[Patch 1.1 Bug] Item randomisation broken (hotfixed in patch 1.11)

[Draedark]

Your argument sounds good and logical.
Unfortunately only if you haven't read anything that has been discussed on the last 6-7 pages.
The gamplay mechanics of CP2077 cancel your argument.
I don't feel like explaining this to you, be so nice and read it for yourself.

I was more or less responding to those statement specifically, I even used a similar numbering scheme in my reply to help with the presentation. I am not sure how you would interpret that response as a response to the last few pages (that seem to be centered around reverse engineering/data discussion) but I will continue to "be so nice" and not dwell on that.

I am more interested in and speaking to the justification of it all (the why), which was the intention of my response. Please and thank you.

As far as the previous pages go, @Robert_Pelz was one of the few I saw who is plainly articulating the root issue. Most everyone else is just dancing around it.

Cheers Chooms.

 

[Hayte]

I do not even understand why CDPR decided to go after save/reloading for rerolling loot anyway if that is what they mean by a save/reload exploit.

Because its shit gameplay. I have save scummed a lot, mostly for discovery purposes. I wanted to know the rules of the game and how much I could bend them. I wanted to know if crafting was worth investing a third of my attribute points.

People don't save scum for no reason. Well designed systems do not break down when a few people poke at them.

Save scumming simply reveals the flaws in the game's loot generation mechanics - Where it is pseudo randomly generated, the method is not sufficiently unpredictable that a player cannot use pattern recognition to spawn repeat items.

If itemization is well designed, you shouldn't need to fix save scumming because there will be no reason to do it in the first place. Believe it or not, nobody does this for fun.

"Well designed" means procedural item generation is sufficiently unpredictable. Randomized loot is distributed and recurs in such a way that players do not feel irreversibly fucked if they loot a one of a kind item and it has bad stats. Because that was your only chance to ever get the item you wanted.

It means not waiting until level 40+ to loot anything unique because the upgrade cost is so insane that the only way to pay for it is to lean on a different kind of exploit - duplicating legendary samurai records at a machine vendor just so you can gather enough legendary crafting components to upgrade a single item by 40 levels.

The same logic applies to that exploit too. People don't dupe glitch for no reason. They do it because the game doesn't give you enough legendary crafting materials to keep even a single item at player level parity all the way from 1 to 50. Solve the underlying systems issue and the shit gameplay problem goes away by itself.

 

[Draedark]

Because the point of randomization in games is to create uncertainty, not remove agency. Players behave differently when the outcome of an event is not certain and you experience a broader spectrum of emotional responses. This is all good.

You can have too much randomness and too little randomness. Too little means the outcomes are very certain. I can already tell you what its like to have static loot in Cyberpunk and its shit. I can predict exactly what you are going to get, before you get it. You just tell me what your character level is and what building you want to loot and I can tell you every thing you are going to pick up, what container is going to drop them and how many of them you will get. I will be able to tell you what the armour on all the pieces will be, what mods they will have. Everything. Playing a game like that is just going through the motions without any feeling. No excitement. No disappointment even. Its just predictable.

Too much randomness and you also diminish player agency. The game becomes like a lottery. Nothing you really do can affect the outcome so are no longer really playing the game anymore. The game just happens to you. Drop rates in Diablo 2 for high runewords prior to 1.12 were so low, they were lottery odds. Don't even bother manual farming them. This is the reason why everyone I knew botted in Diablo 2. I had 3x DTNT Hammerdins myself and 2x on Anya because to hell with the 250,000:1 odds of shopping a 2/3 lightning sentry claw and then the 50% chance Larzuk will completely fuck you by giving it 1 socket instead of 2.

Hand placed loot doesn't mean all of it should be hand placed. Most of it should be randomized to some degree but every once in a while you fight a tough bad guy or kill a boss and you loot a hand placed item. Like Carsomyr in Baldur's Gate 2. Getting a +5 sword after killing a red dragon felt really good.

If the objective of RNG is to create uncertainty, but that uncertainty can be "fixed" by trying again, does it not cancel itself out and just amount to a time/effort sink instead?

Is the desired end effect of save scumming items not to be able to get item X at legendary quality with max slots? The only randomness here would seem to be how many reloads will it take to get what you want.

This looks more more like all player agency and no uncertainty to me. In that case, drops may as well be static and the same for everyone (which they were from what I understand in 1.10). However, folks did not seem to like that either.

So my point is that it seems to me that most of these explanations/justifications all pretty much cancel themselves out.

Cheers Chooms.

 

[RayBotty]

whelp, patch 1.11 says it fixed it. Can't redo my 72 hour gameplay with the collected legendary items with no sockets at all can I? and some I already disassembled. haha. good luck to me on my next playthrough.

Maybe allow common items to be upgradable through the ranks up to legendary items? so we don't look like hobos at level 50? Just a thought.

