PC Duke to Brass ratio needs to be seriously nerfed

[Brian9824]

The ratio of dukes to brass is far too generous. It should be closer to 10 dukes = 1 scrap brass. It's at the point where there is never any reason to buy the brass items from the trader because the raw dukes are so much better. Plus with t5 quests rewarding 4-5k or more of dukes, 1 quest can give you in excess of over 2000 casings.

I had some friends who were going around breaking radiators and spending all day in a building to gather 2k brass. I did a few quests in the same period of time and got 30k brass, plus the quest rewards, the xp, and more loot from the other POI's.

 

[Sjustus548]

Brass is so easy to get in A18. Out of all the different metals that is the one that we have the most of, and we don't even smelt down Dukes to get it. A mixture of finding more in trash, getting more from breaking down sinks, radiators being a commonly found item now, being able to break doors to get the brass knobs, plus other ways, means that we no longer have to worry about it. I remember in past builds brass was one of the rarest materials you could find. Now it is literally everywhere lol.

 

[Ghostlight]

Plus with t5 quests rewarding 4-5k or more of dukes, 1 quest can give you in excess of over 2000 casings.

OK so that's a quest that took all day probably, and gave just enough Brass to cover 1 player in the group's bullets for half a horde night.

Play on Insane, multiplayer and come back tell me that's enough Brass.

Just pointing out that not every group's Brass consumption rate is going to be the same as yours.

 

[Ghostlight]

Out of all the different metals that is the one that we have the most of, and we don't even smelt down Dukes to get it.

Your Coal/Nitrate/Lead miner is not pulling his weight. I suggest you sack him and get a new one.

 

[Brian9824]

OK so that's a quest that took all day probably, and gave just enough Brass to cover 1 player in the group's bullets for half a horde night.
Play on Insane, multiplayer and come back tell me that's enough Brass.

Just pointing out that not every group's Brass consumption rate is going to be the same as yours.

Actually I can clear a t5 fetch in about 5 minutes or less. I actually timed one a few days ago and from accepting to getting their and getting the bag took me 3 minutes. Was 800m away and bag was on ground floor. Otherwise you just walk around building until you get close to bag, then break in and grab it. Feel free to nerdpole as needed. Quest complete.

If we are playing in a group of say 5 people then that 5k dukes just because 20-25k dukes instead as we share the quest and EVERYONE gets the reward for it. So thats 20-25k brass in 5 minutes time.

I mean why would anyone ever sit there and harvest brass from a POI collecting 30-40 a pop when doing the quests gives so much more PLUS resets the loot, gives you a large chunk of xp, AND gives you 1-2 quest rewards which include purple items.

For the clear's they definitely don't take all day unless your group is a bunch of new players who don't need to work togethor. We usually do the T5's with 3-4 people and at most clear them in 2 hours of real time and get a TON of loot and XP for everyone while doing so.

I mean even doing the lower tier fetch quests gives you 1-3k brass for a few minutes work which is a far better ratio then sitting their stripping brass from buildings.

 

[Orclover]

Actually I can clear a t5 fetch in about 5 minutes or less. I actually timed one a few days ago and from accepting to getting their and getting the bag took me 3 minutes. Was 800m away and bag was on ground floor. Otherwise you just walk around building until you get close to bag, then break in and grab it. Feel free to nerdpole as needed. Quest complete.

Thats actually the problem, not the dukes to brass. Believe it or not Ghostlight is kinda playing the game as it's supposed to be when it is finished (albiet on masochist mode). I don't play the same, just to be fair, I use standard settings and cheese whiz like a swiss Cheese Monger.

See the game is designed and balanced around not using cheese. But cheese exist. The game is designed around the idea of going through a POI the proper way, not nerdpolling, not using horde night exploits and proper in design behavior by the player is unenforced...

And the cheese exist. Which makes the game a lot easier obviously. Horde nights can be safely ignored. Quest can be cheesed. Easy mode engaged.

The cheese will not always be there, thats what you gotta remember. We are playing Alpha, not even beta. It's called A18. The cheese is there really just to make sure we don't get stuck on the minutia while we test this out. Its going to get patched out at some point (most likely). We wont always be able to use frames as an elevator. We wont always be bale to make an endless loop horde staircases. At some point, were going to have to deal with these things directly, head on.

When that happens, 2 dukes per brass will not seem so generous.

