What is up with the FMTEL drops?

[Kaii]

Did the "Do a base Assault with only grenades" and got a few dozen bits of plastic, steel and other random resources, nothing great, no uranium, no tungsten, no Phosphorus or Ethanol or anything?

Have the developers just decided to utterly ignore it or something? Like, I have nearly 20,000 steel, why would I want 30 pieces of it after doing a difficult task? Give me something worth my time damn you.

Also, whoever decided that to get the Tank reward level you have to do every single mission, 21 of them over 7 straight days without missing a SINGLE ONE, I despise you, intensely.

[Entaris]

It kinda feels like they gave up on this game a long time ago

[DedZedNub]

(NOTE - DO ALSO CHECK KALANOS POST JUST BENEATH THIS ONE, AS HE MENTIONS A POSSIBLY GOOD DROP FOR MEDKITS AND 5 CROWN WEAPS ONLINE)

I mean, in general, they are very slow (aka 45 day minimum, often more to really fix things) to respond to pushback or to adapt to making the rest of the game adapt to a major update like this last Final Showdown Update. In fact, their usual method is to drop such a major patch right before they go on Summer, Fall, Winter, or Spring vacation -- no joke.

However, they've got themselves in a major catch-22 here. They forced the new Base Defense as the solo gateway to the top-tier crafting components of both the Best Base Walls with Phosphorus , and the new special ingredients like Ethanol, Refined Aluminum, Ref Tungsten, etc. for various Augments and Crafted Items.

But if they give them away during FMTEL ONLINE ONLY missions -- they will be seen as forcing people to be online (which in case you don't know is always the minority of players in any game that allows offline play to do all the content otherwise). In addition, FMTEL requires a good online connection otherwise you can bug out.

They were wrong to go so strongly into the one-way or you can walk the highway approach. But they do this with most updates, that's why the Iron Condor and its Attachments are dropping everywhere -- because the last DLC was heavy weapons, etc. It's a skew to make you want to use the DLC, then they nerf it a patch or two later. That's not a good plan with one hotfix or so to go. But hey, Systemic Reaction is the explanation. I can't wait for it to be used as an excuse by lawyers next.

Nonetheless, in the time you do an FMTEL Mission, you can actually do an EASY Base Defense (on Skirmish game difficulty) and get more to solve the problem than any FMTEL Reward can. Heck, you get the same Base Defense rewards on Easy Base Defense Difficulty on EASY GAME DIFFICULTY (the two are not the same, game difficulty doesn't reduce Phosphorus or Ethanol or Refined Metals you gain, from what I understand).

On Easy Game Difficulty, you probably could easily do a Medium Difficulty Base Defense even possibly a Hard Base Defense -- the only question there is to take down any Soviet Firebird that may spawn in time, as walls don't effectively block their attacks often.

[Kalanos [FIST]]

I don't disagree with anything said here, but I do want to point out that if you _do_ manage to get the tank reward at the end of the week: it's had medical and radioactive med kits in it for me as well as some 5 crown weapons and attachments and various resources. The rewards for each task are not much but that final reward is pretty nice - of course it's not worth it by itself but it's a nice bonus if you can get it.

[DedZedNub]

@ Kalanos

That's a good tip. That's the second time I've skimmed something and saw something mentioned about improved FMTEL drops, at least in the last couple months.

Appreciate the info, as I don't normally play much online. I'll update my post to refer to your below, just in case.

[Kaii]

The thing is, my friend and I play on either medium or hard difficulty, I honestly can't remember which one, and we usually end up with more 5 crown weapons and attachments than we really care for, to the point we ignore anything below them in tier and just take them to scrap. Having FMTEL drop them as the big reward for doing every single mission without missing a single one feels a bit disingenuous.

I did absolutely discover that Iron Condors were dropping like crazy, I got a 4-crown one from a Military Hunter at like level 7 and that immediately clued me in that something was wrong about them. However, it was a good source of early-game weapon parts (we stored ALL box and recycle station stuff on a dump character before we started our fresh characters) so I didn't care much.

I just think the FMTEL stuff is, in general, a complete waste of time, and I'm both happy and irritated at being effectively proven right in-so-much as learning that the Tank reward is, compared to just going to the island and killing Apocalypse-class Tanks, both harder to achieve, and worth less to get.

