Hello Riftbreakers!
Last week, we told you about the changes to the weapons system in the upcoming Riftbreaker 2.0 update. Thank you for all the healthy discussion that took place in the comments section of that post. It’s great to see you so engaged and full of ideas to make the game a better experience. Fear not - we’re not going to sacrifice fun for the sake of mythical balance. We’ll report back to you when we have some more results from our testing. In the meantime, as we promised, we will tell you about the second massive change in RB 2.0 - the upgraded loot system.
The most basic example of the new system in action. The Biocache dropped a unique item and some resources for good measure. The higher the rarity of the Biocache, the better your chances for more advanced gear and even more resources.
With all the exciting additions coming to The Riftbreaker in the upcoming updates, we have been looking for some new ways to encourage our players to explore the maps further than before. Sure, we’ve already had our Bioanomalies and Biocaches. Still, if you have unlocked all the unique items for your profile and do not need some resources, they might stop feeling rewarding after a while. After a while, when a new map opens up, most players would just complete the objectives and move on. It’s not wrong and might suit your playstyle - more power to you! However, we wanted to make exploration more meaningful, so we decided to best approach it through looting opportunities.
The weapons you find as loot have unique properties, like cluster projectiles, for example. They are tuned to be meaningful and trigger often, so that it's not just a "paper" chance for a bonus effect.
When you look at the best action RPGs, they give you plenty of opportunities to get new gear and a power spike by simply playing the game and exploring the world. Every chest you open, or monster you kill is a new chance to get an item. While most of these items are usually in the “straight-to-vendor” tier, the possibility of getting an upgrade drives players forward. It adds a new layer of meaning to the never-ending monster-slaying quest. For a very long time, we were hesitant to take this approach. “How can a Canoptrix drop a minigun? That doesn’t make any sense!” we thought. After playing through some of the most recent big aRPGs, something clicked in our heads. If a goblin can drop a halberd twice its size, and nobody bats an eye, then what’s the problem?
Unique drops are plentiful, but not guaranteed. Worst case scenario - you get a resource fountain. Biocaches are guaranteed to drop Carbonium and Ironium now, in addition to other resources.
We realized that we’ve been wrong about loot drops this entire time. It doesn’t matter if it makes sense in the real world. The game isn’t the real world - it’s a fantasy, and we should give you as many fun things to do in that fantasy as we possibly can. We analyzed loot systems in many games, both old and new, and came up with a simple version that should work for The Riftbreaker. After some trial and error, we arrived at the first version of the new system. Here’s what we came up with - but please, bear in mind that this is just an early idea, and it is likely to change a whole lot as we work on it:
- Until now, the loot pool in The Riftbreaker consisted of resource shards, a couple of unique upgrade blueprints for your gear, some additional player skins, weapon mods, and decorative elements for your base. We decided to expand the pool with actual, complete weapons - not blueprints. You can use them, you can hold on to them, you can disassemble them for resources - the choice is yours.
- The weapons you get as loot will be more powerful than those you can craft yourself. The rarity tier of the weapons you find will depend on your current research level, and you will have the chance to get a weapon that is one tier higher. This means that if you have access to Advanced Shotguns, for example, you can find a Superior Shotgun in the wild. It’s not guaranteed, but there is a decent chance!
- Looted weapons will also receive additional properties that are not available for regular, crafted weapons. We’re talking about piercing, multi-shot, cluster projectiles, homing, etc. The higher the tier of the weapon, the more additional properties it gets. We will mark the items with those extra properties in your inventory so that you remember to check them out. It is entirely possible to fill out your entire inventory without touching the crafting menu even once, but you have to rely on RNG to get what you want. The choice is yours!
- You will have plenty of opportunities to get new gear while exploring Galatea 37. All Bioanomalies, Biocaches, Omega creatures, underground treasures, and creature nests can drop a unique item for you. On top of that, all regular enemies have a chance to reward you with a unique item, but that will happen on a much more rare basis.
- Some of you might ask, “Won’t all these weapons clutter my inventory?” Well, yes, but also no! We are working on a new mass disassembly system that will allow you to get rid of the gear you no longer need on a larger scale. This system will let you select multiple items at once and disassemble them in bulk, saving you time and effort. It will also allow you to get rid of your surplus mods, guaranteeing a new income stream.
- This new system will apply to both campaign and survival modes in single-player and co-op. The rarities will be tweaked individually for all those modes, but you can get a decent power-up during exploration whenever you play.
- It is important to stress that the new weapons will not replace the existing unique loot rewards. You can still collect all the skins, decorations, and gear upgrades. We will adjust each reward type's weight individually, so it doesn’t take 1000 years to complete your collection, either.
Since Omega creatures are the guardians of Bioanomalies, you can get often get two rewards for the price of one! Here, we got a Mortar from the Baxmoth Omega, and a Repeater from the anomaly.
The purpose of the new system is to make exploration in The Riftbreaker a worthwhile investment and an exciting adventure on its own, but it’s not the only thing we’re planning. The 2.0 update will give you more opportunities to discover new areas of the planet thanks to the Randomized Mission Generator. It will let you go on new missions and set up additional outposts in the biomes you have already conquered. That will, in turn, allow you to complete the mega-endgame mega-objectives which we’re mega-working on right now. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves - all in due time.
The underground treasures also give you a chance for a unique item - and that's in addition to other loot inside. We're not removing anything for the sake of the new system!
As always, we highly encourage you to sign up for the Closed Co-Op Beta Test. We test all the latest changes on that branch, and its highly experimental nature means we are very open to suggestions and changes. This gives you an opportunity to influence what the final version of this update turns out to be. We hope you’re going to like it!
To sign up for The Riftbreaker Multiplayer Beta please fill in the following form:
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