Synthite Acquisition Rates Should Be Increased
Dreamnomad Member Posts: 3,775
Even using the synthite 30% drop rate boost, the acquisition rate of synthite is too slow. It is entirely too much of a daily grind to keep outposts operational. I don't really care how they increase it, but please increase it. Alternatively, decrease the synthite cost to re-energize an outpost. But the grind is too much and it is going to negatively impact the long term health of the game.
1
Here is the tricky thing with balancing Synthite. (Consider this a pocket guide to help.)
If you increase that rate that it drops, you have far more people making maps than raiding. If you decrease the drop rates, maps become too inefficient to make. I think (after toying around for a bit) that the developers have hit a nice middle area for most parts of the game.
My only suggestion will be to not investing into large plots of lands, the cost to up-keep are significantly higher than medium and small plots, and Brutal difficulty is already bad enough since getting consistent raids can be tricky (both before and after the matchmaking changes). Large bases by design are meant to be costly but provide lots of XP, but if you just want to log-on, collect resources, prestige, then log-off, it's definitely not the way to go.
Personally, I have invested in a lot of small/medium bases that are able to kill enough to led to net-profit in Synthite (you are limited to Normal/Advance Difficulty but you get more raiders through those anyways), and I also pay a lot of attention to the amount of Genmat each plot of land has as well, since some bases last longer (thus getting more raids).
There are other alternative factors to consider as well, such as the time of day for your region. I find that the best times for getting kills is in the mid-day/afternoon, so if I need Prestige Points I will often just let me Genmat extraction happen during that time but set my base to inactive otherwise. Of course you can just let your Genmat be extracted normally, with some bases you can get away with it due to the long duration, or if you need passive XP it's always there, etc.
Overall, base making in MYM (at least for some sort of net-profit) has more layers than just "build base => profit", I often burn through a small bit of Synthite recycling plots to find the one that seems (almost) perfect since things are not really surface level, but it's mainly just proper management combined with applying knowledge.
I would implore people who are not well-versed in it to experiment and/or research a bit.
Nah, the synth drop rate is simply to low.
Yesterday i saw a reddit video of someone who reached lvl 100 on everything, had 46k cells, 47k parts and only 6k synth.
I would like to see 2 things done after thinking about this. Increase the daily bonus to 1000 synthite. This will just help everyone across the board and encourage logging in regularly. My next idea is more complicated but hear me out. I think when an outpost hits level ten and runs out of gen mat effectively retiring the outpost, I think the player should get bonus synthite based on how much excess prestige the outpost earned. The math on this part would require knowledge only the devs have. Namely, on average how much extra prestige do outposts have when retiring. Take the average and add like 25% by rounding to the nearest 500. Let's just say for argument sake the average outpost has something like 4000ish extra prestige when retiring. Let's round that up to 5000. That would be the cap for bonus synthite.
Then you figure out how much bonus synthite players should be able to earn this way. I think 1500 to 2000 would be about right. There are several reasons why I think this should be done. One to reward players for maxing out an outpost. Two- to help players retiring an outpost buy a new outpost. Three- To help with the daily synthite grind. Four- and this is the most important reason, to give players a reason to care about the advisor that gives a boost to prestige. I also think that advisor needs a massive increase to duration compared to other advisors since the bonus only applies to outposts. Instead of increasing boost duration by 3 mins per level it should be like 12 minutes per level.
Do this or just make it that i can do base related things with all three currencies. Buying bases or prestige shouldnt just be with synthite.
The issue is not Synthite drop rates, the issue is that you do not know how to properly design a base with profits in mind. Again, this are not surface level.
And again, the game already needs more raider than makers, we already have issues were maps just never get raided enough, even after the matchmaking update.
At least let us get all loot from our raids. I've met outposts where I got 10 synth from all three tombs in total plus pretty all loot from trap destruction went into acid cubes. Total? Less than 15 synth. With boost. How the hell can I earn 900 to prestige, then?
Sometimes I get sweet 200 synth per raid but:
1) it's a lucky base without corrosives under traps, I can't control that
2) plus it's a hard base where I die 4-5-6 times (so I loose rank points).
If I don't die or die only once I can't get 200+ synth, it's impossible, traps/guards don't drop that many. And I definitely don't want to die on purpose to restart easy outposts and spend 15 minutes farming.
