Suggestion: Gold to red dust conversion

I have mixed responses here.

On the math side, 1/22400 isn’t zero; however, if you assume that no person will be willing to reroll a single item more than 100 times, it starts approaching zero; if you limit this to by the number of players who have 50+ hours in the game, it get’s even closer to zero. In a practical sense, I would say that it is anomalous for players to be able to roll perfect melee qualities for weapons of their choosing. This is to say… you’re right an an absolute sense; they’re right in a practical sense.

With that said, I have one orange item where I got perfect qualities by re-rolling. Counting betas, I have 600+ hours in the game, and I think I wasted more than half hour in order to get that outcome. I hated that experience.

I think you and others are making an aesthetic judgment about red items. I’d put this in the language of “I think it is beautiful that these items are so rare”. Don’t get me wrong, other’s are saying “I think it would be beautiful if these items were more common” but they’re also saying, “Given time I don’t want to spend rerolling, it would be practical for me if these items were more common.”

Honestly, I think you’re arguing that reds should be rare because you and others appreciate them as a symbol of status, and if they were more common that symbol would be diminished. I’m not saying this is your only argument, but I think this is a central part of it.

I’m only sitting on 300-400 orange dust at this point; I’m probably sitting on 100+ Champion Emp/General chests, and 200+ chests of value below that. I actively hate re-rolling. There is nothing fun about it for me. When I engage with this game, I want it to be fun. So I am in favor of any system that would allow me to bypass what I don’t like. For me, having more red items (I don’t particularly care about their appearance, so keep the illusions) is really a means for me to bypass what I don’t like about the game, so I can focus on what I do like (killing rats).

You are correct that there is little to no difference between 4% and 5% when it comes to combat effects. Frankly, most of my orange weapons do the trick just fine for me… but as a player, I am fundamentally dissatisfied with the quality/trait reroll system, such that I no longer engage with it. I would like the dust conversion because it would save me time. This is a matter of personal preference – but it is a practical one rather than an aesthetic one.

By saying, “restrict the blue illusion to actual drops”, I am saying “I respect your aesthetic argument; so, please respect my practical argument”.

2 Likes

I would prefer instaskip from loot at end of game and insta scrap anythint that isnt red/cosmetics (deeds but they are not scrappable). With 300 hours i have already 1k gold dust and even 100:1 would be good because of how gold is useless,thats why that conversion is bad idea.

That’s a downright high quality post right there, hotdemn. A+ for a job well done and being so polite.

I think something we should consider is, exactly as you said, that you are dissatisfied with the reroll system. I think it airs the issue that the crafting/upgrading system for items needs to be improved so that there’s a more efficient/dependable way to turn dust into a high-quality item. Spending half-an-hour in that menu rerolling the same item 1000s of times is downright awful! If it’s alright, I’d like to set that up as a point apart from the one involving Yellow-to-Red dust conversion.

I’d like to mention that having one of those Veteran Weapons is a matter of time spent earning the chests that are likely to drop them. Of course, we all treat games differently, so it might be that I am biased in my own way… but I’ve never minded a sub-par Orange weapon. I just get it upgraded ‘enough’ to run with and then I’m off to find me that Veteran Executioner Sword. If I can’t find it, a few levels later and I’ll have enough to craft it through Veteran Dust.

@Perteks beat me to it, but that’s the next part of what I’m thinking. If you are willing to go through the slog of opening every chest (and yeah, I feel you… AgainPyromancer tipped me off to a script used to open chests automatically so I use that and then get myself food) then you will have a lot of Veteran Dust from… the Recruit/Veteran chests.

As I see it (and this is entirely an opinion), the barrier to Veteran weapons should lie within Legend difficulty, not before it. The grind to 30 on each character would be enough to poof 4-5 Veteran items into existence if you could convert dust.

