PC Duke to Brass ratio needs to be seriously nerfed

[Scyris]

Skimmed the thread. Fun pimps, please dont balance the game around people that cheese pois. I dont and if you balanced for that I'd be screwed and screwed for playing the pois as intended.
Not judging either. You wanna cheese you do you. I have been know to do it. But I dont come to the forums asking for nerfs based on that either.

I generally avoid cheesing the game as much as possible, as it just detracts from the fun. About the only cheese I do, is wrenching cars before I start a quest at a poi which respawns them so I can wrench them again. I never like double loot the same poi by using the quest system back to back. Just like I never use junk turrets outside of horde night, as its a major way to cheese the game with their knockdown ability and ease of ammo. Only way I would is would be if I was a high int build with points in turret syndrome, which probally will never happen as I generally build with 0 int and rely on rng to get the schematics, its more fun for me that way.

 

[Kattla]

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.

IMO the ratio of dukes to brass is fine as it is. I see the dukes->brass conversion as a placeholder or makeshift solution to not beeing able to recycle spent bulletcasings and a countermeasure to possible brass shortage on multiplayer. Personally i'd rather see recycling of spent bulletcasings, but i can live with dukes->brass for the time beeing.

Odd, but not surprising, those who seem to have the biggest issue with the ratio of dukes->brass are the ones least affected by it. Hence why i suggest those people find someone to make them a modlet, or adjust the ratio in their xml files, to adjust the ratio to what they want, since it's so important to them.

If any change needed, perhaps let the trader have larger stockpiles of feathers and polymers , so both gunslingers and bowhunters are happy.

 

[Ghostlight]

Odd, but not surprising, those who seem to have the biggest issue with the ratio of dukes->brass are the ones least affected by it.

Yup. The problem is always the assumption that everyone else plays like you do, and hence has the exact same surplus of X, Y and Z that you do, and the exact same RNG luck. This is almost never the case!! RNG is RNG and everyone has a miriad of different settings they can change, and xml files they can alter; there's also solo versus MP differences, public versus private server differences, everything. So it's extremely rare that any 2 players will have the same experience.

This is why I argue that the answer to the question:

"Is there too much X in the game?"

always has to be "Nope".

 

[Ghostlight]

I got a easy solution, just don't melt dukes down if you feel its broken? Like for example I will not use junk turrets outside of horde night UNLESS I am a int build with perks in turret syndrome.. why? because its brokenly overpowered and makes the game a joke, the knockdown is what makes junk turrets so good, its not their damage.

And the fact they have no friendly fire is utterly ridiculous. Just saying.

 

[Ghostlight]

Well the argument that not everyone does it doesn't actually solve the problem.

Well in the case of your example.....making 50k dukes per day from quests is nigh on impossible for a lot of players. It takes an absolute niche set of circumstances for that to be possible. We can't do it for example because :

1) We have only found a single trader in our map

2) Tier 5's take us a full day per quest (Insane; GS 600+)

3) There are only 2 of us.

4) Tier 5's costs us 2000 ammo per quest, so we simply don't have the ammo to do any more than we do.

So we manage 10k dukes per day.

 

[Brian9824]

I got a easy solution, just don't melt dukes down if you feel its broken? Like for example I will not use junk turrets outside of horde night UNLESS I am a int build with perks in turret syndrome.. why? because its brokenly overpowered and makes the game a joke, the knockdown is what makes junk turrets so good, its not their damage.

That makes no sense. So the solution to every overpowered thing in the game is just don't use it? I mean at that point why bother balancing and just make every gun 1 shot a zombie. If you don't like it you can always not use the guns. Game's need to be balanced. It's like saying if i use an AK on a horde night my char will insta die, and replying with well don't use an AK on horde night.....

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Yup. The problem is always the assumption that everyone else plays like you do, and hence has the exact same surplus of X, Y and Z that you do, and the exact same RNG luck. This is almost never the case!! RNG is RNG and everyone has a miriad of different settings they can change, and xml files they can alter; there's also solo versus MP differences, public versus private server differences, everything. So it's extremely rare that any 2 players will have the same experience.
This is why I argue that the answer to the question:

"Is there too much X in the game?"

always has to be "Nope".