Am I to take it that the hand placed items that have been looted between 1.10 and 1.11 aren't retroactively 'fixed'? That they still have that "Me-Thrill" mod installed if they had less than their maximum number of slots?

 

[Dagobert666]

If itemization is well designed, you shouldn't need to fix save scumming because there will be no reason to do it in the first place. Believe it or not, nobody does this for fun.

Most important Statement!

Post automatically merged: Jan 28, 2021

Am I to take it that the hand placed items that have been looted between 1.10 and 1.11 aren't retroactively 'fixed'? That they still have that "Me-Thrill" mod installed if they had less than their maximum number of slots?

It is exactly like that!
If you have looted legendary garbage items, you can only change it on the PC via console commands or save Editor. You have no chance on console. What has already been looted now has the stats it has.

 

[Hayte]

If the objective of RNG is to create uncertainty, but that uncertainty can be "fixed" by trying again, does it not cancel itself out and just amount to a time/effort sink instead?

Is the desired end effect of save scumming items not to be able to get item X at legendary quality with max slots? The only randomness here would seem to be how many reloads will it take to get what you want.

This looks more more like all player agency and no uncertainty to me. In that case, drops may as well be static and the same for everyone (which they were from what I understand in 1.10). However, folks did not seem to like that either.

So my point is that it seems to me that most of these explanations/justifications all pretty much cancel themselves out.

Cheers Chooms.

You are completely misinterpreting what I posted by confusing save scumming and trying again.

Randomly generated loot is only appropriate for generic items that can either respawn or can drop from multiple enemies or static containers throughout the game. This way if RNG fucks you, it doesn't hurt so bad, because you can always move on, kill some more bad guys, open some more treasure chests and you might (operative word here) get luckier next time. You want the player to have hope, which keeps them playing.

It is not appropriate for Iconic weapons to be procedurally generated for example. Could you imagine it? You get a low base damage roll on Satori, no crit damage, no sockets and half attack speed. What are you going to do? Start a new character? Just suck it up and start coming to terms with the cosmic tragedy of it all? That the game just doesn't want you to live your dream of becoming the ultimate purple haired cyberweeb? This is what I mean about diminishing agency. Bad luck just happened to you and theres not a thing you could have done about it.

Save scumming is a totally different thing. Its a shit band aid for a poorly designed procedurally generated loot system. I would prefer to have a well designed procedurally generated loot system, that way there is no reason to save scum.

 

[wittynewt]

Because its shit gameplay. I have save scummed a lot, mostly for discovery purposes. I wanted to know the rules of the game and how much I could bend them. I wanted to know if crafting was worth investing a third of my attribute points.

No disagreement with me on that, you are selectively quoting me though as I explained why I thought going after save scumming first was bizarre, I will restate it again. We same to be on the same page anyway with that regard given the rest of your post.

However, I would rather CDPR focus on fixing the shit design and fixing bugs before removing "exploits" the player is using to workaround their shit game play mechanics and bugs. Once they have done that and improved the overall player experience then by all means close out exploits.

 

[Witcherlake]

If you are on PC you can use a save editor to open the sockets back up if you have already picked up a themed legendary during patch 1.1.

The way it works is they always have max sockets. If you picked up a legendary themed torso with 1 socket, it really has 4 sockets but 3 of them have a mod called "Me-Thrill". This mod disables the socket. It is likely some quick n' dirty method of faking socket randomization and is not intended to be found or acquired by the player.

With a save editor you can replace "Me-Thrill" with any throwaway mod (like a white armadillo). This will re-enable the socket and you can then replace the junk mod with whatever you have in your inventory.

I have SirBitesalot's Save game editor called CyberCAT, problem is whenever I got to V's inventory to look for "Me-Thrill" mod attached to the items nothing comes up. I have the legendary items equipped on my char so I can easily track them in the editor. Whenever I bring up the item's editor I don't know what to do with them nodes, I see attachments but in sequence of number codes, if I touch them or change they make errors in-game and cause CTDs. Best not touch them and leave it I guess.

 

[wittynewt]

I have patched to 1.11 and visited a few fixed legendary locations including our acuset one and can confirm that using save/reload to reroll loot for mod slots now works as it did in 1.06.

 

[Hayte]

I have SirBitesalot's Save game editor called CyberCAT, problem is whenever I got to V's inventory to look for "Me-Thrill" mod attached to the items nothing comes up. I have the legendary items equipped on my char so I can easily track them in the editor. Whenever I bring up the item's editor I don't know what to do with them nodes, I see attachments but in sequence of number codes, if I touch them or change they make errors in-game and cause CTDs. Best not touch them and leave it I guess.View attachment 11159441

If you are worried about bricking your saves, please make a backup first. Then scroll down below...

