Disappointed in the "tweaked loot"

[FDru]

I guess that's the Drox term for "magical" items.

So I was "fortunate" in my first run to get a nice collection of decent items with +tweaked loot stats. I was running around at level 45 with about +220% tweaked loot in addition to over 1000 ATK (so over 90% chance to hit equal levels on the stat sheet). Unfortunately, despite getting a large amount of "Artifacts" and "Very Rares" and several of the blue ones (can't remember what they're called), the majority of my equipped items were Common, Uncommon or Rare and even a few "Normals".

Why? These "rare" items are constantly spawning with such awesome stats as +radar, +durability, "Unbreakable", and spatterings of very minor resist increases, instead of anything important like ATK, DEF, +tweaked loot (to replace the ones I was using), increased damage or native stats. Like why would I ever downgrade my weapons to equip something that has +10 explosive resist over the normal thing I'm using? And a rare computer should definitely offer higher attack and defense over its normal counterpart. Instead? Some +durability and +radar (or whatever) which could leave my just using the normal item if it happened to have a more decent base modifier.

I get that the stats are random, and I'm okay with that. What bothers me is the seeming uselessness of the stats I listed; especially things like durability which don't even come into play unless you get totally pummeled by something (ie: not something you typically want to build for, pretty much ever). Resists are okay, but I typically want to focus on Thermal, Kinetic and Explosive (unless I'm missing something, these are the most effective damage types at getting through armor/shields) but they come in such small amounts to be pointless either way. I'd rather just have more defense or, even better, more ATK to simply take out the target more effectively. I also expect higher rarity items to have better base modifiers, so that a "Rare" weapon is almost always going to be worth using over a "common" due to having superior DPS.

tl;dr: Instead of using all of the extremely rare items I keep finding, they get sold immediately while I stockpile Common and Rare items with good +ATK stats. There's just no comparison to 200 DPS weapon with +220 ATK and a 200 DPS weapon with +189% durability, +8 kinetic resist, +7 thermal resist, +60 radar, etc.

If I'm wrong, please explain why.

disclaimer: all numbers pulled out of my ass. Hopefully you still get the idea though

[Tuidjy]

You are not. There is one useful resistance (Thermal), two meaningful skills (Tactical and Command) and three worthwhile bonuses (attack, defense, and critical) Shadow is working, successfully in my opinion, to make radar relevant. I hope he will get around to the other skills/bonuses before he gets bored with Drox. But I am still enjoying it, if only as a break from having my ass handed to me in Din's Curse.

And when I say that Thermal resistance is useful, I do not mean the paltry 10-20 random bonuses. I mean two dedicated 300-400 thermal resistance components in the light slots.

[Tyrax Lightning]

Originally Posted by Tuidjy

You are not. There is one useful resistance (Thermal), two meaningful skills (Tactical and Command) and three worthwhile bonuses (attack, defense, and critical) Shadow is working, successfully in my opinion, to make radar relevant. I hope he will get around to the other skills/bonuses before he gets bored with Drox. But I am still enjoying it, if only as a break from having my ass handed to me in Din's Curse.

And when I say that Thermal resistance is useful, I do not mean the paltry 10-20 random bonuses. I mean two dedicated 300-400 thermal resistance components in the light slots.

With all due respect, I beg to differ... You underestimate how useful Engineering can be, stronger Energy Regen can directly give your Weapons more destructive power.

Also, imho, Resists themselves are useless in their entirety because you can grab stupidly high amounts of points in a Resist & the % of damage reduced for the effort is too small... it can feel like you could take a Resist up 500 points & still have that reduce damage for that one single resist for only like 25ish%... Light Slot Shield Components are completely superior for damage taking boosting.

With that said, I agree that I Facepalm everytime I have 2 of an exact same item, one Common, one Rare, & they have the exact same Prefix, (Example: Superior) & the Common one is capable of having seriously higher Base Stat, like +Shields or +Armor... O_0

Rarely, a Common Item with no Prefix & the exact same kinda Item that's Rare or better with a good Prefix compare to each other, & the Prefix-less Common Item has much more Base Stat... *Facepalm*

I think this needs to change, I think Items need Code inserted into them that has higher quality items have a higher 'minimum floor' of Base Stat that can Generate with the Item up until the strongest Tier, "Legendary" which because of being legendary automatically generates with the absolute maximum possible Base Stat for that Item Type automatically. It's retarded for a 'Normal' Prefix-less Power Plant to have more +Power Load than a Legendary Power Plant with a strong Prefix...