I have 20k parts with 100+ storage of all hardwares. I can't remember any raid when I got more synth than parts :/
Getting a decent kill ratio of lets say 5 is not enough to sustain a base. How much would be needed? 10? 20? 30?Now consider that people abandon raids where they die to often, to prevent their rank from dropping. Only to revisit the same map with 0 deaths.
The game seems to be designed to punish builders. As i just had a rank drop of 22 points, because a base only got 9 kills in 2 raids. Doesn´t sound fair to me.
Kill ratio won't work because after that amount of deaths you get only 1 point of resources from them. So your key to get resources is to get tons of raiders because you get WAY more resources from 30 raiders who died twice than from one raider who died 60 times.
But.
But my super popular base with 1000+ visits total and 2.0 kill ratio wasn't able to pay for itself :) one cycle contained around 100 visits with around 200 deaths. One cycle. No drop nerfs since nobody died more than 5 times per attempt. It wasn't enough, you know. I got 500 synth, maybe 600 at maximum max. It's not enough to prestige even 1p base, you need 625 there. 40 000 prestige points at p10, what for?
And now my bases get 10 raids per cycle max. 40 deaths if 4.0 ratio. 40 deaths versus 200. Of course it is not enough.
I don't know how to properly design a base with profits in mind if 200 death of different people isn't enough for base to prestige itself (see above). My normal (and small) base with 4 kill ratio gave me 60 (!) points of synth on its latest cycle. How can you even talk about synth profit if you definitely can't earn from building more synth than you spend? What do I do wrong? What do I miss?
Or do you suggest to create normal small bases to spend less? It's a great option to save synth but that's not a solution for initial lack of it. If we aren't supposed to have enough resources for that many bases (bc we have raid issues) then why do we have 5 slots in the first place? I just can't get it.
If we aren't supposed to have enough resources for that many bases (bc we have raid issues) then why do we have 5 slots in the first place? I just can't get it.
Two reasons.
One: There are five types of GenMat (five Advisors), so you can have five bases.
Two: You're not supposed to be able to only build. BHVR designed the game to force everyone to raid. You can just raid, or you can raid and build, but you can't just build. That's why the grind is the way it is. If there are too many Builders and not enough Raiders, no one's bases get raided and the game dies. The more bases a player has, the more they're forced to raid. Unless you want to make the game a full-time job, you're really not meant to keep five bases activated at all times.
I don't think anyone here has an issue with doing some raiding. The question is how much do they expect us to play on a daily basis? I personally feel like it shouldn't take more than 2 hours of playing to keep your bases operational. Like we have lives to live and stuff. You can't expect to keep players if you don't make it reasonable. The easiest way to do this is drastically increase the daily bonus for synth.
Unless you want to make the game a full-time job, you're really not meant to keep two bases activated at all times.
That's how I feel it. And that's the problem I'm talking about.
I'm not arguing with that. I was specifically answering the question "If we aren't supposed to have enough resources for that many bases (bc we have raid issues) then why do we have 5 slots in the first place?" BHVR wants players to attempt to keep more bases than they can reasonably handle activated so that they grind grind grind grind grind as Raider. They seem to be very afraid that players will not raid more than is required of them.
BHVR has this mistaken belief that the grind is what keeps players playing. They put more focus on that than on fun. They do not seem to understand burnout. They don't realize DbD survives in spite of the grind, not because of it.
I too hate the Synthite grind and I made a thread complaining about how solid cubes keep eating my Synthite drops so I get even less than I should be. I hope BHVR adjusts the game's economy.
See above: "BHVR has this mistaken belief that the grind is what keeps players playing. They put more focus on that than on fun. They do not seem to understand burnout." And in MYM's case, BHVR seems to be very afraid that players will not raid any more than is required of them.
I do hope they fix the economy. The Synthite grind is awful. I hate walking away from a raid with 90+ parts and 5 (or less) Synthite. It happens way too often.
