The Wrechage Limit Shouldn't be in a Game About Hoarding

[Zectico]

We don't have a blueprint limit for the Foundry, so why have one for wreckages?

• The RNG stat system incentivizes hoarding, especially if players can't afford the resource deficit to scrap.
• This is made worse by half-repaired wreckages being unscrapable, resulting in an inventory full of inferior duplicates.

Unless the goal is to get players to return to Dry Dock between every mission, the wreckage limit does nothing to enhance gameplay.

 

Edited January 12, 2020 by Zectico

[AEP8FlyBoy]

Apparently, our Dojo or even the Dry Dock (AS HUGE AS IT IS) isn't a bottomless hole of capacity for items when our demonstrably smaller Orbiters are.

. . . Classic.

Totally agree that I would not shed a tear if wreckage limit was removed. I lost a few Zetki III weapons that could've been better due to a limit and not being able to return to scrap stuff because the host didn't want to leave.

Edited January 12, 2020 by AEP8FlyBoy

[dogbus]

Id imagine its a technical limitation, just like how rivens are limited because of access time constrainsts in DE's databases. 

Also, once you get the mission summary, you are free to leave the mission...no one is making you stay except you.

[Althaline]

2 hours ago, Vaeldious said:

Id imagine its a technical limitation, just like how rivens are limited because of access time constrainsts in DE's databases

So basically, DE adding something nobody wanted caused a (previously encountered) problem that they solved by implementing a system that they already knew people didn't like. Genius.

[Voltage]

3 hours ago, Iamabearlulz said:

So basically, DE adding something nobody wanted caused a (previously encountered) problem that they solved by implementing a system that they already knew people didn't like. Genius.

[CarrotSalad]

A caring developer will avoid RNG stats, or massively restrict its variables because it removes the ability for the dev to garuntee a fun experience for all. Someone who experiences a sequence of the worst desired rolls is going to have a much worse impression than someone who's had a lucky. Nothing worse than a game that will give a large and inconsistent experience from player to player.

Its also a nice formula to fuel toxicity in the community when peoples opinions clash.

[Steel_Rook]

9 hours ago, Vaeldious said:

Id imagine its a technical limitation, just like how rivens are limited because of access time constrainsts in DE's databases. 

It is, they said as much in one of the Dev Streams. Steve (I think) recounted how weapon mods used to be RNG, but they changed them to flat values because people were hoarding them and overloading DE's database servers. Apparently, these guys are too poor to invest in dedicated servers, which is why Rivens have such aggressive inventory limits. One wonders, however... If that's already the case, then why did they go ahead with a system nobody likes and nobody asked for if it's going to ALSO cause them technical issues and us an irritation? They're not even selling Wreckage inventory boosters... Yet.

[HelmetTooTight]

On 2020-01-12 at 11:06 AM, Steel_Rook said:

Apparently, these guys are too poor to invest in dedicated servers, which is why Rivens have such aggressive inventory limits.

 

On 2020-01-12 at 1:28 AM, Vaeldious said:

Id imagine its a technical limitation, just like how rivens are limited because of access time constrainsts in DE's databases. 

While I don't like the wreckage system and the RNG stats, I think one of the biggest issues with the wreckage limit is the AUTO-SCRAPPING. The riven system, like it or not, works many times better because you don't just lose rivens when you go over cap.

I think a partial solution here would be to adapt the riven capacity's system. I.e. allow temporary go over limits with wreckage, but then not allow you to play railjack until you are under wreckage capacity, just like how you can't play sorties until you are under riven capacity. If you want to hoard, then you can purchase more wreckage slots, just like how you can purchase more riven slots. Also, if they add a wreckage transmutation (just like how we can transmute rivens), then we could free up wreckage for something better than 225 Dirac, while giving us a shot at some good wreckage (lookin' at you, +100 Avionics Capacity Vidar MKIII Reactor).

Also, please don't flame me but I don't think purchasing wreckage slots is that egregious. Don't forget that we need to purchase slots for warframes and weapons, even though these don't have RNG stats.  I don't hoard useless guns/non-prime warframes I don't use because I don't want them to take up my slots. I don't hoard bad rivens because I don't want them to take up my slots. If I do, the option to purchase more with plat exists. This is DE's business model, and it works even for F2P players like me.