See this post first:

Almost 100% probability this is a bug. And I think I found which one.
I just looted this item. With exactly same stats.
View attachment 11156321
Then I opened save in save editor and found something VERY interesting: the item has 3 attachment slots! But with different mods installed in them.
First is an “Items.SimpleFabricEnchancer09” (which is green-quality osmosis), two others have “Unknown_4C882AC5:19”.
View attachment 11156324
Replacing those two with code for simple white armadillo gave me item with 3 slots, then I replaced them in game with intended mods.
View attachment 11156327
My guess: in patch 1.1 all legendary items actually got maximum number of slots (which is a good thing), but for some reason some of these slots being filled with bugged modifications. Mods not exist; slots they occupy cannot be seen.

You have to click on the mods/special tab. You will see 3 sockets if the item is legendary pants. Cybercat Save Editor refers to the "Me-Thrill" mod as Unknown_4C882AC5:19. This is the socket disabling mod. Replace Unknown_4C882AC5:19 with the Item ID for a white armadillo mod (I'll save you the trouble of scrolling back through the thread. Its 122530387466).

This will expose the socket to the inventory UI in the game and you can replace the white armadillo mod with any other mod you have in your inventory. Throw Mordhar a red point, since he is the one who figured this out.

 

[Witcherlake]

Am I to take it that the hand placed items that have been looted between 1.10 and 1.11 aren't retroactively 'fixed'? That they still have that "Me-Thrill" mod installed if they had less than their maximum number of slots?

I just updated, sadly yes, my legendary netrunner visor still has zero slots. haha. I scrapped the duplicate of that item and kept one for collectibles.

 

[Guest 4531988]

4 different characters doing Watson, Every time the loot is the same with the same mods from crates or side ops missions npc bodies for the ops.

 

[Witcherlake]

If you are worried about bricking your saves, please make a backup first. Then scroll down below...

See this post first:


You have to click on the mods/special tab. You will see 3 sockets if the item is legendary pants. Cybercat Save Editor refers to the "Me-Thrill" mod as Unknown_4C882AC5:19. This is the socket disabling mod. Replace Unknown_4C882AC5:19 with the Item ID for a white armadillo mod (I'll save you the trouble of scrolling back through the thread. Its 122530387466).

This will expose the socket to the inventory UI in the game and you can replace the white armadillo mod with any other mod you have in your inventory. Throw Mordhar a red point, since he is the one who figured this out.

I would assume there's nothing else to change in there.
My inner shirt though only displays 3 slot mod with me-thrills but it's suppose to have 4. how do i add the fourth slot?
Thank you for all this.
Better short work at save game editor than replaying the entire hours back.

 

[Hayte]

I would assume there's nothing else to change in there.
My inner shirt though only displays 3 slot mod with me-thrills but it's suppose to have 4. how do i add the fourth slot?
Thank you for all this.
Better short work at save game editor than replaying the entire hours back.

All clothing always has the maximum number of sockets allowable by its rarity (even if you can't see the sockets in game).

A legendary shirt will always have 4 sockets. Lets say you loot it in game and it appears to only have 1 empty socket (no mod in it). Pick it up, save your game and edit the save file. You see see that it has 3x Unknown_4C882AC5:19 mods in them, which disable 3 of the 4 sockets. The remaining socket will not appear in the mods tab (because its empty) or if there is a mod in it, the save editor will display a valid Item ID for the mod in question.

This is how the game fakes socket randomization. In 1.06 when you save scummed a Legendary Outer Torso, you were not re-rolling the number of sockets and won if you got 4. It always has 4. You were re-rolling the mods and you won if you got zero "Me-Thrills".

 

[Witcherlake]

I would assume there's nothing else to change in there.
My inner shirt though only displays 3 slot mod with me-thrills but it's suppose to have 4. how do i add the fourth slot?
Thank you for all this.
Better short work at save game editor than replaying the entire hours back.

I think i'm up to something here. I have an outer shirt (lucky drop from a mob) legendary with four slots. will equip and check its fourth slot and mimic how to apply/unlock the fourth slot on the other legendary item loots.

EDIT: nvm, as soon as all three slots were replaced with white armadillos the fourth one automatically got unlocked.

 

[Dagobert666]

I would assume there's nothing else to change in there.
My inner shirt though only displays 3 slot mod with me-thrills but it's suppose to have 4. how do i add the fourth slot?
Thank you for all this.
Better short work at save game editor than replaying the entire hours back.

inner Clothing, I think (not sure) 3 slots are max for that


Which I know for sure:
Outer boddy has max 4
Legs has max 3
Glasses have max 3
Shoes max 3
I'm not sure about anything else ...

 

[Hayte]

Legendary Inner and Outer Torso = 4 sockets
All other Legendary clothing (head, face, pants + boots) = 3 sockets
All Epic clothing = 2 sockets
All Rare clothing = 1 socket
All Common/Uncommon clothing = 0 sockets

 

[Draedark]

You are completely misinterpreting what I posted by confusing save scumming and trying again.