Every time we come back to the game after a year-long break and new updates/dlc, we think this will be the time where we 1. finish the game, and 2. don't run into a bunch of stuff that just gets under our skin.

#WhyIStayed I guess =/

[DedZedNub]

@Kali

Of course. I actually find that the Base Defense grind is just annoying, there is little difficult left on Skirmish Difficulty. The Balance and loot, combined with the rest, and even before the Final Showdown update, during June/July they really messed up the balance by nerfing the enemy A.I. and hit points, but now it is really bad.

The problem for me on Guerrilla Difficulty is that time to kill is a problem, not for difficulty, but it makes every attempt to get something done result in wasting time removing hit points.

There are the exceptions, where the Laser Aimed Hunters with the Sniping Ability that fires thru one boulder several meters in diameter is just a pain to take on when they are firing from 3 Ridges away behind a impenetrable copse of trees. They also can shoot thru any single wall or boulder as long as it is considered to be one object, meanwhile a garden chair and a cheap wooden fence stops the round but it has an explosive radius as well as being a sniper weapon. But I guess with ammo customized to fit my load-out, now I can just hoard the fireworks, throw them, and move in.

The balance to this game over the years, the change to which gameplay style is being assisted or nerfed is amazing really if one looks back in retrospect.

It is now in the Final Showdown go Loud and go Big, nothing else. Pick your favorite weapons and just kill. The one possible stumbling block is the Fnix Base Assaults, as those spawns used to be eternal, and used to have such a high spawn rate that if you took too long, the machine wrecks piled up to make travel and finding live enemies amongst the trash nearly impossible, even walking a chore. But that may have changed, as a couple of Level 1 FNIX Base Attacks I made were about half or a third as hard as I recalled for a Level 1 FNIX BASE.

I'll try a Level 3 FNIX Base Assault later tomorrow, but I don't care for the gameplay. I mean I meant to play today, but after looking over the map, I just couldn't do it, second time this week.

Anyway, with all the heavy ordinance it doesn't matter. Just fire Recoilless Rifle and RPG rounds until walls are down, then slog your way in, destroy spawning machines, hope they don't rebuild like the Turrets and Spawn Machines used to about a year ago, and boom easy street.

Yeah, I don't know where there head is. This was a resistance campaign, a survive/scavenge/build to war scenario. Now it is kill, kill, circle strafe, fire bazookas like mom's own sniping artillery, and rub the salt of victory into the eyes of the vets who knew it used to be harder than this if you never played co-op and never did the Base Crap.

Now it's just another, well on a bad day, just another Roblox fireworks show. I guess you can tell that I'm not in a good mood. I did a bug report about ten minutes ago, and that's just what I found around a week ago, I can just guess what else I'll find. Can you read my excitement? Gosh, I am sarcastic tonight. Sorry about that.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all, I mean that truly.

[Mothvibe]

Originally posted by DedZedNub:

@Kali

Of course. I actually find that the Base Defense grind is just annoying, there is little difficult left on Skirmish Difficulty. The Balance and loot, combined with the rest, and even before the Final Showdown update, during June/July they really messed up the balance by nerfing the enemy A.I. and hit points, but now it is really bad.

The problem for me on Guerrilla Difficulty is that time to kill is a problem, not for difficulty, but it makes every attempt to get something done result in wasting time removing hit points.

There are the exceptions, where the Laser Aimed Hunters with the Sniping Ability that fires thru one boulder several meters in diameter is just a pain to take on when they are firing from 3 Ridges away behind a impenetrable copse of trees. They also can shoot thru any single wall or boulder as long as it is considered to be one object, meanwhile a garden chair and a cheap wooden fence stops the round but it has an explosive radius as well as being a sniper weapon. But I guess with ammo customized to fit my load-out, now I can just hoard the fireworks, throw them, and move in.

The balance to this game over the years, the change to which gameplay style is being assisted or nerfed is amazing really if one looks back in retrospect.

It is now in the Final Showdown go Loud and go Big, nothing else. Pick your favorite weapons and just kill. The one possible stumbling block is the Fnix Base Assaults, as those spawns used to be eternal, and used to have such a high spawn rate that if you took too long, the machine wrecks piled up to make travel and finding live enemies amongst the trash nearly impossible, even walking a chore. But that may have changed, as a couple of Level 1 FNIX Base Attacks I made were about half or a third as hard as I recalled for a Level 1 FNIX BASE.

