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

[Atletikus]

With your suggestion you are forcing everyone to spec into the technical skill tree to fix an issue with loot itemisation.

Much easier to just change it so that each loot tier will roll with a fixed number of mod slots, see my post above yours. That single change would address all your points and be much easier to implement. CPDR can "fix" crafting separately.

You do realize you are kind of implying it is your right to be as well-equipped as the people who invest heavily (as you must) into crafting. This is a bit like me complaining I have a hard time hacking everything to death with my towering intellect of 3. Crafting was largely made redundant when there were so many exploits in the game, this restores some balance and usefulness.

Besides, no one is forced to adopt any particular build. There will be very good options, just not at your save-scumming fingertips. This will mostly negatively impact the customization options for those who value substance over style. But it will negatively impact everyone and lessen realistic customization options and this is bad.

That said, the huge variation in mod slots is another mark of poor design. Legendary clothing with 0 slots is legendary in name only. A rare with a single slot would be MUCH better. Your idea is a sound one, though to completely eliminate randomness also eliminates the excitement factor of finding the perfect item. I would suggest rather to limit it from 0-4 for legendary inner torso to for instance 2-4 or 3-4. This way you keep the luck of the draw excitement, but don't completely frustrate players with bad luck/little patience.

 

[wittynewt]

You do realize you are kind of implying it is your right to be as well-equipped as the people who invest heavily (as you must) into crafting. This is a bit like me complaining I have a hard time hacking everything to death with my towering intellect of 3. Crafting was largely made redundant when there were so many exploits in the game, this restores some balance and usefulness.

Besides, no one is forced to adopt any particular build. There will be very good options, just not at your save-scumming fingertips. This will mostly negatively impact the customization options for those who value substance over style.

That said, the huge variation in mod slots is another mark of poor design. Legendary clothing with 0 slots is legendary in name only. A rare with a single slot would be MUCH better. Your idea is a sound one, though to completely eliminate randomness also eliminates the excitement factor of finding the perfect item. I would suggest rather to limit it from 0-4 for legendary inner torso to for instance 2-4 or 3-4. This way you keep the luck of the draw excitement, but don't completely frustrate players with bad luck/little patience.

I am not implying that at all, if you read it that way then that was not my intention. Possibly you have not read my earlier post that had more explanation in it. All three of my V's are 18 in technical, I have always enjoyed ingame crafting when a game supports it. I would not force my enjoyment of ingame crafting on others though who maybe prefer a more looter/shooter approach which the game appears to support if loot itemisation was not very poorly thought out.

I would rather games do not encourage save/reload cycling at all with any mechanics. I thought I made that clear in my posts. My gaming time is limited so I would rather not have to do that but I also like to maximise my game play (which is one reason I often are happy to explore game crafting systems) and so I will spend some time in game trying to max things like mod slots via save/reload if that is the only option presented to me. I would really rather not do that.

I do not see why an issue with general loot itemisation should be fixed in the crafting system only is what I am saying as when I came to this thread that I saw quite a few other posters suggesting that this issue should be fixed with crafting changes.

If there is an issue with loot itemisation with mod slots then fix that with a global change to all loot (crafted or not) and all the save/reload/RNG frustrations etc go away and CDPR can also make some more overhaul changes to crafting to make it the system is should be.

 

[Robert_Pelz]

Wow, congrats!
I just tested it and it seems true. I kept away from a lot of Legendary Items with unique looks, so I could get them later. It's about the looks in that case and I wanted to take my time getting the best version possible without wasting all of my ressources. Now I tried to find the "sets". Like the complete Corpo Suit and all parts are below optimum and can't be changed on a save game of way over 150 hours anymore.
Thank you CDPR, I am now done with the game!
You didn't fix the bugs that were easily fixable and prevented people from getting Achievements/Trophies, you didn't fix the bug were vendors offered only 2 out of 5 Blueprints and then never restocked (so much for the theory about strengthening making your own items), but you put in effort to screw those that tried to get the best out of their hundreds of hours of playing the attrociously bug ridden mess of a game your corporate overlords forced you to release. Wasn't it enough that people had to reload to make absolutely unique Items viable for use? No... Now they can't even do that anymore. I sincerely hope this change was an accident, if not you better give people an option to rework these Items and make them viable. I am saying that from the standpoint of someone who actually imvested 20 points into tech, so they can craft good stuff even though they have to force themselves to reload again and again to find a viable option for the stats they can't change later even though they are like crafting masters. Seriously disappointed with this!