Randomly generated loot is only appropriate for generic items that can either respawn or can drop from multiple enemies or static containers throughout the game. This way if RNG fucks you, it doesn't hurt so bad, because you can always move on, kill some more bad guys, open some more treasure chests and you might (operative word here) get luckier next time. You want the player to have hope, which keeps them playing.

It is not appropriate for Iconic weapons to be procedurally generated for example. Could you imagine it? You get a low base damage roll on Satori, no crit damage, no sockets and half attack speed. What are you going to do? Start a new character? Just suck it up and start coming to terms with the cosmic tragedy of it all? That the game just doesn't want you to live your dream of becoming the ultimate purple haired cyberweeb? This is what I mean about diminishing agency. Bad luck just happened to you and theres not a thing you could have done about it.

Save scumming is a totally different thing. Its a shit band aid for a poorly designed procedurally generated loot system. I would prefer to have a well designed procedurally generated loot system, that way there is no reason to save scum.

To be fair, save scumming is a form of trying again, but thank you for the explanation. I do now better understand how you are differentiating the two. One is a game mechanic and the other is an exploit.

Also to be fair, it is your opinion that "Randomly generated loot is only appropriate for generic items..." and "It is not appropriate for Iconic weapons to be procedurally generated..."

From your perspective, yes I have gotten "fucked" by RNG and yes that is more or less what I do. I "suck it up" and continue playing the game. The difference I think is that I do not feel "irrevocably fucked." Now to be fair, did I craft and upgrade all of my items to legendary quality? Yes, that was not an issue. Did I save scumm to get them all to have max slots? No I did not, it was clear to me that was not an intended mechanic.

I offer that the definition of "well designed itemization" is wide open and up to an individual player's preferences. I personally would vote for randomization of all (kind of how it is now) but remove save scumming and other exploits, or to just make everything static because anything in between can easily end up with the RNG being mostly pointless.

 

[Hayte]

Also to be fair, it is your opinion that "Randomly generated loot is only appropriate for generic items..." and "It is not appropriate for Iconic weapons to be procedurally generated..."

Correct, but I hope I have qualified this statement with a rationale that makes sense.

In Baldur's Gate 2, looting Carsomyr (a one of a kind +5 two handed sword) from the corpse of a Red Dragon feels amazing. Its one of the best swords in the game, so you walk out of the dragon's lair with a swagger in your step. Thats what good treasure hunting games do - they make you feel awesome because you did a cool thing and you got an awesome reward for doing it.

Now imagine you struggle to beat the dragon and you get an empty beer mug. Not cool. You are walking out of the dragon's lair feeling like maybe I shouldn't have bothered. Maybe I should've stayed at home and drank beer. Real life does this to people. Games can do better.

 

[Dagobert666]

To be fair, save scumming is a form of trying again, but thank you for the explanation. I do now better understand how you are differentiating the two. One is a game mechanic and the other is an exploit.

Also to be fair, it is your opinion that "Randomly generated loot is only appropriate for generic items..." and "It is not appropriate for Iconic weapons to be procedurally generated..."

From your perspective, yes I have gotten "fucked" by RNG and yes that is more or less what I do. I "suck it up" and continue playing the game. The difference I think is that I do not feel "irrevocably fucked." Now to be fair, did I craft and upgrade all of my items to legendary quality? Yes, that was not an issue. Did I save scumm to get them all to have max slots? No I did not, it was clear to me that was not an intended mechanic.

I offer that the definition of "well designed itemization" is wide open and up to an individual player's preferences. I personally would vote for randomization of all (kind of how it is now) but remove save scumming and other exploits, or to just make everything static because anything in between can easily end up with the RNG being mostly pointless.

What you also have to be aware of is this whole "Looter Shooter" stuff is a decision by CDPR.

The original "P&P RPG Cyberpunk 2020" doesn't have anything like that.
Since a Liberty pistol is always a Liberty pistol, no matter who "drops" it, it always has the same stats. The original doesn't even have a level system. Characters don't have a level.

But if you go the way of the "LOOTER Shooter", then you should also consider why Diablo 1-3 and Borderlands 1-3 are so Popular. Because you can grind the loot you want. There is nothing better than finally getting the legendary item that you wanted to have all the time after hours and hours of grind. This is the human brain's reward system. That's how it works. It doesn't matter if it doesn't make logical sense, like you said. If you add random loot to your game, there must be a good opportunity for the player to get exactly what he wants.

Diablo 3 has therefore even introduced the personalized loot, the transmogrification, and the reolling of individual stats of the items. You may see it differently, but those are exactly the things that made random loot great in these games. If CDPR goes this way, then they should go all the way ...