Progression Bottleneck and Imbalance
Let's talk about what many are finding to be one of the biggest problems with Meet Your Maker: Progression. Take a look at this screenshot of my Loadout screen and then I'll explain.
You'll see I've got plenty of the Parts and Cells but my synthite is low. Really low. I am currently stuck with the choice of either not buying upgrades or not reactivating my bases. There is a massive bottleneck around synthite for me as a builder main and it's getting extremely frustrating to manage.
I have one base at 2,600+ kills, two at 800+, one at 500+, and a newer one at 231 kills. I have tons of accolades (one of my bases has 76 "Fun" ratings on 153 raid attempts, for example) and my bases are prestige 10, 8, 8, 6, and 3. Based on what I've seen around the community, these are pretty solid numbers. Yet I've spent over 80% of my time raiding for synthite instead of tweaking my bases, building new ones, and overall playing the game as I'd like to. Also, despite spending all of that time raiding, I only have a few upgrades to my gear and character to help with tougher bases. I'd have to completely forgo building for a while and just use synthite on upgrades to fix that.
Let's break it down in simple terms. Generally, with all 5 bases up, I can collect up enough synthite to prestige 1 base (sometimes a second) and have a little leftover. Then its time to spam raids until I get the other 4 bases prestiged and reactivated. Now I am out of playing time and can't keep raiding for more synthite and thus, I'm unable to purchase upgrades for my character or my traps and enemies.
I don't think anything sums up the bottleneck more than the fact that my player level is 57 and yet I have basic upgrades for a few minions and traps and only the first couple of basic upgrades for my loadout. Raiders I've been watching live on stream with player levels like 23 or 31 have all gear unlocked and are spending synthite on upgrades for traps and such just to use the resource even though they don't intend to build. This is a huge imbalance that makes it seem like BHVR doesn't want there to be builder mains.
Hopefully this bottleneck around Sythite can be addressed soon because it really is putting a massive damper on what otherwise is my favorite video game release in a long time. I'd really like to spend most of my time making and fiddling with my bases or maybe even practice an even split. As it is right now that's just not possible. Anyway, sorry for the long read but there we have it. If you need me I'll be raiding so I can activate my three depleted bases. Sigh.
Yep. The grind is real.
Personally I feel some of this could be addressed with outposts going on cooldown and players can decide to prestige to skip the timer or pay resources to reduce the time.
Stupid question and sorry for asking but are you going for forbidden tombs? I have found I am not struggling with the yellow currency. Then again I do only have one outpost active and a lot of plots bought but not built upon as I am trying to hold off on building till I have more options in the sense of upgrades for traps and guards
I do indeed hunt for forbidden tombs. That does help some with synthite but not nearly enough.
You are on to something with waiting to build. I think for now, while the balance of resources is so lopsided toward raiding, that is the best option. Make a base or two and raid with almost all of your gaming time. That's reality for now I just hope that it changes so that building is just as viable for progression in the near future.
Ya it’s killing me a bit. I want to go all out on building but I don’t like feeling like “I want to do this idea, oh wait I don’t have the thing unlocked to be able to do said thing” so ya hence the waiting.
maybe they can make it so that when people die in the outpost they only drop sythite and not parts. Or maybe they can add a sort of resource exchange to make it where you can trade parts into a special type of sythites that can only be used on buildings and such not upgrades.
Resource exchange would definitely be clutch. They probably just need to set threshold milestones for bases. For example, reach a certain number of kills or accolades, get bonus Synthite. Something like that.
Raiding needs to be encouraged over building. This game has a serious imbalance towards building.
I don't understand how you can have one outpost that has 2000+ kills, I'm lucky if any of my outposts get more than 3 raids in a 24hr active session.
I think each outpost should require you to raid at least 5 others to maintain. All 5 outposts active? 25 raids per day minimum.
You should not be able to get by as a 'builder main'. The game will die that way.
And I don't understand how can't those bases pay for themselves. First one gave me 500-600 synth MAX per prestige while I needed 900. Like, yes, we aren't supposed to be builders-only but main-builders? Why not? I still need to buy new traps, I still need synth for my bases, I still need synth for new sites, I still RAID A LOT. I'd be happy to have to raid five outposts per my base. But five outposts in most cases aren't enough to prestige one p8 outpost. I get 10-200 synth per raid, I need at least seven outposts and it depends on RNG that they have smth I CAN destroy and not only speedrun the killbox with 10 synth in the end (with synth boost and unlycky tombs full of parts). Sometimes I get more from chimera leveling than from raiding itself.
I guess I raid even more than raider-mains have to. Not only I need basic upgrades for me as raider to be faster and better in farming, but also I need new traps and prestige taxes as builder because somehow 200 deaths per prestige (from different people, no nerfs included) aren't enough :/
Trying to maintain five outposts is incredibly time consuming. Just keeping one/two active is more than enough for me. After the daily bonus + a Chimera level from the extracted genmat your outpost(s) provide, you're at 500 synthite, which isn't enough to prestige a single outpost. Raiding is necessary to keep your creations active.
Striving to max out your active outposts is only for the most dedicated bunch of players. Every outpost needs players to raid them and by pushing five of your own creations into the pool of active ones you'll need to work even harder to keep them all running.
All that being said I would appreciate getting an additional synthite award for reaching prestige level 10. Maybe adopt the outpost milestone rewards like others have suggested. I wouldn't want some basic exchange/conversion solution. While that works, it's the least interesting way to solve the issue of having thousands of parts to hundreds of synthite.
Having outposts go on cooldown instead being forced to prestige them help greatly reduce the raid grind but having an option to allow folks to skip the cooldown timer in order to reactive would then put the own-ness on the player. I discuss this idea below:
But what about repeating outposts - bhvr can implement setting that hide previously player outposts from your selection.
An outpost cooldown idea sounds grand for the players who have been burnt out by earning prestige levels, but I do think the prestige system does an okay job at keeping the active outposts fresh. I rather see that current system receive a balance pass than effectively tossing it for a new one.
Encouraging players to edit and incorporate new strategies so their outpost performs well is a key feature of Meet Your Maker. It's hard to say that would still be a key feature if players could instead build an outpost and receive all the rewards without earning any prestige levels through performance. As we were saying before the game needs players to raid outposts to survive and if you take the synthite requirement away completely with a gated cooldown you'll negatively affect the population of raiders as well.
It's an interesting idea, but I think it does more harm than good for the game as a whole.