 

[Fishwarp]

Feeling this may be unintentional, playing this morning and found the drop for the Legendary Netrunner Visor now gives two identical zero slot items.

I'd prefer a set to be a mix of slot levels, but then have an expensive slot number upgrade mechanisms to enable use to scale nicely.

Without this type of mechanism, or always giving max slots, you end up with a character with terrible dress sense to give the required perks.

Post automatically merged: Jan 23, 2021

The legendaries get fixed across saves. I got a netrunner visor with 0 slots with my lvl 20, couldn't reroll it (I usually don't but it's a really cool visor with 0 slots...). Then I try to loot it with my lvl 47. Same armor, no slots. The items get determined for all game saves the first time you encounter them, that is... a problem.

I have the same issue with this item, it doesn't look random, it looks like the same fixed mod slots and mods for everyone.

 

[TheVoices212]

On one hand, I hate save scumming, on the other hand having a legendary item roll 1 socket and be weaker than rare item that just dropped with 3/4 sockets sucks. Something definitely needs to be done. For one I would definitely have all Legendary items automatically have the maximum number of sockets etc. Or perhaps a way to upgrade the number of sockets by crafting? As the game stands I freely admit I save scummed to reroll items every time I got a legendary.

 

[Axvil]

Great..
The unique legendary armor sets should have spawned with max mod slots from the start, but at least players with some patience could work around the RNG.
Now they decided to "ninja-fix'' it, while not addressing the clothing store legendary blueprint issue.
Really feels like they are going in the wrong direction. This is less and less fun..

 

[Dagobert666]

Attention!
a terrible thought just occurred to me. Legendary loot properly drop only at level 36? in boxes. That means if you explore a bit with level 12-36 the game takes away any chance of legendary loot ??? Forever? That must be a mistake. CDPR cannot want that.

 

[Hayte]

Feeling this may be unintentional, playing this morning and found the drop for the Legendary Netrunner Visor now gives two identical zero slot items.

This is a bug that existed prior to 1.1. Netrunner visor is lootable twice from the locker, one is scaled to player level, the other is minimum level. In this case, you rolled zero sockets but prior to patch 1.1 you could reload your game and roll up to 3 sockets (which will apply to both versions of the visor).

The legendaries get fixed across saves. I got a netrunner visor with 0 slots with my lvl 20, couldn't reroll it (I usually don't but it's a really cool visor with 0 slots...). Then I try to loot it with my lvl 47. Same armor, no slots. The items get determined for all game saves the first time you encounter them, that is... a problem.

This is interesting. I have 2 characters (level 50 and level 31) so I'll do some more testing to verify this. I'm a persistent manual saver so I have 298 manual saves on the level 50 character and 91 saves on the level 31 character. Should be a pretty comprehensive library of savegames near lootable containers to compare between playthroughs (if I can find the right ones).

Off the top of my head:

Gig: Getting Warmer - has a safe next to 8ug8ear that always has a Military-Graded Aramid Netrunning Suit. This can be legendary but there is a minimum level requirement. Its higher than level 31. It could be 36 as Dagobert666 mentioned in the previous post.

Gig: Hacking the Hacker - there is a case and a box which can both roll legendary quality items. I believe 1 of them is always a DB-4 Igla Shotgun, the other one is generated randomly and I don't know the triggers. The item has changed at least once in my level 31 playthrough. It was a pair of epic Boostknit Neotac Pants. I confirmed it could roll legendary by using Cyber Engine Tweaks to set character level to 50 and save/reload scumming until it changed item quality. I decided to leave it for later so I could get it legendary, but upon returning just now it has changed to a pair of rare glasses.