Do you see?

 

[Brian9824]

Thats actually the problem, not the dukes to brass. Believe it or not Ghostlight is kinda playing the game as it's supposed to be when it is finished (albiet on masochist mode). I don't play the same, just to be fair, I use standard settings and cheese whiz like a swiss Cheese Monger. See the game is designed and balanced around not using cheese. But cheese exist. The game is designed around the idea of going through a POI the proper way, not nerdpolling, not using horde night exploits and proper in design behavior by the player is unenforced...

And the cheese exist. Which makes the game a lot easier obviously. Horde nights can be safely ignored. Quest can be cheesed. Easy mode engaged.

The cheese will not always be there, thats what you gotta remember. We are playing Alpha, not even beta. It's called A18. The cheese is there really just to make sure we don't get stuck on the minutia while we test this out. Its going to get patched out at some point (most likely). We wont always be able to use frames as an elevator. We wont always be bale to make an endless loop horde staircases. At some point, were going to have to deal with these things directly, head on.

When that happens, 2 dukes per brass will not seem so generous.

Do you see?

The issue is I can still clear the quest fast without ANY cheesing of it. Once you have hit tier 5 and have halfway decent gear its not too hard. I mean the reward itself is usually a good blue or purple item, plus a good chunk of xp, plus it resets a t5 building for looting, plus it gives the dukes, etc. I mean the t5 quests just give you SO much that its easily the best way to level, get loot, etc. Plus when you do it in a group your now talking 20-30k brass for 1-2 hours time. In ADDITION to the loot, exp, and quest rewards.

I hardly even use any ammo on them unless i aggro 4-5 at once. Just walk thru and melee em.

It also doesn't change the fact that with the way the dukes scrap it's LITERALLY idiotic to buy any brass items. You get more brass for melting the dukes you would have spent then you'd get from the items.

 

[beHypE]

Actually I can clear a t5 fetch in about 5 minutes or less. I actually timed one a few days ago and from accepting to getting their and getting the bag took me 3 minutes. Was 800m away and bag was on ground floor. Otherwise you just walk around building until you get close to bag, then break in and grab it. Feel free to nerdpole as needed. Quest complete.
If we are playing in a group of say 5 people then that 5k dukes just because 20-25k dukes instead as we share the quest and EVERYONE gets the reward for it. So thats 20-25k brass in 5 minutes time.

Cool. I can spawn 10000 casings for myself in less than 10 seconds using the cheatmenu. What's your point ?

For the clear's they definitely don't take all day unless your group is a bunch of new players who don't need to work togethor. We usually do the T5's with 3-4 people and at most clear them in 2 hours of real time and get a TON of loot and XP for everyone while doing so.

"Don't take all day", "3-4 people clear them in 2 hours" : choose one.

 

[Brian9824]

Cool. I can spawn 10000 casings for myself in less than 10 seconds using the cheatmenu. What's your point ?

Well one would be cheating, and the other would not be cheating. So that's the point. Risk/Time vs Reward ratio is not balanced. I mean seriously, your response to someone pointing out a way to get dukes massively fast is that you can cheat so it doesn't matter?

I mean by that logic any bug in the game is pointless as you can just cheat around it. Vehicles disapear? Just open cheat menu and spawn a new one.

items disappear? Just open cheat menu and spawn a new one.

Too much xp from crafting bundles? Who cares, you can just give yourself infinite xp so why bother balancing it.......

"Don't take all day", "3-4 people clear them in 2 hours" : choose one.

Please read, I said at MOST it takes 2 hours (i'm looking at you Higashi). Most take far less to do. Also 2 hours is nowhere close to all day unless you've drastically lowered it.

 

[OzHawkeye]

I have to agree with Brian here, brass is, at least in my single player experience, vastly too common. Apart from the 12,000 or so brass I've got sitting in a storage chest, the several thousand rounds of ammo for my shotgun and SMG turrets in another secure storage chest, and both my forges loaded with 30,000 brass, I've also got now just on 400,000 Dukes - and I don't do trader quests!

I've actually got more brass (effectively) than any other material in my whole base, other than stone.

And again, I don't do trader quests, so I've really done nothing even remotely exploitative to end up with those Dukes, just regularly selling to the Trader certain surplus loot items (armour and weapons especially).

