Looking forward to testing with this. The reason I like using DA Loot is the location specific feature. My main challenge with the game after getting a LO settled is just...coming up with a reason to do anything lol. Needing to go hit hospitals for medical supplies, or an industrial area for mats adds some great immersion and gives me a reason to run more of the map.
meaning what... that Damn Apocalypse is outdated/obsolete?
I've tried a bunch of loot reduction mods. None of the ones i tried did the job to my satisfaction on their own, or went too far beyond just the loot for my liking.
I was already using Looted World and Fallout Loot Overhaul together. Adding Damn Apocalypse on top hit the sweet spot for me for the most part.
I like using weapon mods and don't care for the broken guns thing, so I removed the broken guns.
It also seemed logical to me to use it since I chose DA's Power Armor and Radiation modules after testing a couple alternatives to those as well.
Removing the broken weapons mechanics negatively affects the tightly tweaked economy significantly. You may as well not be running with the amount of caps you’ll get.
That's a completely different issue to be handled separately in my mind, but it's not really even necessary in my opinion. It's all about how the actual gameplay feels.
Getting a broken, unusable gun off the cropse of an enemy that was just shooting me with it 2 seconds ago doesn't compute for me. It would feel a lot better if there were weapon condition/maintenance mechanics instead of a dice-roll to see if you get the heavily-favored broken gun outcome, but I don't want weapon maintenance.
This was originally made at the request of someone who had been using DA Loot for a while and was putting together a zombie apocalypse modlist with a handful of weapon mods. A multitude of people have been playing with this for weeks as part of that modlist. I've experienced the results of removing the broken guns, and I've seen the results in other people's games. You would get a roughly similar result simply by using weapon mods without a broken gun patch.
Even without broken guns, DA Loot's economy is still significantly more limited than vanilla. With or without broken guns, DA Loot is still one of the best loot scarcity options available.
I want the vast majority of the difficulty to come from an inability to find stuff in the world. I want the logical/smart loot placement (ie healing items come mostly from scavenging hospitals). And I want my caps to come from killing stuff and selling the things I don't want.
I want almost all of what DA Loot offers.
I'd rather build a fortune than struggle to scrounge together the caps to buy supplies. That's not where the fun is for me. That just feels oppressive. The fun is in the shooting and the looting. Quite simply, broken guns diminish my enjoyment of the looting part.
I have no doubt that a ton of work went into the broken gun implementation in Damn Apocalypse but I would disagree that it's the core principle of the mod and that sidestepping it somehow destroys the entire experience. It's highly subjective of course, but I would agree with the author of this mod that 3/4 of all guns being broken immediately after having been used by the enemies (sometimes to great effect) kept feeling jarring and illogical.
I found that the economy balance was far more likely to be destroyed by the overabundance of ammo (with its amazing value/weight ratio) rather than an excess of weapons, most of which are far too heavy and comparatively value inefficient to lug back to a vendor. For that reason I made some rudimentary patches in xEdit that removed all broken guns and supplemented them with this mod: https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/64426?tab=description (the True Ammo Remover version, which allows you to loot a bit of spare ammo, but not the ammo that was inside the weapon).
The balance feels just right (to me at least) and as a bonus I don't have to worry about patching individual weapons.
The point of the broken weapons system is that you aren’t just delivered weapons for free every single time you kill someone. In classic fallout, the way to balance it out was condition. In DA, Payload essentially recreated the weapon system from System Shock 1. From the sounds of it, you guys didn’t want less loot. You just wanted loot you wanted. If the weapons system isn’t your cup of tea it’s whatever but you’d need something in it’s place like BRAWL or Degrade and Salvage by WhiskyTangoFox
The point of the broken weapons system is that you aren’t just delivered weapons for free every single time you kill someone.
I would argue that a weapon obtained in this way is hardly "free". It cost whatever resources were necessary to survive the encounter and emerge victorious, be it chems, meds or ammo, to name but a few.