I'll post screenshots shortly so other people know which ones to use for testing.

 

[Robert_Pelz]

So, I tested it with areas I have never been to before (and for that reason didn't even get close to the item in question). It's now always the same item with (in my case) suboptimal stats. So a jacket that could have had 4 slots before 1.1 now always has 3 slots and 185,1 armor. It doesn't matter if you have "looked" at it ever before, nor if you walked close enough to get the option of seeing the golden symbol in the distance... It's just set in stone now. Played the game for 190 hours and just went to find some nice shirt that is 100% unique in the game and fits your style? Oh, right. The game decided to spawn it with the lowest amount of slots possible so it's useless. But at least you can craft yourself a green plastic shirt out of the 1 blue print you got where 5 should have been. XD

Post automatically merged: Jan 23, 2021

As i said save/reloading in front of a container containing a legendary that has say 1 mod slot will still change the number of mod slots on the item, i just did it with 3 legendary items in watson, Rockerboy outer, Neo tec badge pants and gold tipped boots, all initially undesired mod slots, all now max on v1.1 xbox

Have these Items been in a container (like a box) or a corpse?

 

[explicit707]

The mod slots should be fixed, not random. Maybe the sets in the world should have never been Legendary in the first place? Maybe epic with the max of 2 slots so crafting is still the way to go for legendaries. Randomness in a game like this is expected because it creates a dynamic experience that changes every time. I have seen this kind of randomness on gearing criticized universally in every game I've seen it in, yet developers keep implementing this terrible idea. What they are doing is forcing users that would have never looked to the mod community to give it a look, even if just to guarantee they have the look they want with maximum mod slots at level 50.

In a game where "it doesnt' matter what you do as long as you look good doing it" being forced to dress like a clown to maximize player power is quite silly. I would like to either see this changed, or you need some sort of "visual only" system to make your gear look the way you want. Some of the looks provided are immersion breaking for me, and in an RPG that's not a good thing. CDPR really needs to re-evaluate the looks of gear and the randomness of mod slots, especially with the unannounced change to loot aquisition in 1.1.

That's my 2 cents, and hopefully someone at CDPR is reading comments like this and taking it to heart. I would rather not look at mods to fix something so important as this.

 

[eradmis]

Sure but why make changes to one system to fix a problem in another? The fundamental issue here is that loot whether crafted or dropped is subject to mod slot RNG.

It's a looter shooter. That's only a problem because it can happen to unique items. RNG isn't fundamentally bad. Equipment should come with a wide variety of quality as long as it doesn't break unique items or encourage save scumming or render a stat/system worthless (ie crafting).

 

[i.Gilgamesh]

At least we should be able to get maxed items when we craft them.

 

[Aetrion]

Removing the save scumming wasn't a bad idea, having unique items with random stats was a bad idea.

 

[wittynewt]

It's a looter shooter. That's only a problem because it can happen to unique items. RNG isn't fundamentally bad. Equipment should come with a wide variety of quality as long as it doesn't break unique items or encourage save scumming or render a stat/system worthless (ie crafting).

I am struggling to see how the points you are making are answering the point I made that you have selectively quoted which was in answer to your suggestion about making changes to crafting to fix this issue.

Yes the game has loot and guns that shoot although it not completely a looter/shooter because it also has crafting I would argue. Equipment already does come in a wide variety of quality: common through to legendary.

I guess we differ on what determines an items quality based on what you have written. I would argue that given the loot itemisation system already has a item tier system common to legendary then we do not also need an additional layer of quality tied to mod slots where you have a bad epic/legendary to a great epic or legendary based on the number of mod slots and item has.

We both agree save scumming should be discouraged and great loot should be great loot and not be dependant on RNG I think.

My fundamental point in answer to your original post that suggested changes to crafting to address these loot itemisation issues to deal with save scumming and make sure great loot remains great loot was that CDPR should fix the issue at source - namely fix loot itemisation so that each quality tier has a fixed number of mod slots rather than go and make changes to a different system to fix the issue.