EDIT: GOD BLESS DE ACTUALLY LISTENED AND TOOK THE IDEA

Edited January 16, 2020 by HelmetTooTight

[ciTiger]

If they remove the RNG stats it fixes this problem 🙂

[anonymous14z]

To be a bit brainless.

I am in favor of ameliorating what the OP complains about.

I play warframe casually, and when I want to play -I want to play-  and I generally don't like having to compare item stats from one item to another, indeed it was one of the things that set warframe apart from other games, that I didn't need to compare item stats, you just "got" the thing.

But with the wreckage system, I'm reminded of the dreadful task of item comparison and inventory management and worst of all, if I fail to do this, it'll essentially nullify any new items I'll get!

Now imagine if someone grinded veil missions and being careless, grinded 5 missions or so in a row, and on the final 5th mission they were awarded that precious Vidar reactor, but it was AUTO-SCRAPPED because he went over his wreckage limit! Needless to say, this certainly injects extra difficulty, worry, and paranoia when playing railjack missions that shouldn't be there.

While I can understand that railjack wreckage limit DOES create a gameplay "wind-down" that might help combat burnout, the the current implementation feels terrible. I'm in favor of simplistically removing the wreckage limit. Or making it so that better wreckage automatically replaces inferior stuff, to help keep the focus on the gameplay, or SOMETHING other than the auto-scrapping, worry and frustration-inducing situation we have here.

Edited January 13, 2020 by anonymous14z

[Shalath]

On 2020-01-12 at 7:28 AM, Vaeldious said:

Id imagine its a technical limitation, just like how rivens are limited because of access time constrainsts in DE's databases.

It is this, the RNG nature of the stats take up a lot more storage then the fixed stat items.

19 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Apparently, these guys are too poor to invest in dedicated servers, which is why Rivens have such aggressive inventory limits.

It is nothing to do with dedicated servers, it is the database which would balloon in size and running costs if you could have unlimited amounts of RNG stat items.

For example a standard mod probably stores 2 values in the DB, the mod ID number and the rank. Everything else is in a static lookup table in the game to see exactly what the effects of mod X at rank Y does.

A riven has the "veiled" status, rank, mastery lock, weapon it is for, the effect type (Critatin in this case) and the number of rolls. That's at least 6x the amount of database storage since you can't use a lookup table in the client code to look up the randomised stats and that assumes DE don't remember the stats of every previous roll.

19 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

One wonders, however... If that's already the case, then why did they go ahead with a system nobody likes and nobody asked for if it's going to ALSO cause them technical issues and us an irritation?

Plat, for Rivens at least. Once everyone has a Serration nobody needs to buy one from other players. If every Serration is different due to RNG stats then you have a market where everyone wants the best Serration. As for wreckage I suspect they didn't want everyone to just stop using Railjacks once they have one of everything as nobody has anything left to grind for. I ran most of the RJ missions with the other Warlord in my clan and I lucked out on a fantastic reactor that has +96 avionics but he got a lower ranked one on that mission. He has literally everything he can possibly get in the game and before Empyrean he only logged in for sorties. He now won't give up knowing he can get a better reactor as his is only +90 so the RNG is all that is keeping him running RJ missions.

[Steel_Rook]

51 minutes ago, Shalath said:

It is nothing to do with dedicated servers, it is the database which would balloon in size and running costs if you could have unlimited amounts of RNG stat items.

I would file all of that under "dedicated servers" as it has to do with server hosting and the costs thereof, but fair enough - I may be using the wrong terminology. My point is that there was a time when MMOs were entirely handled and hosted server-side, with publishers footing the hosting bills for them. It's expensive, to be sure (shockingly so), but games with a lot less revenue and a lot more concurrent players still seemed to do fine. DE save a substantial amount of cost hosting just about everything client-side and thus only having to manage account database. To then go ahead and complain about how expensive that is when they're already saving money on hosting mission logic and AI and such... Honestly, that seems like penny-pinching to me. If they want RNG, they have to deal with large inventories of random assorted crap that people hoard. Even Diablo 3 - NOT a Live Service - still offered many times the Warframe inventory in the form of stash space, and progressively more of it with expansions.

