Why is exploration loot so... weak and unrewarding? Even in jumping puzzles?

Feedback/Feature Requests
1

Title is self-explanatory, so no “TL;DR” this time.

We know the game’s map is MASSIVE, and most settlements have a whole plethora of hidden guns, both in the open (often listed for the completionists) and in weapon-shaped boxes. So it’s kind of expected that most of them will be duds, stuff that you’re gonna recycle for raw materials, and only a small handful of them will actually be decent.

…But why are almost all of them, universally, terrible? One would expect the hardest guns to find to be a 4-crown once in a while (or a 2~3-crown if we’re talking about early areas).

Heck, some of the hidden guns require jumping puzzles to get to (one time I had to use a bike to jump on a fence, to get to a ceiling, to find a gun), and when you finally get to the gun… it’s a 1-crown gun destined to the recycle bin.

Worse still, this also applies to guns from quests.

I got a sidequest that suggested I could find a neat gun in a “hidden place” (note: no, it wasn’t hidden, there was a huge quest marker pointing to the place, even though it was supposed to be a riddle).

When I got there, there was a hunting rifle.

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…But when I grabbed the gun to see the stats…
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It was a 3-crown rifle destined to the recycle bin, because the quest is in a spot where you’re expected to have a lot of 4-crown weapons to deal with the strong enemies roaming around (lots of which drop 5-crown gear).

Actually, the ONLY interesting weapons I’ve found were less than a handful of 5-crown guns tied to quests (I think there’s 4 of them? Maybe just 3), most of them to the north, and there’s a 5-crown Glock abandoned inside an inconspicuous police car.

…That kinda takes a lot of the feeling of reward from the “treasure hunting” aspect of looking for these guns.

I’m not asking for every single settlement to have a 5-crown or anything like that, but an occasional 4-crown in the harder-to-reach locations could make loads of difference when it comes to rewarding the players who love to explore the map.

And not just guns; a handful of 4~5-crown attachments in fixed-yet-hard-to-reach locations would be a very welcome addition.

And bonus points if there are indeed more than just that single 5-crown Glock for us to find in this absolutely huge map.

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2

The why is subjective…

I never felt that the loot in hidden places was unrewarding. In the case of the parkour and puzzle missions, just doing them was fun. I understand not all people will feel like this. I really like the fact that some of the better/rarer weapons need a lot of work. That’s why I would never accept a weapon via trade.

I think, finding stuff is the reward. :coffee:

3

I agree.
But I also agree with @Doppelshifter in some points. I once wrote somewhere that it would be cool to have the levels of the world loot in most parts bound to the characters level.

As example, so don’t take the numbers for too serious:
So at the beginning you find 1c weapons and attachments with a chance for 2c stuff.

From lvl 10 on you find more 2c stuff with a chance for 3c stuff and still a small chance for 1c.

From lvl 15 you find more 3c with a chance for 4c and still small chances for 2c and 1c.

Lvl 20 opens a small chance for 5c guns and attachments. But in general they should be able to be found as rewards in missions. Every lower level still has a small chance.

Lvl 25 unlocks the 6c versions (exp). They could still be a reward for defeating rivals, base assaults and defenses.

What I don’t like are these often drops of weapons by machines. Parts for attachments, ok, but weapons? Why should a harvester carry a bow or a tank a pistol? So remove most weapons from machines loot pools.

Now we have, in relation to our characters level, a greater chance for a nice reward for exploring the world.

What do you think?

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4

Oh, I know, and I still find it rewarding enough to keep doing it, but I can’t help but feel that constant frustration of knowing that the loot will never be more than scrap metal to craft more bullets.

Like… it feels like the design is incomplete.

There’s a concept in game design called “negative possibility space”, where the game seems to suggest there’s something you can do and that there could be something rewarding up there and… there’s nothing.

The remedy to that is usually put some kind of reward there, even if it’s menial. But crucially, it has to be something exciting, even if not super precious or game-breaking.
…And a 1-crown rusted gun is… hardly exciting. Specially when you’re in the north of the map, doing jumping puzzles while evading the aim of Firebirds.

Like… the current state is more fun than many sandbox games, but it could be the exact amount of better if they just tweaked the quality of the rewards for some of these hidden guns.

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5

Oh, something I forgot in my proposal.

There could also be already upgraded weapons in the boxes in the world to make it more rewarding, diversified and exciting.

Maybe you find a 1c Weapon, which already has one or two 2c-4c attachments attached.

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6

That actually already exists in some form. The 5C Magnum revolver is always found with a 2-4x scope, and a lot of rifles come with scopes (while others don’t). But I agree, it would be nice to see more combinations, such a 3C Glock with a 3C mag, or a 2C MP5 but that’s fully kitted with a 2C suppressor, mag and red dot, because it was found near the corpse of a special operations agent or something.

The game is FULL of environmental storytelling, so might as well take advantage of that and use gun attachments as another vehicle to tell small stories about who they belonged to, or how they were used.

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7

I must have forgotten that… Or just missed it.
It’s long time ago since I finished the main story and visited every location, searched every house and watched in every single box… There are just a few dlc-guns of which I don’t have the 5c version yet… But they can’t be found in the world.

Just another reason why weapons in general should be removed from machines loot pools.

And one more complaint… I already made a topic about that… The way how DLC guns are provided (3c of everything right from the start in the plundra) is so bad. Changing this to the same way as above described would be another rewarding reason for more exploration.

Currently, in lategame, you just fight machines all the time. The whole beauty of the world is forgotten as soon as you have seen all or finished the story. It’s just about getting the missing items which is just possible by destroying machines.

