Low Drop Rates Suck

The other problem with drops ingame is that often there is THAT ONE weapon that is 40% to 100% better than anything else you can get. If there is 10 weapons, each within 20-30% of eachother, but with different nichesm then it's much easier to say "oh well, that's almost the best" or "that's not top damage but have nice speed boost, good enougth"

 

Grinding is fun to me.

 

100% drop rates, but split between several items (more or less equally), like many of Terraria's bosses have is probably the best way to enforce "rarity", with normal mobs dropping crafting items (with a high percentage, but you need a number of them of course).

Then go ahead and grind to see how much stuff you can amass, but leave low drop rates out of it.

 

OP... you think Terraria 1.2 had low drop rates? Buddy, you know NOTHING of actual low drop rates if that's your standard for "low."

No. I want crushingly low drop rates. I want progression to take a solid amount of time. I want to be on one tier for AT LEAST 16-24 hours. I blew through most of the new tiers in Terraria within 12 hours.

 

Don't forget that Terraria takes place on one small "planet." If a game is that limited in size/scope, of COURSE it's easy to get all the items in a shorter amount of time.

I imagine Starbound's tiers will involve multiple planets. Also you have to take into account that we'll have actual quests to complete, too. It's way too easy to skip ore tiers in Terraria and make huge upgrade jumps that'll allow you dive almost immediately into hardmode. I don't think Starbound will work the same way.

If you're dealing with an expansive game universe, you don't have to resort to low drop rates to extend play time spent on each level of difficulty. The "grind" will be the exploration and discovery.

 

My main issue is not with the grind itself, but with the fact low drop rates are too prone to unlucky streaks, where the player kills far more mobs than would be usually required to get the item and the item still refuses to drop.

Thus, I rather like a different approach: progressive drop rates. It's what WoW uses for quest items.

In short, the more times a specific item DOESN'T drop, the higher the chance it will drop next, up to the point it reaches 100% if the player was really unlucky with drops. It's a way to still have some luck involved, but at the same time to cut short unlucky streaks.

 

I know this is super unrelated, but it's really, really bothering me that the last two numeric options in the poll are the same...

 

Well it totally bothers me that there's no unit of measure on the option before the last.

 

Just how will 3D printing fit into the whole rare items business anyways? Will servers be flooded with cheap knockoffs of all the rarest items as soon as a single player obtains one? Do printed items all get the same modification, random, or none at all?

 

Yes they will involve multiple planets, each tier takes place between level 1-10 11-20 and so forth

 

Skipping tiers in Terraria isn't that much of a big deal anyway, since it's only a matter of like 5 or so defense, maybe being able to mine a new material - the only thing that the tiers focus on is gear and the material they're made from. Starbound's tiers a lot more expansive than that to the point where they encompass more than just gear, they include whole sections of the game. And the game is designed so you can't skip them.

I totally agree that the "grind" in the game (not that it is grind) should be finding the right place/stuff you need, not fighting the same thing on the same planet over and over because you want a specific item that drops a small amount of the time. It would be a shame to be stuck on one single planet fighting Random Mob/Boss X over and over for the Shiney Loot Object when there's a massive universe out there you could be exploring.

 

then play other games that promote it. Don't drag starbound down with that.

 

I'm split. On one hand, I hate it when something integral is glued to a rare drop rate. On the other hand, I like that some items are rare and very powerful. That said, things below 0.1% get to be a little too annoying. Terraria did one decent thing, and made rare enemies drop specific items most of the time (except in the case of the new invasions) and usually you'd get something, even if it wasn't what you wanted. I figure there's a balance in this: some enemies are rare, have a decent percentage to drop something, or common enemy, low chance. Games rarely have "hard work" involved, just patience, and drop rates are a weird artificial medium for progress (and in some ways, drop rates are inflation regulators for economies).

So far, none of us know how Starbound's drop system works. Could be tier based, could be based on the attributes of whatever you're killing, could be something else entirely. One thing's for certain, though, there seems to be a much larger focus on crafting for normal items, like many other games, and randomly obtaining weapons you like, much like Borderlands. As much as I may dislike rare drops sometimes, it's also fun to have something someone else doesn't, if only for a short time. And, hey, you could always buy a knockoff of a nice gun in Starbound, right?

 

IIRC card drop rates in Ragnarok Online [maybe not on other servers] had .02% drop rates. It's ridiculous. I bought them instead >_>

 

Listen here guys, I have something to tell you.

Of course, low rates of drops can be frightening and will make you want to throw up sometimes. I agree here. But here comes the interesting part.
First of all, if you want to find a rare stuff - you should explore more, which will lead to founding of new interesting locations, making game even more interesting!
Secondly, if you we're talking about drops from monsters, the drop rate should depend on the monster itself. Of course is this monster is uncommon or rare, the drop rate should be 1%. But if there're lots of them and you can kill 1000 of them in 1 minute (for example), the drop rate should be 0,0001%. Or maybe a bit higher. Just a bit.
Thridly, I guess making some stuff EVEN MORE rare has some points. Think about pokemon. Shinies are a rare occasionm and have a high price when trading them. In case of Starbound, perhaps there should be a special weapon/accessory/armor with some particular effects. Maybe not even powerful, but leaving a fiery trail behind you, for example. Therefore it'll lead to being able to sell it for a high price. Or maybe you could want to decorate yourself with this item.

Think about it. Low rates can make game more interesting, but only in case when you don't need to hunt them. The bad example is a Ankh Charm in Terraria. To craft it you NEED 9 rare, very rare items from particular mobs. Good example is a shiny pokemon. You don't have to hunt them, but they make game more... sweet.

 

Ya, I don´t agree with very low droprates at all, unless they are vanity items or perhaps unusual equipment.

I mean, you already have to spend time searching for things, there are planets that might take you 3 hours just to go around it, and some materials are probably only found on small biomes on those planets, I mean, do we really need really low drop rates for materials that are key into building some weapons or equipment?

I think the items drop rate needs to be balanced out through exploration, like for example when I start off on my first planet, the first thing I want to do is try to explore a dungeon, gather up enough materials to build a small house, and then mine till I get some ores to build myself a sword for example, I dont want to worry too much about what monsters drop, I just want to explore, do some hard dungeons, quests, meet npcs in villages, survive, gather resources and move on to the next planet.

I want to feel rewarded when I find a rare tech that creates for example a turret that shoots wrenches at incoming enemies, I want variety, I don´t want to focus on getting that specific item, I want to have other viable options for me.

I want rare enemies that are harder than most enemies that have a higher drop rate or sometimes a guaranteed drop rate because they are just that rare, they could spawm on certain biomes, and the key to find those enemies in the first place would be through exploration, the more you explore, the higher chances you will encounter such enemies and so forth.

 

I don't even think there will be low drop rates in Starbound. With all the millions of planets, of different sizes, dungeons and caves, I bet it's already hard to get everything even if it doesn't have a low drop rate.

 

How do we even know if starbound has low drop rates, seriously?
can we just be patient and wait for the game to come out.

 

People like to speculate about game mechanics. *shrug*

 

This would be pretty ideal for me. If I can forage and put in the work to be able to craft the gear myself, I'll be happy. I don't expect to be able to craft EVERY piece of gear, of course. It would just be nice if you could still survive relatively well on crafted gear if for some reason you haven't looted anything worthwhile.

I read that as being a turret that shoots WENCHES and was like "Tavern wenches? What would they do, beat things to death with beer bottles?" Haha.