Except none of that is true. There is no RNG in quests. They are guaranteed and will give you the reward every time. Unlike the RNG to get a building with a good supply of brass for instance. Again it boils down to the fact that its the most efficient way to get brass by literally a factor of 10x or more.

I mean imagine if a certain gun did 10x more damage then any other gun, fired faster, cost less to make ammo etc. Would the response be to balance it, or would you go around and tell people to not use the gun or make xml changes to make it less OP?

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Well in the case of your example.....making 50k dukes per day from quests is nigh on impossible for a lot of players. It takes an absolute niche set of circumstances for that to be possible. We can't do it for example because :
1) We have only found a single trader in our map

2) Tier 5's take us a full day per quest (Insane; GS 600+)

3) There are only 2 of us.

4) Tier 5's costs us 2000 ammo per quest, so we simply don't have the ammo to do any more than we do.

So we manage 10k dukes per day.

Again, if its taking you a full day per quest then your doing something seriously wrong or are not playing on standard time settings and have shortened the days. Also if your using 2000 ammo per quest you have some HORRENDOUS aim. It would be rare for us to use more then 3-400 rounds in total for a t5 quest and often we use far less. We melee 90% of it, and only use guns for big groups to weaken em.

 

[Kalen]

2) Tier 5's take us a full day per quest (Insane; GS 600+)

As far as this point, it's been stated that the game is balanced for the default difficulty... so using Insane difficulty as an argument for balance isn't completely relevant.

 

[Kattla]

We melee 90% of it, and only use guns for big groups to weaken em.

Thought so.

Melee 90%, and still use 300-400 rounds of gun ammo, i think using 2000 rounds is about twice as good as your aim.

Question is, why melee 90% of it? Not to save on brass, ammo or time i guess....

 

[OzHawkeye]

Thought so. Melee 90%, and still use 300-400 rounds of gun ammo, i think using 2000 rounds is about twice as good as your aim.

Question is, why melee 90% of it? Not to save on brass, ammo or time i guess....

Why spend the bullets when you can just whack 'em over the head?

I only use guns when I have to.

 

[Aldranon]

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.

I agree about the fetch quest being too easy.

Maybe one quest box per tier? So a Tier 5 fetch quest has 5 loot boxes in various locations? I'm not sure really, as I tend to avoid T5 quests.

 

[Ghostlight]

Except none of that is true. There is no RNG in quests. They are guaranteed and will give you the reward every time. Unlike the RNG to get a building with a good supply of brass for instance. Again it boils down to the fact that its the most efficient way to get brass by literally a factor of 10x or more.

This is just one example. There are plenty of others where people state there is too much X in teh game where RNG is in play.

Also mining under a surface Iron node is the most efficient way to get Iron by literally a factor of 100x or more. So what?

Again, if its taking you a full day per quest then your doing something seriously wrong or are not playing on standard time settings and have shortened the days. Also if your using 2000 ammo per quest you have some HORRENDOUS aim. It would be rare for us to use more then 3-400 rounds in total for a t5 quest and often we use far less. We melee 90% of it, and only use guns for big groups to weaken em.

You can easily empty an AK clip on the big irradiated zombies, and you really cannot melee them down. You cannot do enough damage to bring them down in a timely manner. With a rad remover mod....maybe, but when there's 12 of them at a time....right. I am starting to realise we are doing tier 5s at very different difficulties and/or gamestages. Melee is not an option and I am fully specced for melee.

 

[Ghostlight]

As far as this point, it's been stated that the game is balanced for the default difficulty... so using Insane difficulty as an argument for balance isn't completely relevant.

So like I said when you complain there is too much X in the game or some ratio is out of whack, don't assume everyone's experience is the same as yours.

The game is balanced around default huh? Is that solo default or 8 player co-op default on a MP server with 100 regular players? And is that balance made around a play-style of X, Y or Z?

