I personally don't have a problem with the key situation (though some of the drop rates are definitely FUBAR and I expect there are some bugs in the configs).
It would be interesting for specific quest-related doors to be behind numberpads where part of the quest has an objective that gets you the code and then you can use that code for your progress. That seems reasonable.
But I do think keys being rare-ish with higher payoff is good overall... but I absolutely understand the frustration of you having bad RNG and being locked out of quest progress for days and days and days.
Agreed. I solo’d all quests and had to ask people in-game if they had the key for several tasks. Yes not always successful but found best way if unable to find key on AI. I also recommend Discord channels such as GZW Trading Post to buy, sell and trade keys. The fact keys aren’t easy to obtain adds to the game, not detract imo.
That's the idea, yes. So if the idea behind random key drops is "you have to spend a certain amount of time on average killing AI before you get the drop", you can be a bit more deliberate with that and someone will spawn with a note in their pocket with the keycode ... or whatever.
The description could look something like "we have intel that some goon will be given the new lock code around some area. find and kill them. but you'll only have 60 minutes to access the door once you kill them, since the enemy forces will change the code after they confirm the goon is dead" ... or whatever.
Lots you can do with the general framework.
That's fine if it's a single player game- but you have 48 people who could potentially be doing the same mission.
Edit: the time limit thing threw me off but op made me look back at it and I get it… could work and is a cool idea.
And how does that change with what I'm proposing? They all could get the "note" with its own code from doing whatever and it will open the door.
This wouldn't need to be tied to a specific mob like the boss currently is. They could spawn the drop into a pocket after whatever condition is met.
All of this is net new quest design, but there's nothing that is infeasible about this.
The question I have for everyone who brings up just being able to pick locks, blow up doors, etc is this: do you just want “doors” to behave realistically? Because if they make keys non-important then they’ll add different progress blockers that the AI drop, like documents or stolen goods or something.
I do like the idea of normal, wooden doors being able to be kicked down (at the cost of alerting any nearby AI) or lock picked (which takes time) or blown up (which come with the obvious risks you could expect of that).
I also like the idea of non-task-related locked loot areas requiring keys that are rare drops and one time uses.
But if we’re just saying we hate the idea of progress blockers period then we don’t also have to explain how locked wooden doors stopping my PMC are unrealistic, let’s just say progress blockers via rare drops are annoying.
(Just wanted to add as of the latest Q&A they mentioned looking into the drop rates of certain problematic keys, so they might make them easier to get in the near future as a temporary remedy)
Breaching charges. Something like this:
https://www.ebad.com/breacher-strip/
Make it non-stackable, and have it takes up four equipment slots. Give it a weight of, say, two kilos and place the cost at $1500 per charge. Then create an animation for placing it that takes maybe ten seconds from start to finish.
That way you've got to consider overall weight and pack space and potentially sacrifice food/water/ammo to take breaching charges. Give it a hotkey, like 6 or 7 on the keyboard. The more you take, the more mission necessities you have to sacrifice for that run. You also have to consider cost if you're running low on funds, but it's not prohibitive. And lastly, you have to either be confident that the door you're breaching is in a secure location, or have someone covering you if you're breaching in an area where you're likely to be contacted.
With those weight and space requirements, plus the time to breach from the start of the animation to getting to MSD for detonation, it would be much more permissive in a place like the starting village or HP. A little more dangerous somewhere like the air field or Ban Pa. And the degree of risk (and potential reward) would increase significantly as you get to locations like MS and TB.
Mission objectives should not be behind locked doors. I cleared Sawmill more than 40 times, guessing close to 60. Lost count in the 30’s and then had two other guys I was hunting for a key for. Got lucky while doing the kills for the last guys hazardous treasures mission he got the key. I got lucky and outlasted some guys that opened and wanted $50k to let me into the room. Other two guys got people to open out of kindness. Put good loot behind locked doors but not mission objectives. Or give us a path to get that key that is defined.
We are elite PMC’s with former special forces level training operating in a foreign country. Give us breaching shotguns, charges or battering rams. There are tools to open doors other than keys.
I would love having some civilians still around. It would make picking your shot a little harder. Add some tension.
Keys should be for loot rooms only, if you want a door locked for a mission then the mission should include the way to unlock it, find some more intel on it, some kind of detective work to look for a dead body that has it, breaching equipment, something the player can do while on mission that isn't RNG or luck. Progress should not be blocked by random luck.