Editted:

Just adding this extra point as well, I would also argue that this is not only a problem because it can happen to the unique items scattered around the game world as you stated. I would rather not spend a lot of unnecessary time crafting legendary clothing and weapons in the hope I am blessed with 3/4 mod slots.

If CDPR address loot itemisation in the way that the OP and myself and others have suggested then save/reload is not required whether the loot is dropped or crafted.

This is a single player game which is primarily a story driven action/adventure/rpg. There is no need for CDPR to boost "ingame player engagement time spent" by embracing lots of RNG mechanics like some other online loot/shoot games do.

 

[Realgametester]

All of this just shows how randomized looting is a bad idea. I honestly don't understand why the developers can't understand this. Who actually enjoys not knowing if the loot they find will be good or useless? Who actually thinks randomized loot is a good idea?

Is randomized loot just easier to implement into the game or do developers simply fail to understand the mentality of gamers.

 

[msxyz]

The only way to prevent savescumming is having static, hand placed loot. The moment the system forces 'random' levelled stuff onto the player, then the player is legitimized to exploit such dumb system.

Is randomized loot just easier to implement into the game or do developers simply fail to understand the mentality of gamers.

Designing missions becomes more difficult because you need to place the best loot behind challenging quests. With random loot you can design hundreds of fedex or outpost quests without fear of making the game too easy because every lvl.1 player can meta play to get all the best items at the beginning of the game.

 

[Robert_Pelz]

...
Is randomized loot just easier to implement into the game or do developers simply fail to understand the mentality of gamers.

I figure it's actually much harder to implement.
Developers probably think that randomizing stuff gives people replay value, cause now to get my Corpo Jacket I have to make a new character or maybe later down the line do a new game plus and HOPE it will spawn in a better shape. What they don't realize is, that they rather discourage me from playing it ever again cause there is quite a good chance I will be screwed again after lots of time investment.

 

[wittynewt]

I did a little bit of testing across my three V's. Limited testing so far.

I am a bit of a manual save junkie and have a couple of hundred saves across each playthru and I found a few of these that are close to legendary loot drops.

The RNG for on ground loot drops now appears to be tied to the game save in 1.1 whereas it was not in earlier versions. Typically games use a RNG seed system for these RNG rolls and sometimes these seeds are within a save game or they are regenerated on certain events such as a reload etc or some other ingame event.

I had previously noticed that loot that dropped from bosses was tied the the seed at the point the boss died rather than a save game before looting the boss. This still seems to be the case in my limited tests and this behaviour now appears to be the norm for all loot. Reloading a save no longer rerolls loot whether on a body or on the ground.

My guess is that maybe the change made in 1.1 is unintended and is due to a change in how some parts of the game are making use of RNG seeds to reroll things.

 

[eradmis]

All of this just shows how randomized looting is a bad idea. I honestly don't understand why the developers can't understand this. Who actually enjoys not knowing if the loot they find will be good or useless? Who actually thinks randomized loot is a good idea?

Randomized loot is designed to play on the same human emotions as gambling. Getting lucky feels good. It also let's you create item variety more easily. Level range*rarity range*slot range*modifier combinations*starting mods*elements is a lot of different guns for even a single model of gun.

The alternative is imagine every single Pulsar in the game is identical. Players wouldn't even bother picking them up after the first time. Loot becomes meaningless.

 

[Robert_Pelz]

Randomized loot is designed to play on the same human emotions as gambling. Getting lucky feels good. It also let's you create item variety more easily. Level range*rarity range*slot range*modifier combinations*starting mods*elements is a lot of different guns for even a single model of gun.

The alternative is imagine every single Pulsar in the game is identical. Players wouldn't even bother picking them up after the first time. Loot becomes meaningless.

I agree to some degree. I think randomizing the non-unique drops from enemies is vital in making people still pick up Items, BUT I also think randomizing important and non-changable stats on unique and not reproducable items that are placed in fixed spots on the map at what seems to be the point of a patch (the randomizing, not the placement) after for lots of players hundreds of hours of gameplay and then locking these stats in doesn't elevate the experience.