See what I'm getting at? You cannot balance the game for everyone, so it's dangerous just to assume you're right when you state the dukes/brass ratio is out of whack.

 

[Kalen]

So like I said when you complain there is too much X in the game or some ratio is out of whack, don't assume everyone's experience is the same as yours.
The game is balanced around default huh? Is that solo default or 8 player co-op default on a MP server with 100 regular players? And is that balance made around a play-style of X, Y or Z?

See what I'm getting at? You cannot balance the game for everyone, so it's dangerous just to assume you're right when you state the dukes/brass ratio is out of whack.

Right, and they're not trying to balance it around everyone. I don't remember the exact quote, but I believe it was to the effect that the game is currently balanced around single player on default difficulty. For single player at default difficulty, the duke/brass ratio is out of whack in my experience.

I'm sure once they're satisfied with the balance for single player/default difficulty, they'll start looking at other game configurations.

 

[Brian9824]

Thought so. Melee 90%, and still use 300-400 rounds of gun ammo, i think using 2000 rounds is about twice as good as your aim.

Question is, why melee 90% of it? Not to save on brass, ammo or time i guess....

Sorry, try to read what I typed. Rare to use MORE Then that. Most of the time we use far less ammo. It all depends on how many oh ♥♥♥♥ moments we have, if they start falling thru the roof all around us, etc.

We melee because we don't NEED to use guns and why waste ammo that we could instead use on horde night. Plus meleeing is quieter and it doesn't pull every zombie to us.

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This is just one example. There are plenty of others where people state there is too much X in teh game where RNG is in play.
Also mining under a surface Iron node is the most efficient way to get Iron by literally a factor of 100x or more. So what?

You can easily empty an AK clip on the big irradiated zombies, and you really cannot melee them down. You cannot do enough damage to bring them down in a timely manner. With a rad remover mod....maybe, but when there's 12 of them at a time....right. I am starting to realise we are doing tier 5s at very different difficulties and/or gamestages. Melee is not an option and I am fully specced for melee.

Well first of all if your emptying an AK clip on an irradiated zombie and not killing it your aim is horrendous. Don't spray and pray. Use controlled bursts and aim for the head. It also staggers them allowing a melee person in your group to walk up and pound them while staggered.

I melee radiated zombies all the time. When i'm running t5's and get multiple radiated zombies I use an m60 and use at most 2-3 bullets per to blast em in the head, stagger or knock em down, then switch to my baseball bat and finish em off. It's a piece of cake. In a group I often don't even need to use my gun as we just sandwhich em. It's not very hard when you mod your weapons for stun and knockdown.

If you are doing T5's as a group you need teamwork. We have a mix of melee and ranged and cover each other.

80% damage reduction + health regen and I don't care if I take a few hits. They are healed in a minute or two.

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So like I said when you complain there is too much X in the game or some ratio is out of whack, don't assume everyone's experience is the same as yours.
The game is balanced around default huh? Is that solo default or 8 player co-op default on a MP server with 100 regular players? And is that balance made around a play-style of X, Y or Z?

See what I'm getting at? You cannot balance the game for everyone, so it's dangerous just to assume you're right when you state the dukes/brass ratio is out of whack.

Per Madmole its balanced around SP at the standard settings. Anything other then that they don't worry about balance and its up to people to change it. Hence why I posted a suggestion to change how quest rewards work for MP.

In SP its broken as heck with the ratio. Clearly you disagree since your playing on super hard difficulties and spray bullets everywhere missing so you have a different perspective. So you can mod your files when you want to play insane since your playing on a difficulty that its not balanced for rather then making everyone else suffer.

 

[Ghostlight]

I love how you assume we miss instead of assuming we are facing far tougher enemies.

I actually tested this on the big irradiated bikers (which is by far the most common enemy we face). You cannot kill them with a tier 5 baseball bat, fully modded, 5/5 Pummel Pete without rad remover. They regen too many HP. You think if melee was viable I'd be using bullets? Try a dozen of them at a time with melee. Although having said that, Irradiated Spiders are the toughest enemy in the game.