I'm definitely not playing Insane, nor am I playing MP, so I can say only for my own experience so far.

 

[Brian9824]

I have to agree with Brian here, brass is, at least in my single player experience, vastly too common. Apart from the 12,000 or so brass I've got sitting in a storage chest, the several thousand rounds of ammo for my shotgun and SMG turrets in another secure storage chest, and both my forges loaded with 30,000 brass, I've also got now just on 400,000 Dukes - and I don't do trader quests!
I've actually got more brass (effectively) than any other material in my whole base, other than stone.

And again, I don't do trader quests, so I've really done nothing even remotely exploitative to end up with those Dukes, just regularly selling to the Trader certain surplus loot items (armour and weapons especially).

I'm definitely not playing Insane, nor am I playing MP, so I can say only for my own experience so far.

I definitely think a lot of cheesing would be solved by making the quests a bit more involved. A basic fetch quest is just too easy at t5, people will hate me for saying this but honestly all the fetch quests should scale with tier.

Tier 1 quest - Find 1 item

Tier 5 quest - Find 5 items

That doesn't solve the issue that doing quests for brass is far far far more lucrative then farming items for brass, especially as those items won't respawn (unless you do quests......). Then it becomes even more crazy when you do them in groups and can get 4-5 quests right nex tto each other or even in the same POI.

We've literally ran the bookstore skyscraper 3 times in a row and got so much loot because 3 of us had quests there.

 

[OzHawkeye]

I definitely think a lot of cheesing would be solved by making the quests a bit more involved. A basic fetch quest is just too easy at t5, people will hate me for saying this but honestly all the fetch quests should scale with tier.
Tier 1 quest - Find 1 item

Tier 5 quest - Find 5 items

That doesn't solve the issue that doing quests for brass is far far far more lucrative then farming items for brass, especially as those items won't respawn (unless you do quests......). Then it becomes even more crazy when you do them in groups and can get 4-5 quests right nex tto each other or even in the same POI.

We've literally ran the bookstore skyscraper 3 times in a row and got so much loot because 3 of us had quests there.

No doubt, if I'm halfway to being a millionaire without doing Trader quests, I can only imagine how easily Dukes would be gained if I did do them.

Ironically, I've got really no need for brass any more. I've got so much ammo for my turrets stashed away (and the blade traps are the primary BM horde killers in my base), and I'm already finding so much ammo that my Rifle has 2,000 7.62mm rounds in storage chests over and above what I'm carrying, that I really don't much need it for anything any more.

That said, I'm deep into late game and well past the point of any practical progression in my current game.

Edit: The other issue this raises, is that I'm playing a 4k map, have looted only 2 of the 7 or 8 towns that are on it, and I'm well past "done" for this game. At least for SP, even an 8k map would be massive overkill for me on default loot settings anyway.

 

[HungryZombie]

Actually I can clear a t5 fetch in about 5 minutes or less. I actually timed one a few days ago and from accepting to getting their and getting the bag took me 3 minutes. Was 800m away and bag was on ground floor. Otherwise you just walk around building until you get close to bag, then break in and grab it. Feel free to nerdpole as needed. Quest complete.

Man I really hope they do not balance the game around this type of behavior. If anything make it harder to skirt around the quest. Or just leave things alone. Games don't always need to save the player from themselves.

 

[OzHawkeye]

Man I really hope they do not balance the game around this type of behavior. If anything make it harder to skirt around the quest. Or just leave things alone. Games don't always need to save the player from themselves.

But they do need to balance for MP, especially if its a more competitive MP. To be honest, I'm not sure TFP can do much about the ease with which you can "skip to the end" of a Trader Quest (and this applies to dungeon POI's too), but it definitely is very easy to to skip to the end.

 

[jdm311]

I definitely think a lot of cheesing would be solved by making the quests a bit more involved. A basic fetch quest is just too easy at t5, people will hate me for saying this but honestly all the fetch quests should scale with tier.
Tier 1 quest - Find 1 item

Tier 5 quest - Find 5 items

I like this idea. I would like it better if they stacked so as to preserve inventory slots.

 

[Brian9824]

But they do need to balance for MP, especially if its a more competitive MP. To be honest, I'm not sure TFP can do much about the ease with which you can "skip to the end" of a Trader Quest (and this applies to dungeon POI's too), but it definitely is very easy to to skip to the end.