In classic fallout, the way to balance it out was condition.
A weapon deterioration system is perfectly logical and it forces the player to either take care of their weapons or risk them jamming or breaking in a fight and thus adds another consideration for the player to keep in mind: Do I have the resources to keep my weapon in good working order and do I have the ammo to keep using it? Having 3/4 of all weapons be unusable isn't really analogous to that. It simply reduces the pool of usable weapons dramatically without addressing the fact that the player is free to use the operational weapons they do find to their heart's content. I would go a step further and argue that the broken weapon system brings DA closer to Frost than to Fallout 1. There's only one issue: Frost was built with melee combat in mind (as firearms are scarce for both the player and enemies), DA was not.
From the sounds of it, you guys didn’t want less loot. You just wanted loot you wanted.
Pardon if I seem rather bitter because it’s a common thing I see with users of Damn Apocalypse where they forgo trying broken weapon system because they install like 50 weapon mods and just want their toys immediately. Especially as I host a repository for various mods myself. You do bring up good points like how Frost is very melee oriented while DA isn’t. My main gripe is that the broken weapons system was a friction mechanic to help getting more rare weapons more rewarding. True ammo remover is a good way to help with that but I feel if you’re going to remove the system all together, you should use another system in its place like the mods I suggested. Again sorry if I seem bitter, DA is something I’m very passionate about as I’m also working on a pretty sizable project for it for a year now
It's all good. I do like DA as well and I know that you've gone to great lengths to support it. I am still using some of your weather patches and I am immensely grateful for the work you're putting in. That mystery project you mentioned has me curious and I would definitely be keeping an eye out for it.
it’s a common thing I see with users of Damn Apocalypse where they forgo trying broken weapon system because they install like 50 weapon mods and just want their toys immediately.
Weapon mods or not, this exists because I've given it a chance to grow on me and getting broken weapons doesn't enhance the experience for me. It's a layer of friction that I removed because it doesn't bring me joy with my current load order.
Damn Apocalypse's Loot module is much more than just the broken weapons system. The broken weapons are a small part of the overall experience, especially if using the other modules.
Our views on the subject are clearly on opposite sides of the spectrum, and it's entirely subjective. Some people want a more hardcore "everything is a struggle" experience. I might even put together a hardcore load order at some point where that contributes to the experience I want to create. The plethora of weapon patches you've made facilitates that approach.
For the looter-shooter-esque experience I want with my current load order, and for anyone who wants most of what DA Loot offers but would rather not find broken guns ... for whatever reason ... this facilitates that approach.
As for the impact on the economy, caps are still harder to come by compared to Vanilla, and that's good enough for me at the moment.
I haven't seen any Damn Apocalypse gameplay where it shows up, but it's also definitely possible that it's just rare and I missed the implementation.
I distinctly remember the Lever Action Rifle being somewhat different from most of the other guns in terms of LL integration and such. There definitely are broken and non-broken LARs, they even spawn on common Raiders.
The DLC guns were never integrated in the base game, so the different implementation might have been a result of manufacturing a way to properly integrate them.
I got the distinct impression that workflow standardization is not one of BGSs strong suits when building the initial iteration of DA. Most things are mostly standardized, but no matter where you look there's always a list of stragglers.
Meaning, you may be right, but it might have been accidental on their part. :D
I've heard on multiple occassions that they don't use Design Documentaion. I vaguely (mis?)remember hearing someone say that they actually view it as a waste of time/resources.
True or not, when you're as ambitious in scope as they tend to be, it's understandable how smaller stuff might slip through the cracks.
16 comments
I've tried a bunch of loot reduction mods. None of the ones i tried did the job to my satisfaction on their own, or went too far beyond just the loot for my liking.
I was already using Looted World and Fallout Loot Overhaul together. Adding Damn Apocalypse on top hit the sweet spot for me for the most part.
I like using weapon mods and don't care for the broken guns thing, so I removed the broken guns.
