An analysis: Vanilla VS. Approved Progression

[CCShad]

I'll start off by saying I was and still am happy with how GSG handled mods. Being able to create a new save and try out some mods without tainting my main save is amazing for a vanilla purist such as myself. However, when I came here to the steam forums, I saw everyone else was upset! Vanilla enthusiasts saying the mods in Approved should be in Sandbox, Mod users saying it isn't enough, and upset about being unable to use what would be "client-side approved/sandbox mods". The whole forum seems to be at war.

After reading some complaints about the stuff being categorized as "Approved", I decided to load up mod.io and have a look for myself. and I've gotta say, my first thoughts were "Wow, these are straight up cheat-codes, like in GTA:SA or old 80's NES games"

Then, I remembered another thing being thrown around on the forums: The idea that players using approved mods will progress faster than vanilla players. That seems like it'd be a given, right? Well, I decided to boot up my new Modded save file, and see for myself.

In this experiment, I played 6 vanilla missions, and 6 modded missions (I used the most OP Approved mods I could find). For consistency, I did missions in pairs - one vanilla and one modded - with the same primary objective, complexity, length and hazard level. All RNG events (Machine events, crates and lost gear, error cubes) were skipped as not to skew the data. In the end... I was actually surprised.

For the first three pairs, I played "casually". I understand that term is subjective, so I'll explain what it means to me: Taking my time to look around each room and make sure I don't miss gold, crafting materials, beer materials, and maybe a bit of extra nitra. but still moving at a steady pace.

For the second three pairs, I speedran the primary and secondary objectives, that is to say I completed the mission itself and secondary objective as fast as I possibly could, skipping over all gold, nitra, etc.

Here's a list of all the mods I used for the 6 modded missions:
Karl Class - I set my equipment as: Minigun, Autocannon, Grappling Hook, Drills
Longer Grapple Range
Faster Mining
Unnerfed Thorns
5x Flashlight Range
Limitedly Better Bosco
40 Nitra Resupply
Codependent Molly

Without further ado, Here's the mission data and comparisons for the CASUAL missions:

Vanilla, Casual

Mission 1: 325 Morkite, 14 Ebonuts, Complexity 3, Length 3, Hazard 4
Time: 20:18
XP: 11697
Class: Scout

Mission 2: 6 Eggs, 14 Ebonuts, Complexity 2, Length 2, Hazard 4
Time: 13:22
XP: 5725
Class: Engineer

Mission 3: 10 Aquarqs, 10 Fleas, Complexity 3, Length 3, Hazard 4
Time: 10:42
XP: 9181
Class: Driller

Modded, Casual

Mission 1: 325 Morkite, 10 Fossils, Complexity 3, Length 3, Hazard 4
Time: 19:36
XP: 11331
Class: "Karl" (See mods used)

Mission 2: 6 Eggs, 14 Ebonuts, Complexity 2, Length 2, Hazard 4
Time: 11:43
XP: 6074
Class: Karl

Mission 3: 10 Aquarqs, 15 Apoca, Complexity 3, Length 3, Hazard 4
Time: 11:26
XP: 9510
Class: Karl

So, in summary for the casual missions:
Vanilla - 44.3 collective minutes, 26,603 collective XP.
Modded - 42.7 collective minutes, 26,915 collective XP.

Much closer than I was expecting! To put that into comparison, if you follow the trend for say, 200 hours, the resulting player levels would look like this assuming you started at 1 (Following the trend may be unrealistic since the sample size is somewhat small):

Vanilla: Player Rank 190
Modded: Player Rank 200

A 10 level difference after 200 hours.

Onto the speedrunning data!

Vanilla, Speedrunning

Mission 1: Refinery, 20 Boolo, Complexity 2, Length 2, Hazard 4
Time: 10:34
XP: 6667
Class: Scout

Mission 2: Aquarqs, 20 Boolo, Complexity 3, Length 2, Hazard 4
Time: 6:02
XP: 6732
Class: Scout

Mission 3: 200 Morkite, 14 Ebonuts, Complexity 1, Length 1, Hazard 4
Time: 6:12
XP: 5985
Class: Scout

Modded, Speedrunning

Mission 1: Refinery, 15 Apoca, Complexity 2, Length 2, Hazard 4
Time: 10:06
XP: 6548
Class: Karl

Mission 2: 7 Aquarqs, 10 Fleas, Complexity 3, Length 2, Hazard 4
Time: 6:58
XP: 6567
Class: Karl

Mission 3: 200 Morkite, 14 Ebonuts, Complexity 1, Length 1, Hazard 4
Time: 4:55
XP: 5823
Class: Karl

Again, surprisingly very little difference when going in with mods blazing!
Let's look at the speedrunning totals:

Vanilla: 22.8 collective minutes, 19,384 collective XP.
Modded: 21.9 collective minutes, 18,938 collective XP.