Also, if you're going to alter my quote (which is fine), you should have bolded the changed part and said after "fixed that for you." I thought I'd messed up in my reply to you.
i'm still not 100 on all my advisors, i run 5 bases daily, all my maps but one are 4500 base capacity. i have 16000 synthite, every guard and trap fully unlocked including addons. i do not hunt treats.
edit - the only thing i CAN spend synthite on is bases now, so it just accumulates. when you're unlocking it goes fast and is hard to keep. but if you know what traps and guards you want, you can easily stick to a single base format without unlocking everything for a while and grind synthite out easily by keeping your bases active and productive. i go in and collect my kills on my outposts at about 20-30 deaths, i come out with about 100-200 synthite each time i do this from raider death. i do it probably once every 2-3 hours on each map. so about 150synthie an hour passively per dungeon if i had to guess conservatively. my presteige costs 1000 synthite, which on average the dungeon will earn me in 10-12 hours. and it has a genmat pool of 9000 meaning it's on for 24 hours. i also run these bases in overdrive, doubling the genmat they collect from kills. these kills also generate exp for me and each level up gives me a chunk of synthite, sometimes i log in from sleep and i've gained 3 level up rewards.
Snaps for you. You are clearly a god and we all bow to your superiority. But for the rest of us mere mortals, this is clearly an issue.
Oh, sorry for that, I should've bolded that indeed. And I thought "fixed that for you" would sound kinda rude and aggressive so I deleted that part x)
And, yeah, I understand why they gave us five slots but I don't understand WHY.
Of course, it's for grind, I just can't imagine who and why decided it that way. We were part of the alpha, we didn't have that synth grind at all (at least, I didn't feel that way), I was able to maintain 5 bases and they lived much longer. And I got (and did) MORE raids there than now. Probably, there are good reasons why now it is worse than it was during alpha but I don't see them. I don't know how shorter uptime can be good if lead into low raids and fast builders' burnout.
Prestiges were free, ok, should be fixed to make us grind more, I get it. But they didn't add some price to that, they made it THAT expensive and also they added parts into tombs. Like, everything seemed to be ok and in need of small tweaks, but they just dropped a big ass nuke on synth economy instead of little fixes with a hummer. 🤷♀️ I could pay 200 synth per base and grind 1k synth every other day to maintain 5 bases which can survive 10-20 days and feel both grindy and rewarded. But their solution? Now I don't build at all because I feel it pointless and not profitable. Or build some fast and not super artistic ######### I don't even like just to make it active.
I get they want us grind, but... Well, I guess my question was rhetorical.
So, every your map generates 20-30 deaths per HOUR? How many raid attempts do you have then?
My 40 deaths in outpost (from different people, no drop nerfs) became 65-70 synth average (with boosts). How in univers can your 20-30 give you 150...
i get about 4-8 attempts per hour per map, some die 2-3 times, some die 10+ some don't die at all.
stay hostile buddy. i gave you another data point since you quoted one.
That is nowhere near what i get from my bases. Kill rate of 5 gets me like 30-50 synth on several raids. But 30 raids per Hour? How? I get maybe 3 raids per hour and am happy about it...
30 deaths an hour, 4 attempts per hour is my low average, sometimes its up as high as 8. i run exclusively normal until a map is p5, then i move them to brutal because every other dungeon is a champion run in brutal. this maximizes my raid frequency.
that was a collection from one outpost with somewhere between 20-30 kills in it
Oh you are master. I guess matchmaking works here...
I'm silver 4, almost gold, hadn't enough time to get higher. And I get 4-5 attempts PER PRESTIGE. At max. Even champions don't get too many raids. And I know everything that can influence raiders' decision to try the base so I'm pretty sure mine aren't bad in that way. It's either tons of maps in pool or I'm extremely unlucky. Your rank is the only possible answer for me :/ I guess I'm going to grind master rank as fast as possible and try again with same outposts, they aren't active for now anyway, I' ll keep them and will activate later as master. Not clear experiment but it is something.
And what's your rank? Are you master or lower?
i'm not sure how much rank influences it, but i heard rumor that rank does affect if you see a player's map but never found confirmation one way or the other. also, are you turning your maps off during the dead hours? i use steam charts to disable my maps when the player count is under 500
edit their dead time is from about 8pm to 4AM PST (GMT-8) i turned my map on about 2 hours ago (posted at 6:08 AM GMT-8)
What does rank have to do with raids?