I understand the costs associated, but that IS the cost of RNG loot. DE strike me as wanting to eat their cake and have it, too. Either you limit your database overhead by using static loot, or you pay the overhead for random loot. You can't have it both ways - not without upsetting your playerbase.

 

57 minutes ago, Shalath said:

He has literally everything he can possibly get in the game and before Empyrean he only logged in for sorties. He now won't give up knowing he can get a better reactor as his is only +90 so the RNG is all that is keeping him running RJ missions.

And that's a recipe for serious, long-term burnout. If your friend's only reason for playing Railjack is the RNG slot machine and not anything intrinsically appealing in the game mode itself, then Railjack has already failed to appeal to your friend. Best case scenario, he gets his reactor after a while and moves on with parts of the game he enjoys more. Worst case scenario, he ends up grinding himself into tedium, never gets the drop and rage-quits Railjack with no intention to ever bother again. Grind - RNG grind in this case, your average virtual slot machine - doesn't keep people interested. It keeps people playing DESPITE not being interested. That's not healthy for the game or its player base.

 

7 hours ago, HelmetTooTight said:

Also, please don't flame me but I don't think purchasing wreckage slots is that egregious. Don't forget that we need to purchase slots for warframes and weapons, even though these don't have RNG stats.  I don't hoard useless guns/non-prime warframes I don't use because I don't want them to take up my slots. I don't hoard bad rivens because I don't want them to take up my slots. If I do, the option to purchase more with plat exists. This is DE's business model, and it works even for F2P players like me.

Purchasing wreckage slots isn't really all that egregious - not compared to all the other ways the game nickel-and-dimes us. Why it gets on my tits is because DE created that problem for themselves. They could have just not gone with RNG loot and saved themselves the database bloat. Saves us the headache of having to grind content past its entertainment value, saves them having to upgrade their hosting infrastructure and it doesn't generate ill will, to boot. But no, we had to have a virtual slot machine, so now we have to worry about limited slots bad rolls and regrinding weapons and rerolling them, potentially. Feh. And you know what the best part is? DE could STILL have sold us slots for Equipment and Turrets in the long run, once they introduced more Railjack items - enough that we'd want a larger inventory to hold all of them.

Then again, I wouldn't be surprised to see Railjack a few years down the line where Archwings are now - with the same 6 weapons and 4 types of each gear item, the same set of Avionics.

[ASHERATOR]

30 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

I would file all of that under "dedicated servers" as it has to do with server hosting and the costs thereof, but fair enough - I may be using the wrong terminology. My point is that there was a time when MMOs were entirely handled and hosted server-side, with publishers footing the hosting bills for them. It's expensive, to be sure (shockingly so), but games with a lot less revenue and a lot more concurrent players still seemed to do fine. DE save a substantial amount of cost hosting just about everything client-side and thus only having to manage account database. To then go ahead and complain about how expensive that is when they're already saving money on hosting mission logic and AI and such... Honestly, that seems like penny-pinching to me. If they want RNG, they have to deal with large inventories of random assorted crap that people hoard. Even Diablo 3 - NOT a Live Service - still offered many times the Warframe inventory in the form of stash space, and progressively more of it with expansions.

I understand the costs associated, but that IS the cost of RNG loot. DE strike me as wanting to eat their cake and have it, too. Either you limit your database overhead by using static loot, or you pay the overhead for random loot. You can't have it both ways - not without upsetting your playerbase.

 

And that's a recipe for serious, long-term burnout. If your friend's only reason for playing Railjack is the RNG slot machine and not anything intrinsically appealing in the game mode itself, then Railjack has already failed to appeal to your friend. Best case scenario, he gets his reactor after a while and moves on with parts of the game he enjoys more. Worst case scenario, he ends up grinding himself into tedium, never gets the drop and rage-quits Railjack with no intention to ever bother again. Grind - RNG grind in this case, your average virtual slot machine - doesn't keep people interested. It keeps people playing DESPITE not being interested. That's not healthy for the game or its player base.