IMHO, I’d prefer to fight the good fight and know that they were well-earned; not for status, but for the fact that I’m pleased with myself for having fought for something I find really cool! :slight_smile:

1 Like

I’ll concede a compromise. I think a trade-in ratio of 100:1 up conversion for all dust is a fair amount. This equates to a fair amount of time spent farming Champ if you cannot reliably farm Legend. I too have a lot of gold dust but I’ve been downgrading them into green and blue to reroll orange items. Downgrading gold dust seems really unintuitive to me and feels wrong, especially since the ratio is 1:1.

While somewhat un-intuitive, that’s a classic “Crafting Game” physic; all of the little stuff is worth almost nothing until you need tons of it, but the high-level stuff can only be converted into a few of the little things.

I think the conversion is all a matter of opinion at this point. At a ratio too low, it’s creation would ruin the experience for a lot of players and also really help a lot of players reach their break-points.

At a ration too high, it’s creation is will give you Veteran gear will provide you only 1-2 more Veteran items over the course of your career.

If it were created, getting it in the middle would be key… and even then, I don’t think it would be as much of a benefit as people would want it to be. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Skipping the loot screen would be great. I would even use an “open all” option for chests to save time.

Perhaps we could give value to the orange dust by allowing it to be used to “upgrade” the stats on an orange… like 100 dust makes the selected property on one item maxed. Then you can create a red-ish orange instead.

I as well do believe veteran weapon should be for veterans. But not as rerolling system is right now.
More on that further down.

yes.

I honestly believe the rerolling system is the problem.
I don’t mind veteran weapons being rare but I mind sitting up to 10 min pressing the reroll button in order to get a descent weapon. All maths aside it’s time spent doing something that is simply not fun.
Having veteran weapons/trinkets cuts that time significantly.
I would gladly spend 100(maybe more) blue/green dust in one go and get the stats i want than sitting there rerolling. Was that the case I would not mind veteran weapons being super rare.

VT1 was close to something blending rng and effort in order to build what you want. it was actually more expensive to build a weapon you like, but at least you spent that time playing and getting those resources. Edit: now that i think about it VT1 crafting system was as tedious and time consuming. don’t really know why I am more fond of it than the current.

2 Likes

Erm… Not really. While some bragging rights rewards are cool, I don’t tend to flaunt them (and it’s very arguable whether Veteran items even could qualify as such) - and I hardly care about the illlusions. The reason I think they shouldn’t be much more common than they already are (and they’re pretty common) is that it quickly diminishes the value of Exotic items. Reds are already glorified oranges (as I said before), and when you can trash some items to get a perfect-roll orange, the regular ones lose meaning. The loot and its value is already at a state that after you get your first exotic item, you’re very unlikely to replace it by a lower-quality one. The situation is the same between Exotic and Veteran items, so if Veteran items were made even more common, the Exotics would turn to trash even faster, feeding the cycle of getting reds. It’d produce a self-sustaining cycle of getting ever more red stuff, and there’re already a lot of them.

That’s kinda the thing. I don’t like rerolling items eithr, which is why I haven’t bothered doing it actively for a while now, but the problem doesn’t lie in the items. It lies in an annoying, boring and laborious crafting system that relies overly on RNG. That’s what needs to change, not the items or their availability. Getting reds is such a huge QoL issue because it skips a lot of the boring stuff for crafting. If we had ways to lock Properties or otherwise roll them one at a time, and roll their values separately (and some luck protection to boot, so that you don’t roll the same Property or Trait twice in a row) we would get a lot more mileage out of Exotic items, and Veteran ones would lose a lot of their appeal. Same if we could automatically spend some resources, likely slightly more than what probability suggests, to maximise the Properties. It may be that FS wants to keep that appeal, though, as functionally all the Veteran items gain from Exotics is perfect rolls on Properties (somewhat unlike in VT1, where they could get unique attribute combinations - but that was tied to a completely different annoyance).

3 Likes

I’m having a little trouble parsing what you’ve said.