Gold 1
They have formula to separate maps and offer them to different people.
I don't know if it contains rank in any way but I guess they pretty could use it to calculate things which could lead to smaller map pool for higher (less flooded) ranks (and therefore higher chances for every map here to be raided). Of course it's only my guess. But it makes sense if they try to show similar rank bases to similar rank raiders.
I don't have time through a day to manage my maps this way :c I buy 9k maps only and keep them active 24 hours. Like I activate them at 3 am (GMT+3), go to sleep, to work, come back into game at 10-12pm, check everything, raid and later (at 3am) I prestige and reactivate. But I don't get any spikes like you described. My raids seem random, without any time consistency. One raid here, one raid there, that's it. Not like all four in ohe hour. That's why I stopped. All my maps are on hold now except one.
Well, I guess, if you can activate your outposts at right time for 2 hours, get value and turn the maps off till next time it's better than one long run. Sad.
From the years I've been playing DbD, what I've seen is that BHVR does a lot of things that might sound good in theory but ignore the reality of player psychology. For some reason they are really bad at understanding human psychology. To BHVR, the grind trumps fun, and the drive to compete trumps burnout. So what they've done here doesn't surprise me at all. Rather than encouraging raiding by making it more fun and rewarding, they instead punished builders by increasing the Synthite grind (and also by treating builders like an assembly line to just keep pumping out new content for their game). This is what BHVR does, they go negative instead of positive, they favor frustrating gameplay over rewarding gameplay.
I hope BHVR fixes this, I really do. I like MYM, but there are numerous mechanics in the game that work against the players and will actually discourage playing. The grind is one of them.
I thought "fixed that for you" would sound kinda rude and aggressive so I deleted that part x)
Ah, okay, I can see that. I've seen that phrase used so often it's like punctuation to me lol
Let me ask you a question. If they raise the daily synth bonus to 1000 is that somehow going to negatively impact your play experience?
I don´t think rank plays a role in regard of what maps you find. For example, in yesterdays stream a dev said that new players are not limited on what kind of maps they can play on. That implys that rank has no effect on matchmaking.
So if dev didn't mean new players don't have any restriction preventing them from playing dangerous/brutal bases... there's no real explanation why my outposts don't get 4 raids every hour unlike MadMoeZel's outposts xD You've killed my hope :D
Well, I'm going to get master anyway so it doesn't really matter.
I'm sad everything you've said makes sense for me now x) Let's hope they'll fix it somehow.
not one bit. i'm also not arguing not to increase it. i'm just resisting the doomsaying that it's more or less impossible. it's not. that was the only point i intended to make. i even admitted earlier that the synthite grind when you're unlocking is unforgiving and that you have to select specific combos you want and stick to them.
in yesterdays stream
There was a stream yesterday? Shoot, I missed that and can't find anything about it :(
Yeah i also only saw it, because MyM Twitter retweeted it.
Oh, okay! I actually caught a bit of that but only saw them playing MYM and clicked off. I'll have to go back and check it out. Thank you!
You haven´t missed much. They just introduce the game, speak about the difficulty of creating interesting content for purely player driven content and how important it is to listen to the community...
"how important it is to listen to the community"
What?
lol
lmao
Timestamp 38-39:06
Oh, wow. Yeah.
I ended up watching the stream. While most of it isn't new information, it is nice to hear confirmation that the devs designed the game with certain intentions. I've been watching some people on the Steam forums say the game isn't a level designer, Accolades are secondary to kills, people are misunderstanding what the game is about and the players who are unhappy are wrong, etc. etc. This stream proves those people are wrong: they're misunderstanding the devs' fumbles as their intentions.
The dev talks about how Accolades purposefully reward more than kills. He talks about how building is a balance with making sure your base is challenging and fun so Raiders will stick around and keep dying to it (so all the Builders saying Raiders should be forced to stay and die repeatedly have missed the point). He talks about how they're looking into expanding on Social Raids, looking into doing more with P10 bases (I know with BHVR nothing is guaranteed until it's actually in the game, but this shows that the devs are not hardcore set on keeping the current Outpost system exactly as it is). I'd go tell those people on the Steam forums off if I weren't dead set on staying the hell off the Steam forums, plus they'll always find some way to argue no matter how ridiculous the interpretation required to do so (I saw that with the people defending the Corrosive Cube bug as intentional despite the Launch Day patch notes, holy hell).