Wow Steel_Rook I got to say well said on both these points.  I personally do not mind grinding or randomized drop tables at all because I have enjoyed the game mechanics but the new randomized stats does feel too much like a slot machine that does not have the enjoyable game mechanics anymore.  It also kills the whole idea of what a game is...A game is typically needs to provide at least a sense that it provides a level playing field with some balance to operate within so that it seems fair to the player base.  Just look at board games they may have so random rolls but its still an overall balanced even chance for players or ways to overcome bad rolls with strategy if nothing else.  Compare this to some of the current randomness we are starting to see in game such as the abysmal random drop chance of vidor reactors and then the double random chance that even if you do get one to drop it may be worse off than a supposedly inferior reactor which makes for a far less than 4% drop rate in reality...maybe .004%?  Again I am willing to grind if the mechanics are good but currently the game is not even incentivizing players to work together in a railjack.  As an example post this weeks nerf my guns have a hard time taking down fighters again after going to all the hours and hours of work to include mods that allow more heat-up, massive crit, crit damage etc etc and now I'm back to square one and people are back in their archwings ignoring the whole game mechanics of what the game was supposed to be... Just pure insanity that makes no sense to me. 

[Educated_Beast]

2 hours ago, Shalath said:

Plat, for Rivens at least. Once everyone has a Serration nobody needs to buy one from other players. If every Serration is different due to RNG stats then you have a market where everyone wants the best Serration. As for wreckage I suspect they didn't want everyone to just stop using Railjacks once they have one of everything as nobody has anything left to grind for. I ran most of the RJ missions with the other Warlord in my clan and I lucked out on a fantastic reactor that has +96 avionics but he got a lower ranked one on that mission. He has literally everything he can possibly get in the game and before Empyrean he only logged in for sorties. He now won't give up knowing he can get a better reactor as his is only +90 so the RNG is all that is keeping him running RJ missions.

Well your friend got caught in the skinner box.  DE designed railjack to be addictive first, then fun.  If he is only playing for that, he really should quit because gambling will never bring satisfaction.  Just play the game for what it is and let go of emotional ties to it or the developers who no longer are the ideal F2P company.  

After this update, I honestly can no longer recommend Warframe to friends or family.  The game design is now toxic.  Maybe DE is tired and wants to make as much money in near term possible then get out, maybe thier Chinese overlords are forcing this fundamental change that's both bad technically and no one asked for, who knows, DE isn't talking to us anymore.  

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy railjack and think it has fantastic potential, but only if they at the very minimum remove random capacity from reactors.  It's a game breaking flaw, destroying thier own game and actively attacking thier own community of build developers, guide creators, and YouTubers who create replayability.  

DE is not listening, or worse, listening and not caring.  They doubled down and kept in this Trainwreck for last few patches.  Or, maybe riven slot database capacity was never an issue and a lie to sell overpriced slots.  

We may never know but one thing is for sure, random is here to stay and will be expanded upon in every major update.  Welcome to WarCasino.  

Edited January 13, 2020 by Educated_Beast

[Shalath]

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

I understand the costs associated, but that IS the cost of RNG loot. DE strike me as wanting to eat their cake and have it, too. Either you limit your database overhead by using static loot, or you pay the overhead for random loot. You can't have it both ways - not without upsetting your playerbase.

From a a player's point of view I agree with you but DE have their investors to answer to and they don't care about the player base, they only care about the profits. I have a feeling that DE want more variety in the loot but Leyou wouldn't be happy with the extra expense on the DB side of things so DE had to take the middle road. It may even be the other way around and Leyou want the variety but won't let DE budget appropriately, I've seen such management decisions handed down from on high in the company I work for. Unless DE choose to answer why they want RNG loot but in a limited way we'll probably never know.