I'll try a Level 3 FNIX Base Assault later tomorrow, but I don't care for the gameplay. I mean I meant to play today, but after looking over the map, I just couldn't do it, second time this week.

Anyway, with all the heavy ordinance it doesn't matter. Just fire Recoilless Rifle and RPG rounds until walls are down, then slog your way in, destroy spawning machines, hope they don't rebuild like the Turrets and Spawn Machines used to about a year ago, and boom easy street.

Yeah, I don't know where there head is. This was a resistance campaign, a survive/scavenge/build to war scenario. Now it is kill, kill, circle strafe, fire bazookas like mom's own sniping artillery, and rub the salt of victory into the eyes of the vets who knew it used to be harder than this if you never played co-op and never did the Base Crap.

Now it's just another, well on a bad day, just another Roblox fireworks show. I guess you can tell that I'm not in a good mood. I did a bug report about ten minutes ago, and that's just what I found around a week ago, I can just guess what else I'll find. Can you read my excitement? Gosh, I am sarcastic tonight. Sorry about that.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all, I mean that truly.

Look at this post.

Look at how passionate this person is about their love for the game.

Look at how important Generation Zero is to this person.

THEY. ARE. A. FAN.

And they admitted to us - if not themselves - that their fanhood is dying.

I just think we should try to care about that for them. In the words of Brent Spiner: 'No applause, just support'.

Because that's all modern gaming* is: Devs being negligent/hostile and other community members picking up the slack.

*(that's also what classic gaming was too, for the record - Doom 93 has some of the worst maps in existence, all the good maps came from the community.)

[Kaii]

I too remember a time when you didn't just circle-strafe around enemies and blast them with rockets, when you had to actually use cover and try to strategize instead of just blasting enemies with ordnance and spamming medkits when you inevitably get hit with an attack you were too busy to see coming.

The simply fact is that me and my friend have, as of our current point in the game, lost any excitement in fighting regular Harvesters and Tanks because of how brain-numbingly easy it is. My PM-71 has 80% chance to EMP on destroyed component so I just shoot off the tick pod of a tank, or the rocket pods of a Harvester, and usually that triggers a shutdown, making it a piece of cake. Wolves are the same, those giant rocket boxes are obscenely easy targets, which lets me close in and hose them down with impunity.

I personally think that the developers are completely out of touch with what the audience wants, and are just making assumptions without actually looking at the audience. They instead look at current games, at what they are doing to appeal to the 'current audience' and are trying to mimic it by making the game a looter-shooter bullet heaven/hell instead of a survival game.

At this point, I think the developers are more interested in releasing DLC to wring money out of the game than any semblance of balance, good gameplay or updated old features.

[Kalanos [FIST]]

Originally posted by Kaii:

I personally think that the developers are completely out of touch with what the audience wants, and are just making assumptions without actually looking at the audience. They instead look at current games, at what they are doing to appeal to the 'current audience' and are trying to mimic it by making the game a looter-shooter bullet heaven/hell instead of a survival game.

Perhaps a lot of frustration is being aired by folks wanting Gen 0 to be a survival game but I've just never seen it as such (I've been playing since May of 2021). The store page hails it as a stealth-action shooter which I think fits, although the stealth part is clearly optional nowadays. You don't have to eat or sleep, you don't get hot or cold, radiation doesn't make you sick, etc etc. Loot has always been excessive.

I question some of the new changes, but these are matters of balance more than anything. Apparently they are looking at this so I'm not giving up yet. (they say they want to encourage crafting - I agree - but they make ammo drop the type you are using now in abundance and make special ammo really expensive - does this encourage you to craft? It does the opposite for me, and this is just one example)

I think the excuses for not allowing mods are ridiculous. Especially with end of development being announced.

I can agree with you that they are out of touch with their audience in a number of ways, but I'm not missing the "survival" aspects as some of you are. I'm not as young as I once was when I started gaming and I no longer appreciate mechanics that are huge time sinks for repetitive tasks (tedium is not fun). I like that easy base defenses / assaults are easy and hard ones are challenging if approached normally but have options to make them easy if you want (explosives are super cheap with the ammo changes now which I don't mind but I'd rather ammo be cheaper to craft and still drop in variety, honestly.)

