Let's get rid of Supply Bundles (Experiment)

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Anpu, Feb 26, 2020.

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  1. Anpu

    Anpu Avatar

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    How about we do a little experiment. Alter the loot tables and remove all the supply bundles. Put all of that loot from them into the general loot tables. This would ONLY be done on the QA Server. This would however take a LOT of dev time to adjust the loot tables accordingly. It would also be interesting to see however. And what players think about loot drops.

    We could then test that and give some feedback on QA.

    Take for example, a new player playing our game. They finally find a Grey Supply Bundle, running around Blood River Outskirts! They open it to find a Healing potion, Sugar Cookie, Potato and a Carrot. Granted, they have a CHANCE to find some stuff better. New Player observation: What in the hell?

    The RNG of Supply Bundles are a bad idea and just need to be removed. And it creates a bad perception of the game, because of this. And it only continues to feed this bad perception.

    Put ALL of that RNG of all Supply bundles items, to the loot tables (and weighted by area level and difficulty).

    What do you think?
     
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  2. Feeyo

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    I agree with you on this.
    But what also needs some work is adding more value items to the loot tables.

    I know what will happen now, like always. I will get flamed about yes but the crafted gear should be the best gear, yada yada...
    The problem is. Most players do not even know who or where these so called high crafters are. And how to contact/buy gear from them.
    So as long that there is no easy way (Auction House System) to ORDER/BUY that high end utterly awesome gear/items, players do not see any cool gear.

    I would prefer it more to have more looted items and gear options then searching for hard to find crafters.
    Give us more options in looting high end gear, patterns, recipes.

    If you still want to force us to use those crafters, implement some other techniques.
    Let us loot high end gear, that needs some activation/unlocking by a crafter so that we can equip it.
    The higher level the crafter, the higher level additional bonus stats get unlocked on that item.
     
  3. Vladamir Begemot

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    On top of loot changes, many things should be tested on the QA server, just to see if it works better. Try it out for a few weeks, throw it out if it doesn't work.
     
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  4. Kara Brae

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    More loot would certainly be nice, and the loot tables could be changed but I don’t understand what purpose the removal of supply bundles would serve. Couldn’t they just be left in place? :confused:
     
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  5. Drilikath

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    Sure they can, but leaving them in place, still gives the same bad taste for new players. They finally loot something they think is special, and BAM! Potato.
     
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  6. Nevyn Waldail

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    Supply bundles are an incredible wave of disappointment when you open them. They either need to guarantee at least something decent or as above suggests just lose them. In terms of items of value, it doesn't have to impact the "best gear is crafted" if the items of value were the better crafting materials. A bolt of carpacian cloth is worth around 4k plus just now and 5 gold or silver ingots is about 2k.
     
  7. Jezebel Caerndow

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    The problem is not the game then, the problem is expectations.
     
  8. Drilikath

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    Sure, the sorry drop rate from 1000's bundle opening is expectation issues. Sure it is.....
     
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  9. kaeshiva

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    Oh trust me. "What in the hell?" is also an old-player observation, especially on the more difficult/rare bundles:

    [​IMG]

    Its the same problem that we have with boss loot: 99% of the time its a disappointment, and 1% of the time you might get something good but likely its not something you need.
    I thought the whole point of the supply bundles was getting the bundle to begin with satisfied the "rare drop chance" aspect. But nope! Its a rare drop chance and then a rare chance to have anything in them. Seriously? To add insult to injury, having this be the only source of a large number of crafting recipes .....lets get a rare drop from a rare drop and hope its the particular rare drop we want. Ugh.

    I don't object to there being a rare chance at a super cool prize. But it shouldn't be absolute garbage by default. Beating the RNG the first time and acutally getting a bag should be a moment of joy, not pre-emptive disappointment.

    Even I, the most compulsive box-and-bag-opener, have just starting throwing supplybags in a box because best case, they're just going to clutter my inventory with random fruit and crap.

    I would suggest:

    Remove all maps, individual pieces of fruit, crappy cooked food, potions, scrolls, etc. from bundles.
    Nobody wants that crap, seriously, and if you did, you could buy it from npcs for pennies.