I'm not sure Diablo is a fair comparison as Blizzard's net worth was several times greater than DE's and until Activision got involved they had nobody to answer to but themselves. If I remember right there were some calculations done some time ago on what Blizzard were making in subs based on published player numbers at the height of WoW and I think the number per month was higher than DE's annual turnover in the last public numbers I saw published (2016 I think?).

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

And that's a recipe for serious, long-term burnout. If your friend's only reason for playing Railjack is the RNG slot machine and not anything intrinsically appealing in the game mode itself, then Railjack has already failed to appeal to your friend. Best case scenario, he gets his reactor after a while and moves on with parts of the game he enjoys more. Worst case scenario, he ends up grinding himself into tedium, never gets the drop and rage-quits Railjack with no intention to ever bother again. Grind - RNG grind in this case, your average virtual slot machine - doesn't keep people interested. It keeps people playing DESPITE not being interested. That's not healthy for the game or its player base.

He's actually a bit weird like that and given the speed he completes content I expected him to burn out 2 or so years ago, yet he is still logging in daily. He's thoroughly enjoying Empyrean and getting that reactor is like a personal challenge to him as he wants his perfect build.

[(XBOX)Tucker D Dawg]

35 minutes ago, Educated_Beast said:

After this update, I honestly can no longer recommend Warframe to friends or family.

I can't even convince former clan mates who loved the game to come back. I got them back for about 5 RJ missions, they took one look at the grind mechanics and said no thanks.

 

[Skaleek]

On 2020-01-12 at 1:48 AM, AEP8FlyBoy said:

Apparently, our Dojo or even the Dry Dock (AS HUGE AS IT IS) isn't a bottomless hole of capacity for items when our demonstrably smaller Orbiters are.

Just wait till the next patch notes are implementing a Mod/Weapon/Blueprint/Item capacity limit on our foundry based on feedback from this thread... 🤐

[Skaleek]

3 hours ago, Shalath said:

It is nothing to do with dedicated servers, it is the database which would balloon in size and running costs if you could have unlimited amounts of RNG stat items.

For example a standard mod probably stores 2 values in the DB, the mod ID number and the rank. Everything else is in a static lookup table in the game to see exactly what the effects of mod X at rank Y does.

That a fact? You want to explain all our lich entries then? There are for more variables in liches and yet we have no cap on the number we are able to have as codex entries. This is the exact same method of storing data as rivens, except more of it, with no limit. Yeah no, riven cap was implemented as a platinum sink. I myself have over 100 lich entries which means i am more than likely putting far more strain on their "database that is ballooning in size" than my rivens are.

Edited January 13, 2020 by Skaleek

[Shalath]

3 hours ago, Skaleek said:

That a fact? You want to explain all our lich entries then? There are for more variables in liches and yet we have no cap on the number we are able to have as codex entries. This is the exact same method of storing data as rivens, except more of it, with no limit. Yeah no, riven cap was implemented as a platinum sink. I myself have over 100 lich entries which means i am more than likely putting far more strain on their "database that is ballooning in size" than my rivens are.

You can only have one active Lich at a time as I understand it (not played that side of the game really) so once a Lich has been beaten they can be archived off to a seperate database (cheaper hardware, less RAID reduncacy etc.) for your codex to keep the size on the main DB down. You can't do that with rivens as they need to be in the main DB at all times as does wreckage. I don't think Liches have randomised numerical stats either, just a collection of attributes (skills, weapons, quirks etc.) pulled from a pool which I'm not entirely convinced are really random other than the name but again I haven't played the Lich system enough to really know that. It could easily be a case of 100 or more hard-coded Lich variants that they just slap a random name onto when they are "born". Far more efficient than DB storage and unless you go through a couple hundred Liches you'd never realise.

DE haven't explicitly stated how Liches are stored but that's probably how I would do it if I were their DBA. They have gone on record with wreckage and riven storage though.