Sorry. It's been disappointing to read the different forums and see all kinds of terrible takes on the game. Defending crap that's bad like it's intentional (as if being intentional somehow makes it good). MYM could be really fun, but the devs made some mistakes that have had negative effects on the community (Raiders get docked rank points for leaving a base, so they demand every base must be exactly to their liking and any Builder who fails at that even once gets blocked... I try to make fun bases, it makes me sad to think one misstep could get me blocked. Blocking a player seems so extreme to me but people are doing that over Abandoning an Outpost because BHVR somehow made blocking the more obvious/enticing option.). The directions the game took are at odds with the intentions. "Builders need to make fun bases so Raiders are willing to die repeatedly to them. But also Raiders are docked Rank points for dying, so they're not going to be willing to die no matter what."
The dev says if you play a base over and over again but end up leaving, you walk away with hundreds of Synthite and hundreds of Parts. lol. Hundreds of Parts, yes. Either he misspoke or someone needs to adjust the RNG like a lot. Makes me wonder if they realize just how bad the Synthite grind actually is.
Even the part about "listening to the community" shows a lack of awareness. The devs may be listening, but they're not responding, so the community thinks they're being ignored.
I hope the devs really are paying attention. For some reason I rather like this game and would prefer to see it survive.
Edit: Oh hey, they did an AMA where they address some of the playerbase's concerns. I know this doesn't mean anything will definitely get fixed, but hey, they haven't abandoned us yet, that's something.
But it makes sense if they try to show similar rank bases to similar rank raiders.
I don't think that makes any sense.
Your ability to raid is largely unrelated to your ability to build.
Maybe it would make sense if we had separate 'Raider' and 'Builder' ranks but...
It just feels weird. They say, that they are listening. But are not interacting with the community. The release dev stream really looked promising. The devs were playing player created maps, the viewers could vote which map to play, they talked about the future, etc. THAT was interacting with the community. Not what we had in the last 3 weeks. So far it looks like we will get a new mod every 2 weeks. Why not make a dev stream twice a month, where the devs speak about the mod and show some actual bases where the mods are applied? So people could see whats coming, how to use it, and hype about it.
DbD has a kill switch for bugged content. I would have imagined, that MyM would have something similar, because the devs are from the same company. The whole corrosive cube issue could have been prevented with just kill switching the second stage mod for the cube. Problem solved, people can still use the cubes, but not exploit it anymore. Everyone happy.
Alt-F4 a base shouldn´t be a thing in the first place. I mean, the game saves progress during the raid. It saves how often you died and that you raided the tombs. But it doesn´t save how many mats you have collected? Or that the builder should get X amount of ressources for the kills when the raider left early?
Some things simply shouldn´t be in the game. Blocking for example, whats the point of blocking other players in a game that relies of invading other players bases? It wouldn´t surprise me, if people that complain about not getting raided, are the same that have a ton of players blocked.
Ranks, also something that could be removed in an eye blink and no one would complain. So far there has been no rank reward revealed. But the community is hellbend on the idea, that we´ll get limited cosmetics. So people abandon a raid early, when they die. Because their rank will suffer and they won´t get that cosmetic that hasn´t been confirmed yet. Everything around the game revolves about dying, learning and finally beating the base. BUT doing so and losing a ton of rank points doesn´t feel rewarding at all.
Parts to Synth economy makes no sense. I get easily 2 or 3 times as many parts as i get synth and i have no idea what to do with all the parts. I have stacked over 100 of every consumable and still sit on over 25k parts. Also the boosts make no sense. Since the drops are completely random, there is no way to see if the 30% increased drop rate actually is doing something. Had a raid, where i earned 20 Synth and 90 parts, despite having the 30% increased synth drop boost activated. Instead of having this completely rng based, why not give the bonus after the raid? So you could see, that you earned X amount of Synth and with the bonus you get this on top.
They say, that they are listening. But are not interacting with the community.
That has been really weird. I don't understand the lack of interaction. Even their daily Tweets are just marketing or telling people things that should have been in the tutorial; they're not engaging with the community at all.