It also seemed logical to me to use it since I chose DA's Power Armor and Radiation modules after testing a couple alternatives to those as well.
Getting a broken, unusable gun off the cropse of an enemy that was just shooting me with it 2 seconds ago doesn't compute for me. It would feel a lot better if there were weapon condition/maintenance mechanics instead of a dice-roll to see if you get the heavily-favored broken gun outcome, but I don't want weapon maintenance.
This was originally made at the request of someone who had been using DA Loot for a while and was putting together a zombie apocalypse modlist with a handful of weapon mods. A multitude of people have been playing with this for weeks as part of that modlist. I've experienced the results of removing the broken guns, and I've seen the results in other people's games. You would get a roughly similar result simply by using weapon mods without a broken gun patch.
Even without broken guns, DA Loot's economy is still significantly more limited than vanilla.
With or without broken guns, DA Loot is still one of the best loot scarcity options available.
I want the vast majority of the difficulty to come from an inability to find stuff in the world.
I want the logical/smart loot placement (ie healing items come mostly from scavenging hospitals).
And I want my caps to come from killing stuff and selling the things I don't want.
I want almost all of what DA Loot offers.
I'd rather build a fortune than struggle to scrounge together the caps to buy supplies. That's not where the fun is for me. That just feels oppressive. The fun is in the shooting and the looting. Quite simply, broken guns diminish my enjoyment of the looting part.
I found that the economy balance was far more likely to be destroyed by the overabundance of ammo (with its amazing value/weight ratio) rather than an excess of weapons, most of which are far too heavy and comparatively value inefficient to lug back to a vendor. For that reason I made some rudimentary patches in xEdit that removed all broken guns and supplemented them with this mod: https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/64426?tab=description (the True Ammo Remover version, which allows you to loot a bit of spare ammo, but not the ammo that was inside the weapon).
The balance feels just right (to me at least) and as a bonus I don't have to worry about patching individual weapons.
I would argue that a weapon obtained in this way is hardly "free". It cost whatever resources were necessary to survive the encounter and emerge victorious, be it chems, meds or ammo, to name but a few.
A weapon deterioration system is perfectly logical and it forces the player to either take care of their weapons or risk them jamming or breaking in a fight and thus adds another consideration for the player to keep in mind: Do I have the resources to keep my weapon in good working order and do I have the ammo to keep using it? Having 3/4 of all weapons be unusable isn't really analogous to that. It simply reduces the pool of usable weapons dramatically without addressing the fact that the player is free to use the operational weapons they do find to their heart's content. I would go a step further and argue that the broken weapon system brings DA closer to Frost than to Fallout 1. There's only one issue: Frost was built with melee combat in mind (as firearms are scarce for both the player and enemies), DA was not.
In the words of Ted Lasso:
Damn Apocalypse's Loot module is much more than just the broken weapons system. The broken weapons are a small part of the overall experience, especially if using the other modules.
Our views on the subject are clearly on opposite sides of the spectrum, and it's entirely subjective. Some people want a more hardcore "everything is a struggle" experience. I might even put together a hardcore load order at some point where that contributes to the experience I want to create. The plethora of weapon patches you've made facilitates that approach.
For the looter-shooter-esque experience I want with my current load order, and for anyone who wants most of what DA Loot offers but would rather not find broken guns ... for whatever reason ... this facilitates that approach.
As for the impact on the economy, caps are still harder to come by compared to Vanilla, and that's good enough for me at the moment.
I distinctly remember the Lever Action Rifle being somewhat different from most of the other guns in terms of LL integration and such. There definitely are broken and non-broken LARs, they even spawn on common Raiders.
The DLC guns were never integrated in the base game, so the different implementation might have been a result of manufacturing a way to properly integrate them.
Meaning, you may be right, but it might have been accidental on their part. :D
True or not, when you're as ambitious in scope as they tend to be, it's understandable how smaller stuff might slip through the cracks.