New Loot System

Split Screen has posted on the forum their plans for a significant change to the loot system. Read the post here.

There’s been some discussion on the forum about it, for and against. It’s hard to judge when you haven’t seen it. But what’s the point of having your own blog if you don’t speculate wildly.

First of all, does the existing system need changing? There’s speculation among players that the change is to address imbalance in the Draconis system. Maybe. I’d love to see a poll of Draconis level players on if they’re happy or not. There’s lots of moaning on the forum but any community has a vocal group of dissenters. Have player numbers gone up, dropped or stayed steady? Has SlipStream’s income risen? Maybe I should look at the corporate site to see if there’s any data.

For me I can only speak from experience at Gemini, Antares and Vega. I don’t see any need for the Cryonite drop rate to be changed. When you get to a new system you usually have to grind hard to get the ships and armour, but what do you expect? It takes a bit of dedication and focus but is doable. The existing system works fine for me.

Blue Prints is a different matter. In my career I’ve only come across 2 rares, but there are many players who seem to do much better. With the frequency being so rare and only one Blue Print needed for a weapon, it’s to be expected that there will be a lot of variation between players. Some will kill a 1,000 Mantis and still be waiting, while another pilot could get 2 rares from just 50. It’s this variation that winds people up. There has to be some random element but one that is more consistent between players.

If I understand the proposal correctly, there’s a bigger chance of getting BPs but you need more than 1 to get a fully functioning piece of equipment. If the BPs for an item are identical i.e. not split into sub components such as barrel, targeting system, power supply etc, then it should work. If they are sub components then it would be worse, as you may collect 5 BPs of all but one component of a Remington Kill-o-Zap 357 Blaster, not being able to find the BP for the curly lead. If all of the Remington BPs are identical and you just need a certain number of them then it should even out the luck between players. Cryonite has a more frequent and lower drop value than BPs and no players complain about other players being more lucky, just about the time it takes to collect a certain number.

There are other changes coming in such as a higher energy cap (hmmm, why?), ‘ignore’ list (hooray!), hover in place (good), new log in process (we’ll see) and a few others. They are planed for the 26^th January update. Get ready for the howls of protest in the forum as this goes live.