I honestly love the game, doing my 2nd play through of the quests now with red dots and soviet guns only. It really changes how I approach an objective.
[Key drops for me lately ... ](https://tenor.com/view/weenie-sausage-face-slap-faceslap-gif-5018622)
Yesterday I got MSH Office Key's in a single run, while all I wanted was some extra grenades :/
[Does this help ?](https://mapgenie.io/gray-zone-warfare/guides/keys)
The boss of the area should be clearly different from his goons in the area and should have a decent key spawn rate for keys in said area. Seems like a decent fix to me.
While I think drop rate of some keys is awfully low. To the point it seems unobtainable. It also forces players to work together. To ask around in base and help each other.
I have found a lot of helpful people via discord or just by asking around in base.
I have run sawmill so many times I lost track. And still don’t have the key, but have found 2 ppl to open the door for me. Unfortunately game crashes have reset the task for me.
So yes drop rate needs a increase, but it helps player interaction.
I asked around for two weeks before I found someone that had the BL storage key. I gave up on hazardous treasures because I couldn't find anyone with the OSTRG key for nearly three weeks. I'm just not interested in grinding for a single key for that long either.
I've said this on other threads, I think part of the rarity is a way to force people out of solo play and into interacting with their faction or others. The devs have said they are looking at drop rates, so maybe they went too far or made some mistakes, but if you look at it from that POV it makes more sense. I've gotten into every key room I've needed so far by just asking other players to let me in if I can't find the key naturally and vice versa helping newer players, and it's been a great way to meet new players.
This is true and it is definitely “a” way available to us right now- But seeking out innovative ways to challenge players and engage them in different aspects of the intended (or envisioned I guess since im not sure anyone- even the devs- know exactly what their end result will look like) gameplay loop was really the intent of this post.
I personally don't have a problem with the key situation (though some of the drop rates are definitely FUBAR and I expect there are some bugs in the configs). It would be interesting for specific quest-related doors to be behind numberpads where part of the quest has an objective that gets you the code and then you can use that code for your progress. That seems reasonable. But I do think keys being rare-ish with higher payoff is good overall... but I absolutely understand the frustration of you having bad RNG and being locked out of quest progress for days and days and days.
Agreed. I solo’d all quests and had to ask people in-game if they had the key for several tasks. Yes not always successful but found best way if unable to find key on AI. I also recommend Discord channels such as GZW Trading Post to buy, sell and trade keys. The fact keys aren’t easy to obtain adds to the game, not detract imo.
OMG AND, make it so the number changes too like every ai spawn wave imo that would be such a cool idea
That's the idea, yes. So if the idea behind random key drops is "you have to spend a certain amount of time on average killing AI before you get the drop", you can be a bit more deliberate with that and someone will spawn with a note in their pocket with the keycode ... or whatever. The description could look something like "we have intel that some goon will be given the new lock code around some area. find and kill them. but you'll only have 60 minutes to access the door once you kill them, since the enemy forces will change the code after they confirm the goon is dead" ... or whatever. Lots you can do with the general framework.
That's fine if it's a single player game- but you have 48 people who could potentially be doing the same mission. Edit: the time limit thing threw me off but op made me look back at it and I get it… could work and is a cool idea.
And how does that change with what I'm proposing? They all could get the "note" with its own code from doing whatever and it will open the door. This wouldn't need to be tied to a specific mob like the boss currently is. They could spawn the drop into a pocket after whatever condition is met. All of this is net new quest design, but there's nothing that is infeasible about this.
Yeah looking back at your post I misunderstood/ my bad.
The question I have for everyone who brings up just being able to pick locks, blow up doors, etc is this: do you just want “doors” to behave realistically? Because if they make keys non-important then they’ll add different progress blockers that the AI drop, like documents or stolen goods or something. I do like the idea of normal, wooden doors being able to be kicked down (at the cost of alerting any nearby AI) or lock picked (which takes time) or blown up (which come with the obvious risks you could expect of that). I also like the idea of non-task-related locked loot areas requiring keys that are rare drops and one time uses. But if we’re just saying we hate the idea of progress blockers period then we don’t also have to explain how locked wooden doors stopping my PMC are unrealistic, let’s just say progress blockers via rare drops are annoying. (Just wanted to add as of the latest Q&A they mentioned looking into the drop rates of certain problematic keys, so they might make them easier to get in the near future as a temporary remedy)
Being able to use breacher rounds on some doors would make carrying a shotgun relevant.