There is so much lost potential…

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8

I partially agree, but only because we only have the Reaper as the big roaming boss.

If we get more of those, spawning in more locations of the map, and with potential interactions with other machines on the field, suddenly we have a lot more reason to explore the map, if anything at least to find new vantage points and approach routes.

Like, just like the environmental storytelling is stellar, the emergent gameplay creates some incredible battles (like when you’re trying to sneak into a fight between a Harverster and a Wolf with a tank on the sidelines and as soon as you engage, two Firebirds arrive to make things spicier – oddly specific example that indeed happened to me).

…The problem is that this means GZ’s devs have to both tune the weapon loadout and fine tune new machines and their interactions, and so far I’m not sure how much devpower they have available to tackle that in a timely manner.

…I should make that its own thread, now that I think about it.

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What DLC guns? As long as it’s not in the eastern European pack I have it.

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Some of the eastern european weapons pack and the bow.

11

I could give you the bow. Just send me your username and I’ll add you.

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No, thx.
I don’t share my username with people I don’t know… And it’s just a bow.

Back to topic… It was about loot and exploration, not trading :wink:

Edit:

I built a table with some values to show my idea more detailed:

example tables
World loot pool - weapons (chances, if you find a weapon in the world)
lvl 0 lvl 10 lvl 15 lvl 20 lvl 25
1c 100% 40% 15% 5% 1%
2c 0% 60% 25% 10% 5%
3c 0% 0% 60% 25% 10%
4c 0% 0% 0% 60% 20%
5c 0% 0% 0% 0% 60%
6c 0% 0% 0% 0% 4%
100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
World loot pool - attachments (chances, if you find an attachment in the world)
lvl 0 lvl 10 lvl 15 lvl 20 lvl 25
1c 95% 35% 10% 5% 1%
2c 5% 60% 25% 10% 5%
3c 0% 5% 60% 20% 10%
4c 0% 0% 5% 60% 20%
5c 0% 0% 0% 5% 64%
(here is potential for new 6c attachments!)
100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
Machine loot pool - weapons (overall chances, if you destroyed a machine)
lvl 0 lvl 10 lvl 15 lvl 20 lvl 25
1c 2% 3% 0% 0% 0%
2c 1% 2% 3% 0% 0%
3c 0% 1% 2% 3% 0%
4c 0% 0% 1% 2% 3%
5c 0% 0% 0% 1% 2%
6c 0% 0% 0% 0% 1%
3% 6% 6% 6% 6%
Machine loot pool - attachments (overall chances, if you destroyed a machine)
lvl 0 lvl 10 lvl 15 lvl 20 lvl 25
1c 3% 4% 5% 0% 0%
2c 2% 3% 4% 5% 0%
3c 0% 2% 3% 4% 5%
4c 0% 0% 2% 3% 5%
5c 0% 0% 0% 2% 4%
(here is potential for new 6c attachments!)
5% 9% 14% 14% 14%
13

Alright understandable have a good day.

14

When there are so many different people, the problem is always that what is exciting for some could be disappointing for others.

But indeed, something exciting would be nice. For me that would never be a gun that we can get in other ways, but perhaps a new piece of lore that gives some new clues towards filling the gaps in the story, such as what happened to some of the people, e.g. Janek, Riikka, Veronika etc.
Or who is R. Salonen?
Or how Rivals came to be.
Or the big one: what happened to all the inhabitants of Östertörn, who were not found dead or in a resistance group, and I mean some concrete information.

Example lore bit about Janek. “Hey Otto, I don’t know if you already heard the sad news, but I wanted you to know that our friend Janek was found dead, it appeared he had died from nasty leg infection”.

Other things that would excite me are more info/lore snippets just found in the game world, that e.g. has information about location in the form of a street name, bridge name, etc, with a description of where that is. For instance: I left a shopping cart on Klinthyttavägen for you to find my hideout, where the exciting bit would be the name of a road never mentioned before.

I also would love to get more information on the unknown locations mentioned in the lore, like the ports Boden, Karlshamn, and Fårösund, or the Firebird base of origin, Camp Kabarga. And although I feel this might be information that is yet to come, some early hints would be exciting because at least we would then know that these threads have not been left unfinished.

2 Likes
15

Like a spoiler or cliffhanger at the end of a movie, episode or book. I would be interested in this, too.

I just think the devs use this very rarely, because a cliffhanger or spoiler always is some kind of promise, that there will be an answer… But if plans change due to technical limitations/reasons or due to changes in the plot, they maybe produce additional work for themselves and the community manager. And maybe their prestige suffers by breaking too many “promisses”.

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True, they can never really right out promise content, because something can change. But they are smart people, and they can see what I suggested here, so they might see a way to give us something. :coffee:

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17

we need more weapon packs :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: not DLC story content

18

:-1::-1::-1::-1::-1:
Don’t be ironic in this case. That’s not funny.

1 Like
19

No i think we have enough weapons, we need more worldbuildind like more uniqe locations and cities and more to the story.

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20

To return to the topic a bit I’m not sure I agree with it.

When it comes to missions, the 3* guns you get as reward are simply there due to balance reasons. They are often found during the midpoint in the game, when players explore regions that are not yet near the endgame.

For example, a similar mission in North Coast Region also awards a Hunting Rifle, except this one is 4* due to the late-game content you’re most likely on at that point.

For exploration, it should be a reward in itself, discovering new and interesting places with visual storytelling setpieces placed there for curious players to discover. If loot’s your thing then sure add some ammo boxes and maybe a gun.

Or like our resident level design genious @SR_knivspark did, make the player go on a treasure hunt if they are willing to do additional exploring for a more substantial reward…

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