Feedback Request - Resource Patch I - Final Test

We are ready for final testings of the release candidate build of the upcoming Resource Patch on the Test Server. Primarily I am looking for any critical issues or bugs with the changes.

Specifically we are testing:

• Scavenging distribution.
• Sorting from old and new bundles.

If any incorrect or blank resources are found please post here.

Here is a full list of changes:

Resources
Regional distribution of scavenged and sorted resources.
Increased chance of rare resources in high danger areas.
Scavenging skill increases chance to find rare resources.
Weights of items revised and balanced.
Armor bonuses added to feathers.
Armor bonuses added to tree resources.
Armor bonuses added to crafted components and creature resources missing bonuses.
Increased amount of guts from innards.
Decreased chance of failed scavenging on scrap piles.
Revised quality of scavenged items found.

Interface
Rarity of material on items indicated by the text color of the item's name.
Spelling on leather craft tools corrected.

Bug Fixes
Fixed needles and leaves so that they work in armor schemes.
Fixed issue causing free inventory slots to be miscounted.
Destroying an object while another character is picking up the item properly blocked.

Improvements
Tribe updates radius when a character logs in. Upgrading to premium takes affect at this point.
Improved busy system for objects in use.
Totem placement checks based on new totem location, not player's position.

A few notes from the previous thread:

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Area based mats, look like they are still using the OLD area tables.

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If it still seems this way, please describe why. The old area maps and tables are not loaded at all.

These should be corrected now:

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Extreme, Low, Medium etc All seem to yield the same chance to get rare items

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There is a higher chance of rare items in the outer extreme zones.

Finding of rare items now should be properly affected by skill and tribal lands.

nice...Monday...;)

Hello I did scavage not far from my tribe and i did find old saw and that was nice So why we can`t not find them on normal server it nice not to have to run all over the map to find some For the rest i did like it all bye thanks

Hello...Gruu Here.

I did not test sorting. what i did was to make an average small loop thru 3 zones, 40 min. time.
my stats are as follows. Scavenging - 53.5, perception - 69.1, Charm 66.2

I started at zone 856 by Praeatorians and went thru 856 and 857 then back thru same ones back home.

896...30 pulls 1 osb, currency, rings and 1 small batch of nails....all else was std drops.
856...basic drops with schemes. 1 weapon hed.
857...3 pulls of metal small plates, 4 purple items, 1 BP, and a single pull of 135 Tin nails?

coming back thru same in reverse order...

857...more common items, more blue and purples.
856...basic
896...6th pull osb, 23rd pull osb, shovel hed and feathers

Over all for 40 min, items of note was Old saw blades and currency.
I am one of the whiners on OSB but no I think they are dropping too often and these are all in low danger zones.
Currency totalled about $1000.

there were 4 of us from same tribe.
total OSB 8, currency $4000, BP's 4, purple items...12 or more.

all in all the drops of rare items is too much. you have made it easier to be solo but now the need to trade is being eliminated thus new players may stay longer and sub but older players will get bored sooner. sorry i know...catch 22...cant please us all but you do what you have to do to make the game more appealing to more people to keep it growing.

After about 2 hours of scaving about 300+ scavs, I would say that the drop rate is low for rares in extreme areas. I barely could tell the difference. I could see a major difference inside my tribal area, and outside the tribal area.

I don't think Old saw blades (or as Gruu says OSB) are toooo common. I do believe they are to spread out, and not enough in the extreme areas. People should know where (and whom) to get items. So far with the new scav tables, I couldnt really find a major area to find X Y or Z at.

Polystyrene is way to common for a plastic also. I found that 60% of the plastic I found was this type.

Also I never failed on a junk pile. My skill is 99.9. with 110+ in both stats. Not sure what the chances of failure are but less than .25% is pretty low. If there is even a chance to fail.


I do like the text name color change for rare material types (titanium, Silver, Acetate etc) to help people notice that they did find a rare.

I'm not sure if your objective is this or not, I noted it last time, but the range of QL is very small. 4 point range. Lowest out of 300+ items I found was 95QL. Highest was 99QL. I found 25% of the items were 99QL.


Changes to how scav should work. I would like to see a table where its very clear what types (silver, lead, acetate etc) are in the "area" you are in. Meaning 50% or so should be that type.
I would like to see a MAJOR increase in rare, and very rares in extreme zones, make it noticeable.
Increase the range of QL items to be at best 25 point swing. Meaning if you can get a 100QL, then the lowest you would get would be 75QL, or MORE.

Good luck, I hope that helps.

Spent a couple hours today going from 781 (low) to 783 (extreme).

