Randomized Chest Contents

I'm sure this thread'll take a lot of heat, but the overwhelmingly popular 'Anyone got good coordinates they would like to share?' thread has become a very obvious cheat-sheet for collecting rare loot without ever having to explore. It boils down the huge universe into a shopping list, and while players can avoid doing this if they want, it causes lopsidedness in multiplayer games, and quickly shortens game interest for a good portion of players. Exploration was supposed to take up the bulk of playtime, but this is a very exploitable shortcut.

Anyway, I'd like to hear more opinions on the topic, pros and cons, to either static or randomized chests. I guarantee that thread would become far less popular if the current exploration-recipe ease would become no longer an option, and it's not a complex fix.

 

People should be able to cheat if they want to.

 

Cheating wouldn't be eliminated, just the ease of temptation and the antithesis of exploration. You can even now edit your player files to give yourself items.

Cheating should be left up to modification, not a core element.

 

Honestly, I do think randomized chest contents should be in the game. It promotes more exploration if you want good items, which actually provides an incentive to explore more than two or three planets in a sector.

 

I think they should randomize,
When you are playing two separate games, with separate universe's they may be the same, but either your in an alternate dimension, or an alternate timeframe. Either way, contents should change IMO.

 

If you don't want to have the temptation of cheating, change all the sectorSeed values in celestial.config to different numbers.

 

Are you suggesting the aspect of not cheating should be mitigated by mods, rather than the logical opposite?

 

The chests are technically randomized, but it's all based on the seed which is the same for everyone. Computers can't actually do true randomization, there has to be a number to base it off of. Usually RNG uses the system clock I think, which maybe the game could do for chests upon the world first being activated by the player.

 

Nah. I'm pretty sure that the fixed seeds are implemented to allow uniformity of experience for ease of testing. I imagine the system will default to random seeds, possibly using that ol' crowd-pleaser,

Code:

srand(time(NULL))

with optional fixed seeds for those who want to get specific stuff. It's a technique that's worked in other games with this kind of generation, and you could even have a natty little GUI for it.

(Snide aside: Other people cheating? Unless you're on an open MP server, it's not really your business...)

 

Well I'd personally like to see them more frequent but random.

I basically upgraded to the top armor in 2 days of playing. I only have 1 piece of tech.

I'd like the tech to be a little easier to find, even though it's not hard, but I don't like how you can just enter coordinates and go to it.

 

Simple fix : Add universe seed to servers. Defaults to 0.
The universe will take it into account and 2 universes with different seeds will be different. Server admins who don't want their players to cheat wil render coords sheets void.
Server admins who want to be able to share seeds can just leave the seed to 0.
Singleplayers worlds don't need them - if the player doesn't want to cheat he won't look up coords in the first place.

 

I know generalizations are bad, especially when it comes to programming, but a "simple" way to do true randomized loot, is add a timestamp variable to the universe seed. Bam instant random seed generator.

 

From what I know you can already do this, its just a matter of going in and changing the universe seed in the game files.

 

I agree with the OP and have voiced my disapproval of the "cheat-sheets" in previous threads.

 

Chest loot based on biome type would be cool i think Like in snow biome you get frost equipment set or frozing sword, frozen meat, etc

 

Daily bump.

 

For some people, going to coordinates that they find is their way of exploring. Who are we to tell them that they can't play like that? For multiplayer servers, the admin can just change the sectorSeed values as Harlander stated.

 

I find it hard to believe that for a game that touts it procedurally generated universe would NOT have a random seed or an option to choose a seed. I would say just edit like the above suggestions until we get farther into Beta.

 

Just play with celestial file as stated above, different seed makes stuff different