    Keep the rare recipes - but add another way to get them. You know, something involving crafting.
    Keep the rare artifacts, the rare houses, whatever. They come up so infrequently that its a non-issue. Those are your jackpot prizes.
    Keep gems, jewels, etc. these have a use or a decent sell price (ie, not 1 gold) if the player just wants to dump them.
    Adding some of the non-agriculture reagents in stacks of 5 or 10 (or larger) would actually be useful, especially since reagent use has gotten absurd. These at least stack with stuff the player is likely carrying.
    Adding other stackables like random monster essence, etc. would at least be useful / could be added to wherever the player stores these things.

    Decide what you want a bag to be worth - 200g? 500g? In my example above you see me opening TWO orange bags whose net contents were <100g in value. That should never happen. There should be a minimum threshold based on bag color/rarity to ensure that even if you only get reagents and gems, you at least get enough of them, valuewise, to not make it feel like a slap in the face.

    Opening a supply bundle at the moment just gives you an inventory management headache.
    The OP suggestion that we just skip the bundle and deal with normal, direct loot disillusionment (skip the middleman) is a decent one, but only if bag contents are seriously reviewed, I personally don't want the extra inventory hassle.
     
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  10. Rowell

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    Loot, in general, is disappointing... not just out of Supply bags. Nothing like taking on a critter with 6 times your health, only to get 6 gold and a rusty sword.
     
  11. Jezebel Caerndow

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    I'm sorry but it is, and you are doing nothing but proving my point, you are EXPECTING more. Did the devs ever say what the bundles will drop and how often? Where is the base from where you are getting the idea that it should be more then what that base is? Its just like I cant really call something small or big unless I compare it to something.
     
  12. Numa

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    Maybe the supply bundle loot setup makes sense for hardcore RPG/MMO fanatics. But for the F2P crowd, it's the kiss of death.

    I'm not sure I agree with the direction to make SOTA F2P - but now that it's done, be consistent with that decision.

    Pick a model that works. Make the loot worthwhile.
     
  13. Dartan Obscuro

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    Easy solution rename them potato sacks!
     
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  14. Vladamir Begemot

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    Re: Recipes. What works pretty great in No Man's Sky is that you get recipe points. Spend them as you see fit. It lets them dribble out the points, but every single one feels like you just got something. Because you did! Even if it is just a fraction of the recipe you need, you are one step closer.
     
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  15. Feeyo

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    Actually yes? http://sotawiki.net/sota/Supply_Bundles
    The "problem" is that the RNG for these items inside the bundles are "probably" utterly broken.
    As I have had lots of bundles in the years I have been playing and always I received the most crappiest items in the wiki list.
     
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  16. Drilikath

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    Points to post...

    Thanks for the addition.

    @Mac2 they did tell people what to expect from a bundle. Artifacts, Recipes, Decent stuff. Not 99% of the time a Potato, a Scroll(possibly), and a Gem(possibly). I have opened so many yellow bundle and got 1 damn potato, and maybe a recall, Nothing else...

    I have been here since day 1, I, and many others are not making this stuff up because we just want it our way. We want a better experience for everyone and making suggestions is how we do it.
     
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  17. Sentinel2

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    I've noticed Yellow and especially Blue supply bag drops have become very rare the last couple months. Usually when I go somewhere like the Rise (for example), I used to pickup several Yellows and a Blue now and then. These days I may spend hours to get one Yellow. Maybe.

    Guessing Port/Nip is tweaking the drop rates there.
     
  18. Jezebel Caerndow

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    Yes it says what they drop but does it say how often? What are your chances of getting a vexlyns ember of conflagration from a yellow bag? It does not say the chances, just says it is possible.