Following the trend for 200 hours would net you these player ranks:
Vanilla: Player Rank 268
Modded: Player Rank 273

Incredibly, only a difference of 5 levels.

Conclusion:

Looking at the data I've collected, I have to say: The increased speed in which you level with approved mods... is negligible.

My data shows that even if an Approved modder were to tediously grind xp, they'd barely make more xp than a vanilla player. And note that it's an unrealistic standard to believe a player would use these mods for 200+ hours for the express purpose of "gaining xp", as I played them there was very little fun to be had, as most of the challenge of the game was gone. "Karl Class" is definitely the most fun due to the possibilities it unlocks, but I feel even that would get old eventually.

It should be noted that my research doesn't cover everything, Using mods that make the game easier reduces the amount of failed missions you have, if that number is high, it could make a bigger difference in the xp you're gaining. But again, people are not going to go out of their way to do this... if somebody wants to boost their level, they're going to use actual cheats and edit their save file, or purposefully join games that are almost completed repeatedly to mooch on the payouts, and we can't stop them.

What these approved mods actually do are change the game, make it different. the ones I downloaded certainly made the game less challenging, and by proxy, less fun in a way.
Other mods can also make the game more difficult, which I find exciting! It's a case of whatever floats your boat, I definitely think I'll stick to vanilla after I play around with my modded file for a week or two.

[NeloDante]

Цитата допису Wally:

imagine being so bad at the game that you have to cheat

Imagine being so bad at a casual game that you think it has any kind of difficulty.

[RENGOKU]

Цитата допису NeloDante:

Цитата допису Wally:

imagine being so bad at the game that you have to cheat

Imagine being so bad at a casual game that you think it has any kind of difficulty.

So legitimate question do you really think this game haz five and all isn’t difficult at all?

[NeloDante]

Цитата допису RENGOKU:

Цитата допису NeloDante:

Imagine being so bad at a casual game that you think it has any kind of difficulty.

So legitimate question do you really think this game haz five and all isn’t difficult at all?

Yes. It's quite easy, so is EDD.

[RENGOKU]

Цитата допису NeloDante:

Цитата допису RENGOKU:

So legitimate question do you really think this game haz five and all isn’t difficult at all?

Yes. It's quite easy, so is EDD.

I disagree on that but whatever

[Frank Deluxe]

Imagine giving a damn what people do in their own lobby.

[JeanneOskoure]

Цитата допису RENGOKU:

Цитата допису NeloDante:

Yes. It's quite easy, so is EDD.

I disagree on that but whatever

Nah, if you sweat a bit it's really easy. I personally prefer the chill and casual vibe of Haz 4, but unless you get terrible RNG haz 5 is a walk in the park.

[RENGOKU]

Цитата допису JeanneOskoure:

Цитата допису RENGOKU:

I disagree on that but whatever

Nah, if you sweat a bit it's really easy. I personally prefer the chill and casual vibe of Haz 4, but unless you get terrible RNG haz 5 is a walk in the park.

There is the difference for me,
you say you have get a bit sweaty put forth an effort, Acting like it doesn’t have any difficulty at all just sounds like a try hard sweatlord thing to say.

no offense intended everyone gets a little sweatlordy

[Fryskar]

Цитата допису RENGOKU:

Цитата допису NeloDante:

Yes. It's quite easy, so is EDD.

I disagree on that but whatever

I think i archieve nearly 90% success rate on h5, if i get 3 randoms.

Hitting 100% with a premade is a lot easier.
DRG's difficulty just isn't that high compared to other games.

Having infinite revives helps a lot.

[RUCKUS RELOADED]

all this whining about mods providing an "advantage" to players' progression is like when they added automatic steering to mario kart and all the 40-year-old boomers who've been playing since the SNES days kicked off at the idea - when the only people it really helped were disabled gamers and literal toddlers
it's all just pride getting in the way of reasonable judgement. the former group are gettig mad because they had to play the game without the options available to the latter group
like, why wouldn't i mod the game to fix the worthless flashlight, raise the enemy cap, sort out the awful weapon balancing and the drilldozer's paper-thin HP pool?

ask yourselves, if someone really just wanted to just cheat their way to the top, wouldnt they just use cheat engine or an XP modifier?

i fully subscribe to the idea that people should be able to do whatever they want in the games they purchase, so long as it isnt affecting others, and nothing ive seen so far in this entire modding debacle suggests as such

[No skill only Tiktok]

Play Hazard 7, and you will understand why people want 60 nitra supply pod as approved mod.
And trust me, you won't progress faster.
Those mods are supposed to use with higher difficulty mods.