[Skaleek]

38 minutes ago, Shalath said:

You can only have one active Lich at a time as I understand it (not played that side of the game really) so once a Lich has been beaten they can be archived off to a seperate database (cheaper hardware, less RAID reduncacy etc.) for your codex to keep the size on the main DB down. You can't do that with rivens as they need to be in the main DB at all times as does wreckage. I don't think Liches have randomised numerical stats either, just a collection of attributes (skills, weapons, quirks etc.) pulled from a pool which I'm not entirely convinced are really random other than the name but again I haven't played the Lich system enough to really know that. It could easily be a case of 100 or more hard-coded Lich variants that they just slap a random name onto when they are "born". Far more efficient than DB storage and unless you go through a couple hundred Liches you'd never realise.

DE haven't explicitly stated how Liches are stored but that's probably how I would do it if I were their DBA. They have gone on record with wreckage and riven storage though.

Owning a riven and having a "history" of it, in terms of data, are no different. I click the the codex lich entry, and it pulls up all of the information, just as it would a riven. The weapon with the % is the exact same as a stat roll with a %. The variation on its appearance is a simple numerical order. Possibly a hash, but probably not needed. Simple example: Male 0, Head 1, body 4, armor 3, legs 4, voice 3 etc (you get the idea) = 014343. Also they have specific warframes heads on their armor in some cases which maps to their progenitor. Then they have their progenitor, their name, their location of birth, their requiem history, every encounter you've had with them and what requiem order you tried... The more i delve into it the more it seems like 1 lich > 10 rivens of data. Liches are rivens in terms of implementation, with far more data, and no top end capacity.

In another thread i've also demonstrated how a riven can be boiled down to very few variables and could easily stored within less than a single KB of data (Far less, actually). If you -really- want me to find it, I will, but you should be able to logically deduce how to do so. Wreckage is in fact, even easier. You have your weapon 0-29 (30 weapons total), and it has a bonus: 15-60. This is information on the level of bytes. Liches are orders of magnitude more complex to store information for than Railjack turrets.

Edited January 13, 2020 by Skaleek

[(XBOX)Erudite Prime]

On 2020-01-11 at 11:28 PM, Vaeldious said:

just like how rivens are

Okay, then why can't we buy Wreckage Slots, as we can with Riven Slots?
Why doesn't the game let us buy slots or pick which Wreckage to get rid of when we hit capacity, as the game lets us with Rivens?

[dogbus]

Just now, (XB1)Erudite Prime said:

Okay, then why can't we buy Wreckage Slots, as we can with Riven Slots?

Thats a question for DE, not me. I'd imagine it's because the update is literally only weeks old, only part 2 of 3, and they are seeing how things work in practicality.

It also took years before the cap was raised on rivens, and that was after constant public outcry.

Additionally, you CAN buy component slots (repaired wreckage) as an alternative. 

[CarrotSalad]

5 hours ago, (XB1)Erudite Prime said:

Okay, then why can't we buy Wreckage Slots, as we can with Riven Slots?

No way man,

Doing so would show support for these stats to be a norm. Pretty much signal the death of this games future as it has now entered shovelware mobile territory.

[Steel_Rook]

18 hours ago, Shalath said:

From a a player's point of view I agree with you but DE have their investors to answer to and they don't care about the player base, they only care about the profits. I have a feeling that DE want more variety in the loot but Leyou wouldn't be happy with the extra expense on the DB side of things so DE had to take the middle road. It may even be the other way around and Leyou want the variety but won't let DE budget appropriately, I've seen such management decisions handed down from on high in the company I work for. Unless DE choose to answer why they want RNG loot but in a limited way we'll probably never know.

Majority stockholder meddling wouldn't surprise me one bit. I tell this story often because it's apropos, but I'm reminded of when City of Heroes Lead Developer at the time Matt Miller had to beclown himself defending a decision which it later turned out had been pushed onto him by publisher NCsoft. At one point, Paragon Studios came up with a new costume set locked behind raids and raids only. Matt then had to defend this decision because "it would be an insult to the art team" if the set were obtainable any other way than raid grind, because apparently it was just that good. It had glowy bits on it! Yeah, turns out NC wanted to incentivise running raids, and he had to come up with some backwards justification for it, because he couldn't very well say "I agree, but NC say we have to." Maybe DE are in the same situation, bending over backwards trying to explain Chinese decisions same way Blizzard handled BlitzChung, maybe they aren't - can't say for certain either way. Their behaviour is consistent with that, however, so I wouldn't be surprised if 15 years down the line it came out they were under severe pressure from their investors to release more virtual casino slots.

