My Review: The Recombinator

Hi GGG,

The Recombinator is a very promising idea and feels like a step in the right direction. It aims to return some crafting agency to the player while also making item gathering and planning more engaging. In particular, it adds a fresh layer of excitement to Expeditions, giving players more reasons to participate in them.

However, my first experience with the Recombinator was extremely frustrating—and here’s why:

The failure penalty is far too punishing. When a recombination fails, it destroys both items, and that feels excessively harsh considering the effort and cost involved. I would be fine with the rare possibility of losing one of the items on failure, but losing both, especially after paying a high price, makes the system feel discouraging and punishing rather than rewarding.

Suggestions:
1- The crafting cost could be a bit lower, especially when working with Magic (blue) items.

2- On failure, the materials items be returned, allowing players to try again without full loss of everything.

3- Alternatively, a very small chance of losing one item would be much more acceptable.

4- Another idea: on failure, there could be a chance to recombine randomly, even if not with the chosen mods.

5- Perhaps introduce the option to pay more to increase the success rate—though I recognize this might be a bigger design shift.

Right now, the system punishes planning and experimentation too harshly. The destruction of both carefully selected items after a single failure makes the whole feature feel too risky to engage with seriously (at least on SSF). I doubt many players will use the Recombinator proactively in its current form due to the steep cost and brutal penalties.

Again, I really love the concept—it’s genuinely exciting and promising—but in its current state, it feels unviable.

Best,

Ketaros

I would also move it to the campaign. Somethign that should be accessible during campaign. You need to show the core systems to your costumers still during campaign.

It seemed like a great addition for about 5 minutes.
My own imagination got ahead of me and I thought it had potential.
Again this games rng is utterly cruel.
Nothing rng related turns out to be very useful or fun.

I couldn't agree more. Takes a long preparation and grinding in order to find the items you want. And then, 90% of the times, boom, you get nothing. I wouldn't be surprised if this tool is rarely used just because it's not rewarding enough.

I agree with the cost/failure point. I still think at least 1 item should be destroyed per attempt, but both everytime is very frustrating and big dopamine killer.

Currently ill spend days gathering bases with good mods and running logbooks. Then when I finally sit down to do some crafting- I'm out of recombo mats in less than 5 minutes, gained nothing of value and have to find something else I'd rather do.

Well,

There are so many other people talking about so many other things. I just hope they give some more love to the Recombinator. It's one of their latest best initial step to solve this "slot machine" crafting system...

*fingers crossed* here to they notice this post. :)

Thanks for all the support.

Ketaros