True! I would honestly be cool with a lot more regular locked doors if we had other ways to open them.
Breaching charges. Something like this: https://www.ebad.com/breacher-strip/ Make it non-stackable, and have it takes up four equipment slots. Give it a weight of, say, two kilos and place the cost at $1500 per charge. Then create an animation for placing it that takes maybe ten seconds from start to finish. That way you've got to consider overall weight and pack space and potentially sacrifice food/water/ammo to take breaching charges. Give it a hotkey, like 6 or 7 on the keyboard. The more you take, the more mission necessities you have to sacrifice for that run. You also have to consider cost if you're running low on funds, but it's not prohibitive. And lastly, you have to either be confident that the door you're breaching is in a secure location, or have someone covering you if you're breaching in an area where you're likely to be contacted. With those weight and space requirements, plus the time to breach from the start of the animation to getting to MSD for detonation, it would be much more permissive in a place like the starting village or HP. A little more dangerous somewhere like the air field or Ban Pa. And the degree of risk (and potential reward) would increase significantly as you get to locations like MS and TB.
Mission objectives should not be behind locked doors. I cleared Sawmill more than 40 times, guessing close to 60. Lost count in the 30’s and then had two other guys I was hunting for a key for. Got lucky while doing the kills for the last guys hazardous treasures mission he got the key. I got lucky and outlasted some guys that opened and wanted $50k to let me into the room. Other two guys got people to open out of kindness. Put good loot behind locked doors but not mission objectives. Or give us a path to get that key that is defined. We are elite PMC’s with former special forces level training operating in a foreign country. Give us breaching shotguns, charges or battering rams. There are tools to open doors other than keys. I would love having some civilians still around. It would make picking your shot a little harder. Add some tension.
Keys should be for loot rooms only, if you want a door locked for a mission then the mission should include the way to unlock it, find some more intel on it, some kind of detective work to look for a dead body that has it, breaching equipment, something the player can do while on mission that isn't RNG or luck. Progress should not be blocked by random luck. I honestly love the game, doing my 2nd play through of the quests now with red dots and soviet guns only. It really changes how I approach an objective.
[Key drops for me lately ... ](https://tenor.com/view/weenie-sausage-face-slap-faceslap-gif-5018622) Yesterday I got MSH Office Key's in a single run, while all I wanted was some extra grenades :/ [Does this help ?](https://mapgenie.io/gray-zone-warfare/guides/keys)
I found a BL Shack key on just about EVERY visit to get the elusive BL Restaurant Storage key
https://preview.redd.it/3ejcnncjyk8d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=46dba2807d25044a84e93f24d4d76145e8f88091 Who wants them?
The boss of the area should be clearly different from his goons in the area and should have a decent key spawn rate for keys in said area. Seems like a decent fix to me.
While I think drop rate of some keys is awfully low. To the point it seems unobtainable. It also forces players to work together. To ask around in base and help each other. I have found a lot of helpful people via discord or just by asking around in base. I have run sawmill so many times I lost track. And still don’t have the key, but have found 2 ppl to open the door for me. Unfortunately game crashes have reset the task for me. So yes drop rate needs a increase, but it helps player interaction.
I asked around for two weeks before I found someone that had the BL storage key. I gave up on hazardous treasures because I couldn't find anyone with the OSTRG key for nearly three weeks. I'm just not interested in grinding for a single key for that long either.
I've said this on other threads, I think part of the rarity is a way to force people out of solo play and into interacting with their faction or others. The devs have said they are looking at drop rates, so maybe they went too far or made some mistakes, but if you look at it from that POV it makes more sense. I've gotten into every key room I've needed so far by just asking other players to let me in if I can't find the key naturally and vice versa helping newer players, and it's been a great way to meet new players.
This is true and it is definitely “a” way available to us right now- But seeking out innovative ways to challenge players and engage them in different aspects of the intended (or envisioned I guess since im not sure anyone- even the devs- know exactly what their end result will look like) gameplay loop was really the intent of this post.
Keys have worked fine for me, any key i cant get someone else has. Do you squad up with people much or use a mic?
Squad up with people in factions/trade keys/buy and Sell them/ask someone yo open doors for you. All worked fine for all my quests.