 

18 hours ago, Shalath said:

He's actually a bit weird like that and given the speed he completes content I expected him to burn out 2 or so years ago, yet he is still logging in daily. He's thoroughly enjoying Empyrean and getting that reactor is like a personal challenge to him as he wants his perfect build.

Fair enough. The reason I brought that up is I can only speak from experience, and I have experience in compulsion. The reason I keep bringing up City of Heroes is I played that game for 8 years straight, well past the point severe burnout and well past the point of habit. Some are creatures of habit with conditionable personalities. We tend to take activities out of the realm of a hobby and into the realm of "part of my daily routine, I do it because that's what I do." We make our own fun, we set our own challenges, we experiment with different ways to make an old game fun again. That's how I ended up with probably 100 characters in City of Heroes and tens of thousands of playtime, to say nothing of 30-40K posts on the official forums. Over time, I've come to believe that video games need to be fun FIRST before any grind, progression or monetisation is taken into account.

Obviously, that might not apply to your friend - I don't know him, can't really speak authoritatively. If he's enjoying the grind, then good on him - at least someone is 🙂 For the broader playerbase, however, I'm convinced that this level of fractal RNG is going to end up cheesing people off more than it'll keep them coming back. I guess some might keep hitting that lever the same way people keep playing the lottery despite never winning, but I personally find that to be pretty damn skeevy game design.

 

19 hours ago, ASHERATOR said:

Wow Steel_Rook I got to say well said on both these points.  I personally do not mind grinding or randomized drop tables at all because I have enjoyed the game mechanics but the new randomized stats does feel too much like a slot machine that does not have the enjoyable game mechanics anymore.  It also kills the whole idea of what a game is...A game is typically needs to provide at least a sense that it provides a level playing field with some balance to operate within so that it seems fair to the player base.  Just look at board games they may have so random rolls but its still an overall balanced even chance for players or ways to overcome bad rolls with strategy if nothing else. 

That's good point. I remember people complaining about XCOM being so "unfair" because success or failure supposedly all comes down to a dice roll. Like many others, I tended to disagree with that. Though RNG-based, the game still let you make your own luck because the probability of your rolls came down to soldier training, gear, positioning and a variety of ability synergy. If you found yourself taking shots with a chance lower than 75%, you were already doing something wrong. If you found your success depending on landing a single shot, you were already doing something wrong. And sure, that's a different "kind" of RNG - combat mechanics rather than drop chances - but the same rules apply. In fact, let me give you an example out of Warframe:

Void Relic drops. Let's say I want a Vectis Prime and I'm missing the Barrel. That's a Lith V7 relic which drops from over a dozen different activities with different probabilities. I could try running Ghoul Bointies, but those aren't always available. I could try running regular Cetus and Fortuna bounties, but ones with a V7 don't always show up. I could maybe try Exterminate or Capture missions if I can run those quickly, or if I want an endless one there's a particular Defence mission. The chances aren't great, but I can stay in the same mission for an endurance run and not have to constantly look for new teams.

Simply put, let more things drop from more activities, such that players can either pick the activity they enjoy or else min/max for drop rate and pick the activity they're most efficient at. Instead, Reailjack has the same issue that all of DE's content has - the "most valuable" item drops from only a single bottleneck activity. #*!% the rest of the game, you're going to be running that one single mission type or location over and over and sodding over again until you're sick to your teeth of it. You can't do anything to stack the RNG in your favour other than "kill faster," you have no real choices in the matter. Just keep grinding that one mission and keep hitting that lever.

Railjack progression is a major contributing factor to why I've given up on it until at least the Control intrinsic comes out.

[(PSN)MildObstruction]

I lost 2x vidar reactor mk3s because I guess I hit the limit from other wreckage during the mission so it started scrapping.  It would be nice for there to be a grace period or something.  I had just tidied up yesterday too but we got like 15-20 drops in 2 missions.