Biggest observation is that I had only one pull of cloth--crimson polyester scraps in an extreme area. Maybe cloth is a regional resource, but it shouldn't be.

Found plenty of rare resources but mostly on things that don't have a lot of utility--lead studs, heavy blocks, etc.

I have 100 scavenge, Charm--88.3, perception 85.9. I was finding only quality 91 to 96. This range seemed to be flat, i.e. chance of 91 was the same as 96. On the live server, I pull between 78 and 96 quality and the range seems to follow a bell curve with 98 and 96 being rare and the upper 80's being most common. The longer bell curve distribution is preferable, imho. On the previous candidate patch, I was pulling 91 to 100.

As prior posters noted, cash pulls are probably too common, 20-25% of all pulls. The number of fastener pulls is probably also too high.

Love the system window actually displaying what you found.

Found two old saw blades, but that is in the range I would expect for a long scavenging run.

Thank for the all the feedback.

A few comments:

- Resources are distributed by named region (Zephyr, Glendale, etc.).

- Old saw blades were never intended to be a rare item. The rarity of old saw blades was a mistake in the old distribution which was done much too randomly.

- Quality was originally intended to range +- 5 points from your skill. This applies to all found resources (hunted, gathered, scavenged). The programmer who set up the original variance set it up to be up minus 0 to 20 points from your skill. I've been trying out different compromises between the original design and what players have become used to. What I would like to do soon is convert quality to an incremental system similar to the power variable on creature parts. The goal is to facilitate stacking of each quality and prevent degrading a stack of one quality by finding items of a lower quality. This change won't be for this coming patch.

- Item rarity is currently defined primarily by materials. Materials and schemes should have the most noticeable regional distribution. Other items will be adjusted once I'm satisfied with the material and scheme distribution.

- The increased success rate of scavenging on scrap piles is intentional. With high skill and stats there should be no failure. The previous failure rate was much too high in my opinion.

The major points right now seem to be:

- Currency is too common.

- Fasteners are too common.

- Polystyrene is too common.

- Not enough noticeable difference in rare finds based on danger of the region.

This patch looks solid enough to go public on Monday. The distribution will be adjusted before the patch and will continue after the patch. I believe it's a better distribution than what's currently on the main server (the scavenge regions now match actual regions) and it's much easier to work with now.

You might want to look at cloth distribution before going live with this patch. I scavenged for a couple more hours today, and did find more cloth, but not much. Six cloth pulls vs. 5 old saw blades.

Another suggestion is to make copper a rare material since it is new. Tribes already have bins full of stainless steel and brass, but no copper.

Scav is not random also. I've noticed I can find the same item over and over and over using a relog. This can easy be exploited once you find a rare spot, also there is a way to change what you get and able to further exploit it. I can give more details if you cant see what I'm talking about.



Another major issue is with area's (aka regions) do not yield drastic enough differences of items. So if I goto Zephyr I should quickly see that it has a lot of Gold, but no titanium, Silver, Acetate etc. But gold is like 50% of the "rare" type there.
If I goto Glendale, I should quickly see that Silver is very common but gold, titanium, acetate etc is none or very very rare.

What I mean by this is lets say I'm in an low area where I find 7 out of 100 "rare" metals. Of those 7, 4 should be gold, the other 3 would be spit between a few other metals, and none of some of the other rare metals. So in an extreme area, I might find 21 out of 100 "rare" metals. Of those 21, I would get 12 Silver, and the other 9 would be split up with the other "rare" metals that are on the loot table, and none of a few "rares".

This would promote people to know where to go, and help trade. I think right now the scav tables are so mixed up and randomized and so close, few people will ever figure out where to go for what type of metal, or who really has a "low spawn" area for what types of rares.

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Originally Posted by thurgond

You might want to look at cloth distribution before going live with this patch. I scavenged for a couple more hours today, and did find more cloth, but not much. Six cloth pulls vs. 5 old saw blades.

Another suggestion is to make copper a rare material since it is new. Tribes already have bins full of stainless steel and brass, but no copper.

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Please do not make copper "rare" its a crappy .25 bonus, no need to have it rare. They changed stainless to "rare" because of the bonus even though currently its not rare.

Rare items are based on the bonus, not if its new or not. =)

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Originally Posted by MrDDT

Scav is not random also. I've noticed I can find the same item over and over and over using a relog.

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Please send the details to our bugs email so I can work on this immediately. Thanks.

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Originally Posted by Xsyon

Please send the details to our bugs email so I can work on this immediately. Thanks.

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Sent. Any other questions please reply here or in the email.

I like the changes as they are and think they will help to increase in game population. Thanks for your hard work.