Yes, people can cheat their progress with only using mods that make the game easier.
But who cares? It doesn't affect your fun your experience. They only ruin the game for themself.

Also people could cheat their progress before mod support and still can do it without any mods.

[No skill only Tiktok]

Цитата допису RENGOKU:

Цитата допису NeloDante:

Imagine being so bad at a casual game that you think it has any kind of difficulty.

So legitimate question do you really think this game haz five and all isn’t difficult at all?

It is not difficult at all.
If you play modded difficulty games for some days, going back to Hazard 5 would feel so easy. The waves will look small and the enemies will look slow. Also you can easily tank some hits.

[RENGOKU]

Цитата допису ( °□°) ♟:

Цитата допису RENGOKU:

So legitimate question do you really think this game haz five and all isn’t difficult at all?

It is not difficult at all.
If you play modded difficulty games for some days, going back to Hazard 5 would feel so easy. The waves will look small and the enemies will look slow. Also you can easily tank some hits.

Again I think there’s a core difference between saying a game has no difficulty and just being good at it

I know it’s semantics at this point and I’m not gonna say that deep rock is some super difficult game it is relatively chill compared to most but saying it has no difficulty at all always feels like some kind of humble brag.

[phittte]

These statistics aren't really very realistic. Even with the mods available right now (and lots of other mods will follow, so it's relatively safe to say that in a few weeks you can literally just turn on god mode) hazard 5 becomes easier than hazard 3. Failure is always possible for most people in hazard 5, but most people won't ever fail in hazard 3. Plus there are even hazard 6 + 7 mods, which increase rewards and which become as easy as hazard 4-5 with the right mods.

Add to that all the mods that allow you to mine and traverse the caves faster (vastly improved grappling hook for any class, 1 hit mining, faster molly etc) and that simply speed up everything you do in a very straightforward way. I don't know what you did in your test runs, but if I normally spend 3 minutes to mine stuff in a cave and a mod allows me to do that in 1 minute then I saved 2 minutes. There isn't really anything I need to test to realize that.

I don't care about the progress of other people or how they reached level 1000 or whatever, but saying that approved mods don't significantly speed up progress is very obviously not true.

And people not 'going out of their way' to do this is wishful thinking as well. I remember that back when you could farm loot crates that were opened before you joined the game lots of people would jump from game to game, look whether a loot crate was around and then quit if there wasn't one. That's just how people are, and there were enough of them that the devs had to change this in a patch.

The question is whether you care about someone getting to level x in less time with less effort. The question is not whether he is able to do that now.

[Diesel]

If I can play vanilla and other people can play modded who cares? XP and progression in this game is meaningless anyway, a bronze 1 scout has the same kit as someone who is a legend 3 scout (bar missing overclocks), levels ultimately mean nothing and the only people who cared were the types of losers who made "LEVEL 100+ ONLY SILVER ONLY" servers.

This update is great for a vanilla lover like me because I can now join games knowing there are definitely zero mods, instead on having to rely on the host telling the truth.

If you want to make the game harder you can now with out affecting your original save. If you want to make the game easier, go for it.... just don't cry when the game becomes monotonous and boring because you made it too easy

[Nosteru]

Цитата допису CCShad:

Цитата допису Nosteru:

Interresting for sure, but probably the difference increase abit on Haz5. Where those OverPowered weapons and stuffs start kick in compare to vanilla weapons.
Thanks for detailed test.

Surprisingly, Haz 5 is the same from the much lighter tests I did, there's no mod to simply make yourself strong enough to obliterate every enemy, and no approved mods that make you immortal.

It ends up being the same as vanilla, Haz 4 for quick xp and Haz 5 for a challenge

Oh nice, Thanks. I just know from other games power only kick in with difference if there is harder enemies where it realy make that noticeable difference, but it seems this theory busted here.
Adding question (as I tried Bosco mod, what is crazy powerful) how easy become Haz5 with mods? Because that might comparable to Haz3 or Haz4 vanilla. I mean Haz5 with power mods make it equal to Haz3-4 vanilla. Where you have +33-58% multiplier on everything.