[Tuidjy]

Originally Posted by Tyrax Lightning

With all due respect, I beg to differ... You underestimate how useful Engineering can be, stronger Energy Regen can directly give your Weapons more destructive power.

I would argue this. With respect, of course.

It's not that Engineering isn't very useful, it's that you can get its effects through the components that Command gives you.

Let say that you advance Engineering by 50 points. You get, if you are Fringe, 300 max energy, 4 regeneration and 250 max power, for a total of 6.5 regeneration.

But anywhere on the hull list, 50 Commands gets you at least one component. Most often it gets you two, and sometimes, it gets you three. Around level 50ish, a heavy slot can give 15 regeneration, a medium 6-7, and a light 10. In addition, you can get a number of other bonuses from tweaks.

At any point of the hull list, 50 point of command will get enough slots to get a lot more than 300 energy and 6.5 regeneration. Even going from 400 to 450 will get one light and one medium slot, which will easily provide 700-800 max power and 25+ regeneration (collector+charger). Or 1500 max power for 15+ regeneration (collector + optimizer). Or 800 max energy and a bit of regeneration (battery in medium slot, max power in light, useful for Big Bag builds).

So, Engineering gives you a nice benefit, but Command gives you twice the benefits, at the cost of some max thrust and defense, which tweaks easily absorb.

In my mind, there is no doubt that the most powerful build is one that splits 500 points between Tactical and Command. I am not sure what the golden ratio is, but I fully intend to build a 40/460 Brunt and a 250/250 Fringe, and compare them.

[namad]

the way it works is an item gets made, it's got base stats, then depending on how rare it is it has several or none additional minor bonuses which you'd never ever pick an item for, excepting in the case where the base stats where the same then the rare one would be better just for whatever minor bonuses it had.


i think the real problem isn't that rare loot is bad, an item that decides to be rare is more likely to be good than an item that doesn't decide to be rare, however you'll find 100common items and 1rare item and so the best common item will be better than that 1 rare item most likely.

I think the best solution would be a) make items like shields/plating/battery just like weapons, in that the base stats are always absolutely always exactly equal and non-random for a given itemlevel or b) let us reroll the base stats of a given item for a certain price at a certain planet just like some of the other planetary options out there?

[FDru]

Originally Posted by namad

or b) let us reroll the base stats of a given item for a certain price at a certain planet just like some of the other planetary options out there?

That's an interesting idea. I keep wondering what I'm going to do with all of the extra credits that keep accumulating. Since there seems to be no money sinks in the game currently, rerolling items would be perfect.

I'll have to reconsider where I spend my stat points from now on, too. I did consider that more slots = more stats but I figured that the early game would be a struggle without those stats, if the right mods didn't drop.

[Tyrax Lightning]

Originally Posted by namad

the way it works is an item gets made, it's got base stats, then depending on how rare it is it has several or none additional minor bonuses which you'd never ever pick an item for, excepting in the case where the base stats where the same then the rare one would be better just for whatever minor bonuses it had.


i think the real problem isn't that rare loot is bad, an item that decides to be rare is more likely to be good than an item that doesn't decide to be rare, however you'll find 100common items and 1rare item and so the best common item will be better than that 1 rare item most likely.

I think the best solution would be a) make items like shields/plating/battery just like weapons, in that the base stats are always absolutely always exactly equal and non-random for a given itemlevel or b) let us reroll the base stats of a given item for a certain price at a certain planet just like some of the other planetary options out there?

This sounds like a job for the Cortex!

[namad]

the issue of common loot being what people wear most often also crops up in mmo's

in wow or swtor you might spend most of your life wearing mostly green common yet slightly enchanted loot... why? because you level up so fast and all the gear is level locked that it's just not worth rarer loot UNTIL endgame...so the same is true in drox at level 100 if you keep playing and playing and playing eventually your loot would get rarer?


so another proposal i have is to allow players to take low level rare loot and somehow upgrade it with credits or combine it with another higher level item of the same type to transfer the rarity to a higher tier item somehow? so if you have a legendary missile that's tactical level 10 and you have tactical level 50 you're obviously never going to use it, and might even instead use a basic grey item...



honestly i'm not sure this is a problem, or that it needs fixing, it's basically true in diablo3, wow, swtor, drox, many many games face this issue of rare loot not being good enough because the odds of actually finding the rare loot you need when you need it at reasonable expense of time...are just long shots.