I also don't think the game has gotten so much easier - I'm dying a lot more lately than I remember. Areas that I like to farm that always had a tank and sometimes 2 now regularly have 4 or 5 in the same location (between Granhygget and Storskogen for example) - the firebirds can make things tense too. Overall the map has a lot more challenging enemies than it used to which I really like. Yes, you can have an easy mode if you just circle strafe and blast everything with explosives, but I rather play tactically. It doesn't bother me that I know the explosive option is there, though. I use it for hard base assaults because it just takes too long to deal with all the spawners without it but that's about it. (I do like the experimental algustare (sp?) for blowing up cars for FMTEL missons, too)

Speaking of FMTEL. we've strayed a good bit from topic, hope OP doesn't mind too much :P

[Kaii]

Ehh, it's all good, tbh airing things out is always a good idea.

When I say survival game, that wasn't accurate, it was just what came to mind when thinking about what sort of game it was. The game really sort of lost that "you need to use different guns and not pick one gun and hose every enemy down for more of that ammo type." that it used to have with the new update. I have a Experimental PVG90 and a 5-crown PM-71 and always try to not pick up any other gun, meaning I get loads of 50cal and 7.62 off of tanks, wolves, harvesters and firebirds, usually enough to completely recover any bullets fired. I have nearly 4000 rounds of 50cal in my box and that number keeps on growing because I get so much off of enemies, it's a bit ridiculous, and hopefully they do achieve a good balance again.

I also despise time-sink actions, which is why I really LOATHE the fact that drilling is required for Phosphorus. You need a full 1000 phos for one of the weapon augments, the rapid reload if I recall correctly, which would be insane on something with a high ammo capacity and a slow reload. Having to grind for it really annoys me, especially considering how much you need. And if it turns out I don't like it, that's 1000 phosphorus just down the drain, which is a huge time investment utterly wasted.

I still die a fair amount, but since enemies drop so much ammo, I find that I gain medical items and adrenaline from easily-slaughtered enemies far more than I lose them, effectively forming a self-perpetuating cycle where the collected stuff allows me to kill things with even greater impunity.

Speaking of time-sink actions, this loops right back around to FMTEL. I distinctly recall doing a hard difficulty mission, kill a tank with a machine gun, which was pitifully easy mind you since I found a prototype tank as the very first one and just shredded it, and got 5 paramedic things and 5 bandages of some kind. I just genuinely have to ask myself who on earth decided these reward tiers, and can we please sit them down in a nice quiet room and ask them what their thought process was?

Anyways, I'm off to throw fireballs at things for a bit!

[Kalanos [FIST]]

Also 1000 phosphorous for machine disarmer which is one I wanted to use (paired with skilled spotter on ai-76, then switch to other ai-76 with emp and quick learner for anything tougher, when "going loud") Augments and experimental ammo I want rebalanced the most. The 7.62 shock ammo (really the only exp ammo I _really_ like) was too costly for me to use nearly as often as I'd like even before the update dropped, but now it's like adding punishment to the grind with a gamble thrown in for good measure. I'm sooo glad I don't want to unlock any augments that require 1000 rounds of experimental ammo to hit a target...

I do actually miss my s21 (removed the weapon packs) which I hear a lot of folks either overlooking or just hating, lol. It's nice to be able to go prone and take out all the runners and sentries with a single silenced, well placed shot and avoid aggro until I'm ready to get up and fight the baddies and the s21 rocks because it also uses 7.62 which I'm carrying in abundance already.

I carry the exp pvg usually but I've been relying on it a lot less since the update (I've not wanted to miss the xp bonus from quick learner, lol) and I don't usually carry explosive weaponry unless it's a lvl 3 base assault or destroy cars for FMTEL. So yeah, tons of .50 and 7.62 :)

Enjoy your fireballs!

[Eventide]

I've been happily ignoring FMTEL since it started existing. But GZ should come up with either an offline play fix - or remove the feature - when GZ leaves active support, late next year.

It ties in with APEX, which became a requirement, but is still "optional" in the pinned FAQ - never updated. Perhaps it will become truly optional again, once the Apex Account server it phones home to, is shut down.

[DedZedNub]

A very good point, Eventide. As you say, since the online component is likely to be taken down, to save money with no more development costs being spent on Gen Zero, it would make sense to grandfather the Online Missions, as say Random Triggerable Missions or Daily Missions available to pursue as part of the OFFLINE Campaign.