    Did they say you will get an artifact, recipe or decent stuff every time? Do you not get any of that stuff ever? I know I do not get good stuff every time, but my odds are about 1 in 5 yellow bags will get an artifact. Now, because I do not know what the drop rate is suppose to be, I just accept that the drop rate is what they made it to be and therefore have no comparison to say the rate is low or high. Now, if I compare this to other games that I have played ( and this means nothing because it is a different game with different odds and systems) the drop rate of stuff in sota seems EXTREMELY high for artifacts. I have not played any other mmo where I can get 50 artifacts in one day, or had one that on the first day an artifact came out I got one or even multiple of it. If I sat there an just farmed envy angel all day long I would probably have 5-10 bows and quivers. It took me 3 years to get my first iron necklace in knight online, it can take months to get a griffins eye in diablo 2. But none of that matters in sota as those games are not sota and have their own drop rates.

    Now lets say they do make the bags drop arties every single time and bosses drop their special loots every single time. What happens to the value of those loots now? Are they worth anything anymore? If everyone who could kill envy angel got an envy bow each time, do you still think envy bows would sell for over 100k? HELL NO, abundance reduces value while scarcity increases it, combined with the demand for the item.

    Remember before we could combine artifacts and how all the artifacts were dropping in price like mad as they were so abundant that attunement rings were down to 1-5k. They became worthless and ended up in people saying the loot sucks because they had no value. And everyone keeps on saying the worse examples while leaving out the other side. For example "I have opened so many yellow bundle and got 1 damn potato, and maybe a recall" or "99% of the time a Potato, a Scroll(possibly), and a Gem(possibly)" but you dont talk about the times that you did get stuff, and maybe even had some times where you got really lucky as well. And I highly doubt those are your real odds either. Just about a month or 2 ago I got 2 uncommon rings of wisdom from about 300 yellow bags. That was above MY expectations from before where I only got 1 from 1200 yellow bags. This did not make me start to freak out that I did not get 8 wisdom rings from the 1200 bags I opened before, I just accepted it and moved on and was happy with what I got.
     
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  19. Feeyo

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    @Mac2 you got some good points there. I am not saying that we should always get an artifact from a low bundle. But at least do get it from a blue (Rare) and for sure from orange (Legendary)!

    Rare and Legendary should always statically drop high end loot. At least one item 100%.
    The other bundles should also give us the RNG on items from the rare/legendary bags.
     
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  20. Oakenhammer

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    Supply bundles need some predictability to have value, so that players can have an expectation of the types of contents rather than 100% RNG. Nobody wants to open up a bundle to find a collection of miscellaneous junk, especially if it is a rarer bundle. I'd like to see something like this:

    Possible Contents
    • Raw Materials (wood, ore, fish, cotton, seeds, gem fragments, etc.)
    • Uncommon Materials (tin, bark, gem, beetle, etc.)
    • Rare Materials (T3 components)
    • Legendary Materials (artifact components, boss components)
    • Recipe
    • Player Crafted Gear
    • Artifacts

    Bags
    Grey
    • 100% chance for 5 - 7 Raw Materials
    • 100% chance for 1 - 2 Uncommon Materials
    • No Rare Materials
    • No Legendary Materials
    • 5% chance for 1 Recipe
    • 5% chance for 1 Player Crafted Gear
    • No Artifacts

    Yellow
    • 100% chance for 7 - 10 Raw Materials
    • 100% chance for 2 - 4 Uncommon Materials
    • 25% chance for 1 Rare Material
    • No Legendary Materials
    • 15% chance for 1 Recipe
    • 5% chance for 1 Player Crafted Gear
    • 5% chance for 1 Artifact

    Blue
    • 100% chance for 10 - 15 Raw Materials
    • 100% chance for 5 - 10 Uncommon Materials
    • 25% chance for 1 - 2 Rare Materials
    • 5% chance for 1 Legendary Material
    • 35% chance for 1 - 2 Recipes
    • 5% chance for 1 Player Crafted Gear
    • 25% chance for 1 - 2 Artifacts

    Orange
    • 100% chance for 15 - 25 Raw Materials
    • 100% chance for 10 - 15 Uncommon Materials
    • 50% chance for 2 - 4 Rare Materials
    • 25% chance for 1 Legendary Material
    • 50% chance for 2 - 4 Recipes
    • 5% chance for 1 Player Crafted Gear
    • 50% chance for 2 - 4 Artifacts
    @Elgarion could we get updates to supply bundles added to the Wishlist / Feedback?
     
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