Some things simply shouldn´t be in the game. Blocking for example, whats the point of blocking other players in a game that relies of invading other players bases?
I would not have released the game with the Block function. That's something that should be a last resort, but everyone seems to think of it as the first and easiest option. BHVR made some really poor choices. They say they want Builders to have to build a fun base that will encourage Raiders to stick around and die repeatedly, but then they kind of force Raiders to stick around by docking them rank points for leaving, and they also punish the Raider for dying. The only option left for Raiders after that is to stick to easy bases. And when you add all that together with the rather useless difficulty ratings and the lack of tags for bases, of course the block function looks super attractive to a lot of players.
In the AMA they said they'll be getting rid of the rank loss for leaving a base, but they don't mention getting rid of rank loss for dying, and while I'm happy to see it gone for leaving I will be super confused if players still lose rank for dying.
Ranks, also something that could be removed in an eye blink and no one would complain.
Yeah, speaking of poor choices. This game isn't competitive, there shouldn't be rank; if BHVR wants to do a battlepass-type thing, call it a battlepass or some other name without the baggage of "rank." But, not only do they have rank, players can lose progress, and that kills creativity, it kills the gameplay loop of die-learn-persist they designed and advertised.
Then there are Outposts. Accolades award more than kills towards Prestige, but Accolades give nothing towards rank: only kills matter for rank. I guess someone thought the two systems would complement each other, but with rank loss they absolutely conflict. (It's like how the emblem system is supposed to ensure people play in a way that's fun for the opposing side rather than playing efficiently to win, but because of depipping it just causes friction within DbD.)
There has to be some decision maker at BHVR who thinks things like rank (and rank loss) and grinding are required for player retention. (DbD still has depipping this long after Ranks changed to Grades.) I'd like to think the MYM developers who designed the gameplay of "Take another step forward with every attempt. Reveal a new strategy with every death. Master every Outpost that stands in your way." did not volunteer a rank system that punishes death as a good idea. Someone at BHVR values rank and grind, and hopefully they'll relent if it's shown to be killing the game. DbD continues to survive no matter what, but MYM is not DbD.
Everything around the game revolves about dying, learning and finally beating the base. BUT doing so and losing a ton of rank points doesn´t feel rewarding at all.
I couldn't agree more. It hurts when Outposts lose rank points, too.
the boosts make no sense.
The only Boost I've ever used is the tier 3 info boost a couple times. The others seem useless. I was tempted to use the Prestige boost, but a 20% or whatever boost to 0 Prestige is still 0. That crap doesn't help when it's time based and you can get zero raids during that time.
That's one of those other bad decisions in this game: things being time based. I get that it's appealing to make things time based because it's the easiest to implement, but it makes players miserable when it punishes them without any alternatives or recourse. It also inflates the grind really bad. To keep putting your base up over and over again: yes, an Outpost extracts GenMat, but most Builders don't care about the GenMat, they want Raiders, they want to watch replays. The grind and lore can say the GenMat is the goal all it wants, but in the Insomniac stream it sounded like the MYM developer understood that getting raided is the player's desired goal.
Yeah, different mechanics in the game compete with each other and hurt gameplay. Some of those things may have happened because the devs planned for the best without safeguarding against the worst, or maybe an overseer thought some things would be good financially for player retention without actually understanding player psychology. Either way, I hope this stuff gets fixed before it's too late.
Yeah, Synthite is a massive bottleneck, the drop amounts should be increased a bunch.
Missed your comment, sorry. Your ability to raid is largely unrelated to your ability to build and yet somehow they use rank of builder to calculate your rank gaining/loosing after the outpost. Even though we all understand that pretty all those thousands of rank poins builder got from raids and not from building.
EDIT: it looks like official AMA but it's from another forum post, I've just heard this info too and pretty sure they've said it on one of their stream. Didn't want to copypaste but then I thought it might look confusing so I here's the disclaimer.
So, it seems, if you die in a good base of not so good raider (with low rank because every time they raid they loose points) you loose more points than you should. And vice versa. Maybe it would make sense if we had separate 'Raider' and 'Builder' ranks but... But.
Maybe I understood or heard smth wrong but at this point I won't be surprised if they use those ranks also to show you more "fair" outposts so you can gain right amount of points.