I think you’re saying… Fatshark should overhaul its crafting systems so that perfect value orange items would be more accessible, while keeping red items (which are in effect, perfect oranges + illusions) scarce.

If that’s correct, I totally agree with you, and if that system were implemented I would have zero problem keeping red items as rare as they currently are.

As I said, my concern is practical, in-so-far as I want to avoid the experience of re-rolling ad nauseum. I think that more red items would be the easier solution (without overhauling the system), but I agree that the RNG crafting system is the underlying problem.

Are we on the same page?

2 Likes

Pretty much, yeah. In all honesty, I also think that Veteran items should have something to make them more unique, separate from Exotics, but it shouldn’t be inherently stronger, just different. Maybe a few additional Trait options or something like that.

But yeah, it’s hard to express one’s thoughts accurately sometimes, especially in non-native language.

3 Likes

Good discussion, thanks for keeping it civil.

@EPIC_Bitch

Thanks for the corrections, I must have been half asleep while typing half of that.

However, I note that it is 12 possible traits as we have no proof that power vs X includes all power vs and not one power vs X per potential roll. If it’s all inclusive then it’s 1/8. If it’s not then it’s 1/12.

Attack speed goes in increments of 0.1, I have plenty of items that have 3.6-4.9% attack speed which if your assertion that it goes in increments of .5 is accurate, should be impossible. Critical is accurate and is a mistake on my part.

I have timed most of my runs at roughly 30 minutes so I would presume that’s an average time as it corresponds to youtube streamers and twitch streamers. I discount speed runs as those don’t count.

I’ve never seen a Skittergate finished in 18 minutes, given the number of hordes that should be spawning and the number of probably boss spawns it seems implausible. However, I imagine with enough luck and the proper team setup it’s possible; this isn’t the average QP PUG though.


As noted by some, if gold was max stat then the entire issue with red would vanish. Red is simply a max stat gold which is the main contention to begin with as those stats matter.

Certainly there are many ways around the issue of getting max stats on gold items. Red upgrading is simply the most straight forward of such approaches. Red’s uniqueness is already in its illusions, an upgraded red does not have an illusion but does have max stats. Even if one has say a million green/blue/gold dust and mathematically can roll every possible combination in existence, then we go to the problem of time and user input required to roll a ludicrous number of times.

Again this is a problem that is largely mitigated by red.

Also I agree red items should be distinctly unique - an additional trait on top of gold would give a sense of progression and reward rather than just “it’s a max stat version”.

If memory serves, in VT1 you could roll stats independently, this would be a step in the right direction and would mitigate the problem of gold->red where by you:

  1. roll independently
  2. you cannot ever roll a stat lower than your current stat

On the first step we reduce the probability calculation from double to single. On the second count we ensure that the probability steadily increases until it’s guaranteed to roll the desired property. This would be actual progression rather than RNG.

Of course the best solution would be to simply remove the RNG completely. For a fixed price of X dust you choose the trait you want, you choose the amount you want.

1 Like

Nope…in V1, you rng spam until you get the 3 traits you want and know that certain weapons CANNOT have certain traits or combination of traits. RNG is random and combos can repeat multiple times until you finally get exactly what you want. Afterwords, you had to UNLOCK the traits at the Forge, then you go to a different Shrine menu to randomly increase the % if it has a % proc effect. If you rolled lower than the current stat, nothing happens, the materials are wasted. Switching between Shrine and Forge was asinine…

It was a huge time and material sink to get perfect Orange weapons and Red weapons were NOT the best weapons. Some were unique and quirky, but nothing game breaking. It was nice to have an invincible Red shield/hammer on bardin (Improved Guard AND Perfect balance!?) but nothing that made the game unfairly OP.

What WAS OP was allowing Trueflight with Haste/Hail of Doom on an orange bow.