 

[Ghostlight]

Also mining under a surface Iron node is the most efficient way to get Iron by literally a factor of 100x or more.

How about addressing this quote I made above, since it's on topic? There are endless examples of methods in the game to gain a particular resource that are massively more efficient than the many other available methods for getting the same resources. What's the big deal? Why aren't you complaining that the amount of Iron you can get in an in-game hour or two mining is OP compared to looting Iron-based crap in houses and scrapping it? Mining is far less effort than looting for Iron and probably 100x more efficient, never mind 10x. Help ma boab! It's OP! Nerf Nerf nerf.

And again, dukes melted for Brass are dukes not spent on other often very game-changing items. That is a huge deal.

 

[OzHawkeye]

How about addressing this quote I made above, since it's on topic? There are endless examples of methods in the game to gain a particular resource that are massively more efficient than the many other available methods for getting the same resources. What's the big deal?
And again, dukes melted for Brass are dukes not spent on other often very game-changing items.

Well, addressing this and your prior post both:

1. Game is balanced around default difficulty as has been mentioned before, and on default difficulty I can say for sure, that I'm awash in Dukes and that it has effectively rendered Brass an infinite resource.

2. No doubt there are other balance issues in A18, and hopefully they all get looked at, but that has no bearing on whether this particular one needs attention or not.

 

[Brian9824]

I love how you assume we miss instead of assuming we are facing far tougher enemies.
I actually tested this on the big irradiated bikers (which is by far the most common enemy we face). You cannot kill them with a tier 5 baseball bat, fully modded, 5/5 Pummel Pete without rad remover. They regen too many HP. You think if melee was viable I'd be using bullets? Try a dozen of them at a time with melee. Although having said that, Irradiated Spiders are the toughest enemy in the game.

I'll agree to disagree with you then. However as its been said numerous times you are not playing on the standard settings which the game is balanced for. If you wish to make it harder then that's your choice. The game is balanced around the default settings, and with those settings its not balanced.

I mean heck, I could set the game to the easiest setting and say all zombies should be buffed because its too easy and that would be just as wrong.

 

[Brian9824]

How about addressing this quote I made above, since it's on topic? There are endless examples of methods in the game to gain a particular resource that are massively more efficient than the many other available methods for getting the same resources. What's the big deal? Why aren't you complaining the amount of Iron you cam get in an in-game hour or two mining is OP compared to looting Iron crap in houses and scrapping it? Mining is far less effort to boot and probably 100x more efficient never mind 10x. Help ma boab! It's OP! Nerf Nerf nerf.

What do you want me to address? That mining iron is the most efficient way to get iron? Ok sure.

If im in a group of 5 people do I all of a sudden get 5x the iron for the same amount of work?

Do I get 13k bonus xp every time I mine Iron?

Do I get dozens of loot chests and containers every time I mine Iron?

Do I get bonus items for mining iron as a reward?

No, didn't think so. Also Mining those i-beams, destroyed stone, blue pallets for cement/cobblestone, etc are all just as good as mining rocks for instance. Looting and scrapping also generates a ton of iron and gives you loot that can be used to get brass, or to gear yourself up so that's another method that's quite profitable as well.

The entire point you keep refusing to address is that the quests are in part OP because its not JUST brass you get. You get

1. Dukes (brass)

2. An entire huge POI filled with loot reset and all the loot in it

3. XP from the quest

4. ADDITIONAL items as a reward when done

And those rewards unlike every other activity are MULTIPLED by the number of people in your group for #1,3, and 4. Which makes it even more imbalanced when you do it with others.

 

[Sjustus548]

Every item in the game can be harvested infinitely in one form or another. Just because you can harvest brass faster in one form than you can another does that really even mean anything? You can make a ton of brass casings but you will still be gated by how much gun powder and lead you can craft. We don't smelt dukes down to brass and we still have more brass and casings than we know what to do with. I can go out mining for 15 minutes and have 30k iron, lead, coal, or nitrate, sometimes multiple of these. Until they go thru and make everything more scarce I don't see a point in just focusing on one way to get brass.