Well for fetch quests your even SUPPOSED to skip to the end. Otherwise it would have been a fetch/clear quest. I mean why have Fetch quests in the game if your not supposed to be able to avoid the clearing part of it. Otherwise just remove them and make everything a fetch/clear.

In part fetch quests lets someone built for stealth have quests they can do without lots of combat.

IT does get far worse in MP, especially when you can share them. Almost seems like the people you share a quest with shouldn't get the exact same reward pool and rewards as the person whose quest it is. So perhaps they should do the following.

1. If you complete a shared quest you get 1/4 or 1/8th or something of the xp and dukes as the quest owner.

2. Your quest reward is pulled from an entirely different pool of rewards that are not as good as the quest holders.

This way they still get rewards, but its not as excessive.

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I like this idea. I would like it better if they stacked so as to preserve inventory slots.

Yeah would definitely have to stack and should be easy to code to do so.

 

[Ghostlight]

Well I have not done tier 5 quests in A18 yet. However I did a ton of them on Insane in A17 and allocating 1 full day per quest was normal. We typically did clear quests though for the fun and the simply massive fights. They would easily spill over into night as well. There were HUNDREDS of zombies to fight. I guess the fact they also nerfed the hell out of POI zombies will make them go a bit quicker too.

But anyways, unless you are doing full clear on Insane, where 2 to 4 players will fire a LOT of of ammo (many thousands per quest per player - those Irradiated take a LOT to bring down), please do not assume your Brass consumption and needs is the same as everyone else's. That's all I'm saying. I've heard similar mis-information from players telling me there are enough Bones in the world, when in fact they haven't got a clue and are playing solo on Warrior on a private server or whatever. It's infuriating.

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I like this idea. I would like it better if they stacked so as to preserve inventory slots.

The clear quests would be better like this too as it would remove the danger of missing that one zombie. Eg tier 5....kill 1000 zombies. etc

 

[Brian9824]

Well I have not done tier 5 quests in A18 yet. However I did a ton of them on Insane in A17 and allocating 1 full day per quest was normal. We typically did clear quests though for the fun and the simply massive fights. They would easily spill over into night as well. There were HUNDREDS of zombies to fight. I guess the fact they also nerfed the hell out of POI zombies will make them go a bit quicker too.
But anyways, unless you are doing full clear on Insane, where 2 to 4 players will fire a LOT of of ammo (many thousands per quest per player - those Irradiated take a LOT to bring down), please do not assume your Brass consumption and needs is the same as everyone else's. That's all I'm saying. I've heard similar mis-information from players telling me there are enough Bones in the world, when in fact they haven't got a clue and are playing solo on Warrior on a private server or whatever. It's infuriating.

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The clear quests would be better like this too as it would remove the danger of missing that one zombie. Eg tier 5....kill 1000 zombies. etc

Honestly junk turrets also help a ton. I mean when we do it with 4 people we all carry a junk turret, place it down, and then usually just beat the hell out of hte zombies. Have 1-2 with sledges, some with clubs, bows, and they go down so fast. We never use more then 200-300 rounds of ammo really in total and most of that is towards the end where the toughest enemies are. I mean I can melee cops, demo zombies, radiateds, etc with my baseball bat.

Usually we split up into pairs and go our seperate ways and cover each other.

Also 100% on the clear quests, finding that last zombie or two is what takes the longest.

 

[jdm311]

The clear quests would be better like this too as it would remove the danger of missing that one zombie. Eg tier 5....kill 1000 zombies. etc

I remember when quests were first added that tier 5 clear quests might have that one zombie that didn't spawn in and showed an orange dot on the compass that led to no entity. That would infuriate me as all that time spent to clear would be wasted with no reward (other than all the looting done). I stopped playing clear quests for higher tiers until they fixed that (thankfully!). Now if there is one left to clear, it's usually the damn vulture flying around causing gps tracking mayhem.

 

[HungryZombie]

But they do need to balance for MP, especially if its a more competitive MP. To be honest, I'm not sure TFP can do much about the ease with which you can "skip to the end" of a Trader Quest (and this applies to dungeon POI's too), but it definitely is very easy to to skip to the end.

For sure. I'd have no problem with them nerfing the rewards a group gets if people feel the rewards are too much. Maybe they should all share one reward instead of each getting their own? You can run quests much faster as a group so your bonus is getting more quests done.