Is Rare Stuff Too Rare?

I'm just going to stop you right there, because you're being completely irrelevant.

Rarity isn't a function of how many there are of something. It's a function of how accessible it is, or how much time and effort it takes to obtain. There are literally infinite biome keys in Terraria, but they are rare because they are time consuming to obtain. Everyone I've known who plays Terraria very much has gotten every single biome key. By comparison, chain knives that drop from cave bats are not rare, even though many of my buddies have never even gotten one.

In Starbound, I've played for 49 hours, searched many planets, and still haven't gotten a single legendary weapon. 49 hours. That's too long, especially considering I'd just end up replacing it by a crappy weapon that is just one tier higher. The new balance update might help that a little, but it doesn't change that it seems like a long time to be hunting for rares, only to find one that isn't what you wanted (like getting a sword when you prefer to use guns).

Also, the only interesting and fun weapons to use are rare, so most of the time you are using boring weapons.

This is a result of very low drop rates. The math involved results in drastically different levels of success, with some players being extraordinarily unlucky and others having the opposite experience. It shouldn't take a few days for anyone to find an interesting weapon, and as-is the only interesting weapons are very rare.

I'm not actually sure that lower rates would help per se, but I do see a problem here. Maybe instead of enemies dropping complete items, they drop materials that are used to craft items that get random stats when you make them. Then the rates could be higher without reducing the amount of time and effort it take to make them, and the math involved wouldn't be so heavily dependent on a player's luck.

 

Personally I want lower drop rates 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% chance of finding a superior brain. God, this game is so unrealistic; 7% of animals aren't geniuses.

 

In my opinion, there needs to be a better way to "pinpoint" certain kinds of rewards. As it stands, the only way to get anything valuable is to hit "Find Random" and energy dash across the surface of a planet. Then go to the next one and repeat. It almost feels like I'm playing slots, and if the stars don't align just right, I don't get anything useful to me.

I'm not saying the game should hand out great loot like candy, I'm just saying there needs to be a more direct way to work toward goals.

 

rare should stay rare, they should get fixed to actually being useful but please lets not turn starbound into WoW where having "legendary" "epic" "rare" items means absolutely nothing

 

"Is Rare Stuff Too Rare?"

Yes.
I've found nothing but uncommon and common weapons after 40+ hours and several miniboss hunts.

 

Hopefully it will be more reliable when they flesh out the quest/side quest system.

 

All the weapons I've seen in this game were green. I still havn't found a single firearm.

 

I once went through an abandonded penal colony

My inventory quickly filled with boring weapons, save for a few, like an INCENDIARY AXE , which unfortunately became quickly obsolete as I found other things

I think drop rates on hostile NPCs would be reduced, as going through that penal colony gave me a bunch of weapons that more or less did the same amount of damage

But I also agree with you OP, better loot should be more common, I want swords that shoot laser beams that split into two as they bounce off walls and tons of other crazy things

Also, kinda unrelated, but does anyone else wish that weapon names were less...random?

 

I think the problem is how the stuff was generated and the level system made rare things (forgive the accidental pun) rarely worth it compared to how rare they are. It probably just need to either get a bit stronger and less rare or keep a similar drop rate but make rare wepaons actually worth the drop rate. It's always disheartening finding a supposed rare weapon and you end up still using the one you crafted since it's better. :/

I sort of agree here; I'm fine wit whacky names but the name generator seems to be lacking. I cna only guess it'll get a wider pool of potential names as they advance int he beta patching.

 

I hope the planetary scanner that they showed sometime back makes its way in for such a purpose.

 

I think it just makes it hard to keep up with all your items. Sure, Borderlands does with, with random names for weapons, but the names usually sound pretty good, even with low tier weapons.

 

I personally find that Rare weapons or equipment is far too weak, hopefully the new patch with the modified damage system will change this. But at the moment when I find a weapon from a boss mob I'd expect it to wipe the floor with a majority of the enemies there. But I tend to find it tickles my enemies into submission, whereas my crappy hammer I found in some random chest does much more damage and is much more efficient.

 

Yeah, I don't think telling someone they're being completely irrelevant is a very nice thing to say to someone.

Also something being rare is defined as it's chance to occur. If you're speaking from a capitalistic view point, or abstractly, it could definitely be defined by how accessible it is, or how much time and effort it takes to obtain (Not trying to start a who's smarter argument).

I've found several legendary items, none of them worth anything at the time I found them, but you and I are both running the same build of beta. I think loot generation will get better the further through beta development we go through.

 

I've actually used common weapons over legendary weapons (even at same armor penetration level), simply because the legendries aren't balanced towards being... legendary.

Hopefully they'll be able to make things a bit better over the course of the beta.

Also, currently common weapons are way to frequent. You go to a dungeon and you come out with like 20 common weapons, and maybe 10 uncommon weapons. They should reduce this substantially so that getting a weapon from a dungeon actually feels like a reward.

 

Drop rates are fine. I've found tons of vanity items and decent looking weapons.

The problem is that all weapons are useless compared to the common sniper rifles you can buy for a few hundred pixels off the airships.
Sniper rifles need to be nerfed, and all other weapons need to be buffed to the point of being viable (hopefully all the scaling changes in the coming patch will fix this.)

I think the sniper rifles would be fine if the energy per shot was increased by a factor of ten. As it is, they are the least draining of all the guns despite having the most damage per second. Snipers should only be able to fire a few shots before having to wait for energy, leave the spray-and-pray combat to people with automatic weapons.

 

I suspect we'll see more interesting unique affixes as time goes on. I can't imagine what we've seen so far is the extent of the randomly generated items. It may be that what we've seen so far from the legendary items is prior to final special effect additions and tuning.

 

I agree. Its not that saying the game is in beta is and excuse for the current issue. It is in fact the simple reason however, this is one of the focuses in the progressing and balancing parts the devs are working on right now. Its and issue but its an issue being worked on.