I am only level 700~ or so in V1 but I never complained about how long it took me to make perfect weapons for everyone. Was the crafting system dumb? Yes, but I grinded my share and moved on. Now I’m playing V1 for fun/community service since V2 is practically unplayable atm.

8 out of 10 games a night I play, crash, crash, crash… thanks Devs, where’s my refund?

1 Like

It is 8 possible PROPERTIES per item (swift slaying is a trait, attack speed is not).
Let me spell them out for you:
Melee:
Stamina
Block Cost Reduction
Push/Block Angle
Attack Speed
Crit Chance
Crit Power
Power vs Skaven
Power vs Chaos

Ranged:
Crit Chance
Crit Power
Power vs Skaven
Power vs Chaos
Power vs Armored
Power vs Infantry
Power vs Berseker
Power vs Monster

As a note: My math in my first post is actually wrong. The total numbers of possibilities is 54, not 56 since i disregarded that Power vs Skaven and Power vs Chaos cannot roll together. Nevertheless the 3,57% chance is correct.

Its been a while since the last time I rolled orange items, so yes I did remember that incorrectly. (not sure about the 0.1 steps though, might be 0.2 steps)

I actually bothered and went in 2 skittergate missions for you.


First run was IB with 1h Hammer/Handgun
Second run was Slayer with DA/DH
Since Im streaming myself sometimes, you can see the setup for both builds. I ran with full bots. In the chat window you can see the boss kill times. Run time is at the bottom. So, if I can run skittergate solo in 20mins with very high boss kill times, this is easily doable with other people in 18mins. In both runs I even had a double boss, in the first run there was an additional patrol that I killed and the bots left me alone with the troll. Fact is, in a normal party, even with a slowpoke char like IB and a low dps weapon like 1h hammer, you shouldnt take longer than 20mins for any map.

VT2 follows VT1 with their approach to red weapons. They are nowhere close to being a neccessity. And you said it yourself. If you really like a weapon, save your red dust for it, so you can simply upgrade it to red. I dont see the error in the system. The droprate from chests is already pretty high.
And if someone really invests so much time and resources in actually trying to get a perfect roll weapon, kudos to him, thats some dedication. Most people dont care about that 0,5-1% missing because they can upgrade it anyway later if they want.

VT1 weapon upgrade system was a totally different one. And even in VT1 you could roll lower than your current stat, but the system prevented you from downgrading. You can do the same in vt2. Just craft a 2nd orange weapon. You should have thousands of crafting mats laying around. keep rolling that one, until you get better stats then switch it. Or wait until you farmed enough red dust to upgrade it.

For a fixed price of 5 red dust you can have every property maxed out, doesnt that sound good for you?
And for a conclusion: Red weapons are a boon for those who can efficiently beat the highest difficulty in the game. It was like that in the first game and here it is exactly the same.

2 Likes

Yeah, nah. Reds without the red skin might as well be oranges as far as feeling a sense of progression about it goes.

I appreciate and agree with the math you’ve done for this (as might be inferred from my earlier post where I did some of the same, if somewhat less thoroughly), but completion times really depends much on the group and their attitude towards the game, too. My own seems to average somewhere around the 30 minute mark, as while we don’t specifically tarry, we also sniff out quite a lot of chests and such and don’t particularly hurry either. That said, the OP’s (and mine) timing of 30-35 minutes and yours (and at least one another’s) of ~20 minutes seem to average towards 25 minutes, which could be a useful assumption. A more inexperienced group would drag this somewhat more up, too. I’d say this doesn’t change much, though, as that all is time spent truly playing the game, instead of waiting or getting bogged down in the crafting system (which, I’ve stated I think is the real problem here, and the only reason Veteran items have the value they have). Or in other words, having fun.

3 Likes

Less time rolling items (grinding to get mats to reroll, etc.) = more time having fun. I always look forward to getting to post-loot because of that, but the loot system as it is is a bit harsh at getting to that point.

This topic was automatically closed 7 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.