iron crossbow for a quest reward and it does 59 damage

My yellow iron crossbow does 77.9 damage.

 

It's not a bug, it's a design choice - it is just how they implemented the random variation in the items.

• Each item (T1 and higher) has a random chance to be anywhere between -0.15 and 0.15 for entity damage.
• For quality, starting at Q2, there is a 0.1 increase in entity damage between Quality levels - so a Q3 has 0.2 increase while a Q4 has a 0.3 increase
• Using your Iron crossbows as an example,
  • Q3 crossbow can be anywhere between 52.5 and 67.5 damage with stone bolts while iron bolts are 61.95 to 79.65
  • Q4 crossbow can be anywhere between 57.5 and 72.5 damage with stone bolts while iron bolts are 67.85 to 85.55
  • Note the overlap in the damage numbers when comparing like ammo between Q3 and Q4
• Based on your numbers, the Q4 crossbow rolled low (about -0.12) while your Q3 crossbow rolled high (about 0.12)
• If you drop the random damage numbers from 0.15 to 0.05, the overlap basically disappears at that point (though a 0.05 Q3 will have the same damage as a -0.05 Q4 item)

There is already talk adjusting those values to prevent (or limit) the overlaps, but that would be a change implemented to affect the outcome of the code, not fixing a bug in the code.

[ElCabong]

i just pulled four iron crossbows out of creative. I went into modify mode on each and cleared the stone bolt.

 

The yellow 58.1

The green  58.1

The blue 65.3

the purple 73.1

 

My original crossbow I bought on  day 3. 77.9   Got a good crossbow.

[BFT2020]

7 minutes ago, ElCabong said:

i just pulled four iron crossbows out of creative. I went into modify mode on each and cleared the stone bolt.

 

The yellow 58.1

The green  58.1

The blue 65.3

the purple 73.1

 

My original crossbow I bought on  day 3. 77.9   Got a good crossbow.

 

Your numbers seem off.  If you are comparing 4 different quality crossbows from creative mode, yellow and green should not have the same value.  Items from creative mode don't have the random variation in entity damage (or any stat) so the only difference at that point is the quality level.  So the green box should have a higher value than the yellow bow with the same ammo loaded.

[theFlu]

23 minutes ago, BFT2020 said:

Your numbers seem off.

I can confirm his numbers to an extent; I pulled a Q3 Iron crossbow with 66.9 Damage, and a Q4 same with 60.2.

It seems the items from creative do have random stats now.

(A20.6 b9)

 

EDIT: I'm not ruling out an ammo difference in the numbers for the good one, though. @ElCabong are you using Iron / Steel bolts in your "good one"; try loading a stone one (even if you don't have any, just changing the loaded type is enough)

Edited September 26, 2022 by theFlu (see edit history)

[BFT2020]

19 hours ago, theFlu said:

I can confirm his numbers to an extent; I pulled a Q3 Iron crossbow with 66.9 Damage, and a Q4 same with 60.2.

It seems the items from creative do have random stats now.

(A20.6 b9)

I wonder how that happened.  I don't recall seeing that in any patch notes so I wonder if they made the change but didn't think it was important enough to have in the patch notes or if they made some other changes and this was a side effect of the change (or as noted, I don't recall seeing it but I could have missed it also).

 

Now I am trying to remember what Alpha level was the last time I pulled many weapons from CM and compared them. 

[theFlu]

12 minutes ago, BFT2020 said:

Now I am trying to remember what Alpha level was the last time I pulled many weapons from CM and compared them. 

 

I ended up looking for a crossbow damage thread you were testing in, but that was with looted weapons, in January.

 

While looking I ran into a post of mine where I was being surprised at CM being random on Jan 22; which would likely be A20.1 b5 (released Jan 19 and I tend to always upgrade).

 

 

[ElCabong]

On 9/26/2022 at 3:34 PM, theFlu said:

I can confirm his numbers to an extent; I pulled a Q3 Iron crossbow with 66.9 Damage, and a Q4 same with 60.2.

It seems the items from creative do have random stats now.

(A20.6 b9)

 

EDIT: I'm not ruling out an ammo difference in the numbers for the good one, though. @ElCabong are you using Iron / Steel bolts in your "good one"; try loading a stone one (even if you don't have any, just changing the loaded type is enough)

 

for the comparisons I made sure no bolt was loaded. All I use are iron bolts.

 

[theFlu]

7 hours ago, ElCabong said:

for the comparisons I made sure no bolt was loaded. All I use are iron bolts.

"No bolt" is not an option. It's not about having one loaded, it's what type you have selected. You have to manually select the same bolt type, it makes no difference to the damage tooltip whether the ammo counter shows 1 /100 or 0 /100.

 

The quest rewards show stone bolt damage, so if you want to compare to those, you have to select a stone bolt for the one in your inventory. Same for vendor items.

