#Attention Adventurers! Help solve the locked box dilemma

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

forest pivot
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Boxes are one vector to incredible game riches; however, unlocking them all has become a challenge for the Shattered community. Here's the issue: Our resources dedicated to opening locked chests are stretched thin, and without action, we will be unable to service our own boxes.

Currently, there are three ways to open locked chests:
.01 The Pool:
A safe way to getting your boxes opened; however, the 100 box capacity impacts us all. Unless you're a prolific tipper, there is a good chance that based on supply/demand, your box will not be picked. Recently, we have seen when a pool picker drops off unexpectedly, everyone's boxes back up and their scripts fail. Even during the good times, our players run into full pools. Currently, we are seeing tips between 1.5k-2k/box.

.02 The Town Locksmith:
Instant, convenient, incredibly expensive. I have the sense that using the town locksmith nets between 10-30% of the actual value of the box. This is worse than the pool by far, and defeats the purpose (fun!) of going out and hunting.

.03 Direct Player Served:
If a picker pulls away from the pool to serve their own characters, a few things happen. The pool backs up quickly, especially if our high end pickers go off the pool to serve their accounts exclusively. There is also a substantial challenge to the scripting of this to make it work consistently. Also, we've seen that individual pickers are sometimes unable to keep up with the demands of more than 3-4 full time hunters. If the picker goes offline, it's easy to have over 1k boxes dumped into a room, leading to other problems.

I'm hopeful to hear that this issue could get some traction, and would like to source solutions from the community. To that end, I've had two thoughts that could help Shattered.

#1 - Remove the governor that limits boxes on the pool. We have demand for it.
#2 - Cap the amount Jahck charges. Would that be possible?

Lets come together and unlock the solution to this problem!

near rock
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I like the idea of removing the pool limits. We have a limited community that is a powerhouse for generating boxes. I don't see why we need limits!

sly sinew
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The NPC is capped. However, the formula used means you'll make a loss if the loot is low enough and the lock and trap difficulty high. The pool in Shattered should probably auto open boxes rather quicker than it does in prime.

random geyser
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I don't see them making instance-specific changes to the boxpool system. But if changes to the pool system unique to Shattered on the table...

  • Remove the limit on xp pool (allowing fried/saturated to get a box)
  • Remove the limit on boxes picked
  • Change the auto-pick system from 7 days to something much shorter. Like 6 hours or something.
  • Massively increase or even remove the limit on boxes able to be put in the pool - If you made the limit 10,000, then that would allow one character to force 100 more boxes/hr being given to the pickers.

Other changes...

  • An item that when worn tricks your xp pool so you can't ever become fried - So if your pool is 1000, you can't go above 999, it just goes to the ether. This would fix the xp governor on boxes without changing the pool code.
  • An item that removes all RT for picking/disarming when picking in any room with a pool worker/table or at a table.
  • Turning all tables in the Garrett to supernodes.

At the moment I am almost always limited on boxes/hour by mind state.
Even if the XP governor were removed or tricked, I think I'd just pick forever - even with the box/hr governor.
I'm getting close to the max boxes/hr I can pick anyway just from RT. Hence the RT reduction as well.

So even if you did pick your own boxes, bypassing the pool... Just having a script that keeps track of dropped boxes... I think you'd need several pickers because of the time it takes to pick a box. But at this point, the only place you could really do that is a table in the lodge, which isn't a supernode.

forest pivot
forest pivot
lapis roost
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So time to join shattered as a dedicated picker?

forest pivot
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We're hiring.

#

Pays about 250-270k/hr if you can pick every box.

sly sinew
# forest pivot Perhaps a lower cap then?

My opinion is that the game generates too many poor boxes and that loot should be more valuable and less frequent. Perhaps 1/3 the frequency of box drops and 3x the valuables in each box.

random geyser
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I agree, but that'd also be a universal change that is unlikely to be changed on a single instance.

sly sinew
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I think this is a general problem, boxes are too common and too boring in Prime too.

random geyser
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I agree - but it's outside the scope of this discussion.
The GMs have been pretty clear that they were not open to any talks about changing code for specific systems like the Pool or Treasure mechanics for just one instance. Otherwise, since we've been complaining for years about this same problem, we would have already got them to remove the governors on xp & jobs per hour.

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From an GM perspective, there are already are solutions... Larton, bypassing the pool, adding more pickers, gaming the pool to allow for more boxes/hr... I think from their perspective, we're simply pulling more boxes than we have pickers to pick - solution, have more pickers or pull fewer boxes.

sly sinew
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You can use loresinging to refine how you use Larton to remove the chance of taking a loss on a box.