[Weazelsun]

But, doesn't having more mod slots make up for it? Well, sometimes it does... You know it kinda shows my mentality, that I when I do find a low quality item that does higher damange than my high quality with low damage but more mods slots. I always keep the former. Just due do it doing more damage. Even though the latter, would be more better in the sense that with more mod slots it should in theory. Make its damage output almost up to par with the other item.

[ElCabong]

4 hours ago, theFlu said:

"No bolt" is not an option. It's not about having one loaded, it's what type you have selected. You have to manually select the same bolt type, it makes no difference to the damage tooltip whether the ammo counter shows 1 /100 or 0 /100.

 

The quest rewards show stone bolt damage, so if you want to compare to those, you have to select a stone bolt for the one in your inventory. Same for vendor items.

Like I said, for the comparisons I made there was no bolt loaded. It is an apples to apples comparison. I'm aware that when you look at the trader, there's a stonebolt in the crossbow. I didn't do that.

28 minutes ago, Weazelsun said:

But, doesn't having more mod slots make up for it? Well, sometimes it does... You know it kinda shows my mentality, that I when I do find a low quality item that does higher damange than my high quality with low damage but more mods slots. I always keep the former. Just due do it doing more damage. Even though the latter, would be more better in the sense that with more mod slots it should in theory. Make its damage output almost up to par with the other item.

Maving more mod slots might make up for it if the higher end item is close enough to the low end one. But when I've got a yellow crossbow bolt at 77.9 and say I get a purple at only 60, I don't think I can mod that up to make the difference.  Especially because I put two mods on the yellow

[meganoth]

42 minutes ago, Weazelsun said:

But, doesn't having more mod slots make up for it? Well, sometimes it does... You know it kinda shows my mentality, that I when I do find a low quality item that does higher damange than my high quality with low damage but more mods slots. I always keep the former. Just due do it doing more damage. Even though the latter, would be more better in the sense that with more mod slots it should in theory. Make its damage output almost up to par with the other item.

 

Yes, when comparing them you should add (I think) 6% damage for every additional mod in the high quality item. That is on top of the utility the mod gives you.

 

Practically that means you never need to compare weapons two quality tiers separate as your worst case would be 4% less damage and an additional mod slot for the higher tier weapon (which at least I would take without thinking twice)

 

 

 

13 minutes ago, ElCabong said:

Like I said, for the comparisons I made there was no bolt loaded. It is an apples to apples comparison. I'm aware that when you look at the trader, there's a stonebolt in the crossbow. I didn't do that.

 

 

Please read the **first** paragraph of theFlu's message again, you seem not to have understood it.

 

 

13 minutes ago, ElCabong said:

Maving more mod slots might make up for it if the higher end item is close enough to the low end one. But when I've got a yellow crossbow bolt at 77.9 and say I get a purple at only 60, I don't think I can mod that up to make the difference.  Especially because I put two mods on the yellow

 

I think It is mathematically impossible that a yellow crossbow has 77.9 and a purple only 60 in a true comparison.

 

You are still right that even with an additional mod slot a lower tier weapon can be objectively better.

 

 

Edited September 28, 2022 by meganoth (see edit history)

[theFlu]

14 minutes ago, ElCabong said:

Like I said, for the comparisons I made there was no bolt loaded.

And like I said, unloading a bolt does Not change the damage display. If you unload an iron bolt via modify, the crossbow will still show damage of the iron bolt. I just tested this in A20.6 b9.

 

What you are comparing May* be correct, but what you are describing is wrong.

* may, as in, from your descriptions I can't be sure of what you're doing.

[BFT2020]

22 hours ago, theFlu said:

I ended up looking for a crossbow damage thread you were testing in, but that was with looted weapons, in January.

 

While looking I ran into a post of mine where I was being surprised at CM being random on Jan 22; which would likely be A20.1 b5 (released Jan 19 and I tend to always upgrade).

Yeah, thinking back, it might have been A19 when I last did any comparisons of CM gear.  I think A20 has only been gear from loot.

2 hours ago, Weazelsun said:

But, doesn't having more mod slots make up for it? Well, sometimes it does... You know it kinda shows my mentality, that I when I do find a low quality item that does higher damange than my high quality with low damage but more mods slots. I always keep the former. Just due do it doing more damage. Even though the latter, would be more better in the sense that with more mod slots it should in theory. Make its damage output almost up to par with the other item.

 

Thing is though, both the Q3 and Q4 has the same number of mod slots (at 2) in vanilla so in this case, you are not getting another mod slot for the higher quality weapon.

[Riamus]

I don't really have any problem with overlap between two quality levels that are sequential, such as 3 and 4.  It's when you have overlap between 2 and 4 that it is a bit much.  Yes, you get an extra mod on the 4, but the damage shouldn't be noticeably lower.  I'm not talking about 0.1 lower or something.  I don't have it in front of me, but it was around 3 lower or something like that.  On a spear, that is too much for 2 levels difference.