Inspired by a post from AndiNagasaki, i realized that there are a fair number of people like me who have gotten to Auric level in the game, but there is no progression or rewards for being an “elite part of the warband”. In AndiNagasaki’s post they talk about skill points becoming univeral one at a time for every 30 levels. I’ll refer to these universal skill points as Auric Points from now on. You can place an Auric Point anywhere in your skill tree without needing to unlock nodes that would then in turn unlock the node you want. In effect allowing you to skip nodes and still unlocking the the desired node. So with getting one Auric Point every 30 levels, you would max out your Auric points at 30, meaning you would have to reach level 920 to unlock all of them. A distant goal to be sure, but one that is rewarded along the way.
I have another idea that adds on top of this. Vermintide veterans will remember the red tier of weapons. I suggest they implement them as a part of the crafting system. When you complete an Auric damnation mission you get a single Auric Token. These tokens can be used to reroll the base stats of a weapon, or added to one its existing stats to add 20% to that stat. So you could theoretically take a maxed stat so 80% and make it 100%. You can add two tokens. I think it would be fair to lock stat rerolls on a weapon after you add an Auric Token to a weapon stat. Though you should be able to remove auric tokens from a weapon’s stats (delete the tokens) so you can reroll it with other auric tokens youve earned. Lastly, you can spend a number of Auric Tokens on a weapon, or trinket to make it a red item. For weapons this adds a third blessing OR a third perk, you choose. This also unlocks all blessings and perks on an item so you can customize it as much as you can afford - trplacing perks and blessings until the weapon is exactly as you want it. The cost in Auric Tokens to take a weapon into the red tier would depend on its power. The equation should probably be something like its total power divided by 20 rounded down. That way a weapon with 514 power would cost 25 auric tokens to make red. (514 ÷ 20 = 25.7 round down to 25) i think that will make red weapons suitably rare, and the extra power make them still be sought after.
My last request on this topic is that when you turn a weapon into its auric level version, you unlock a weapon cosmetic that makes it slick, fancy and gernally high quality enougb to make it look like the master crafted machine of death it now is.
Id love some feed back. How would you change this concept, or the numbers to make them better for the game?
Edit: After some great feed back i think it’s fair to say that the actual Auric Difficultly shouldnt be tied to the progression of auric tokens, as it would punish people for not being great at the game and funnel people who werent ready for auric into the difficulty. Maybe instead the auric tokens should be tied to excess levels over 30. My thought is to reward an auric token every 10 levels after 30, and 1 token ar 30. I think the equation for tokens needed to red tier an item should then be power level divided by 50. So 514 would be 10 tokens. Or 100 levels. Additionally, a better way of using auric tokens to reroll a weapon’s stats would insure that its base power can only increase during this time, so you dont make a weapon worse while using a rare reaource trying to improve it.
I think this is okay, I feel like at the highest difficulty certain enemies should have unique behavior that only happens on that difficulty, examples coming to mind are Beast of Nurgle being able to eat two people at a time or Plague Ogryn having a cloud around him that increases corruption of people trying to melee etc. should hash out some of the bosses more and give them cool abilities
yes, but in response to having better items/rewards, you’d get them in better difficulties with more difficult enemies possibly and them having new abillities/AI would be part of that. So yes it’s about enemy behavior because that justifies the rewards, unless you were saying red is the new gold and this topic just goes no where
There’s no reason to commit development resources for new and interesting mechanics only seen at the difficulty that exists for players who find the game otherwise too easy.
FS has a history of adding a max difficulty mode with the same rewards as the level below it – most players aren’t meant to use it, it exists purely for the small group of players who play for the added challenge, and otherwise already have maxed out kits. In vermintide, this was Cataclysm difficulty.
Adding special mechanics at Auric only then penalizes players for not maxing out their difficulty, by means of missing unique content.
Gating any kind of rewards in a more difficult content will lead to a revolt.
AT BEST more diffult content can have slightly more rewards or a slightly better chance at them, but the rewards must be achievable for anyone who only plays Sedition.
You have a point but it’s not like they’re actually ‘missing’ the content they can acquire it at anytime they just have to play the higher difficulty, it would be more of an endgame thing maybe certain missions would have a new ‘auric’ endgame difficulty, I guess the real question is what should endgame be and the rewards for it?
Yeah except the title is literally ‘Auric’ rewards. This is the highest difficulty basically.
Ideally you would get exclusive cosmetics/rewards from Auric level stuff. The difficulty is the cost, unless you would literally only want that if you have to pay for it. There HAS to be something EXCLUSIVE to HIGHER difficulties, that’s literally the point of them. Theres no point in higher difficulties without better rewards for them. A terrible but current example would be COD’s Prestige camos. They’re sick but not just anyone will be willing to get them. Sure people will complain but at the end of the day nothing is stopping them but themselves.
It’s only technically the highest difficulty. I agree it’s a weird hump to get over since most games would give the best rewards on the highest difficulty. You need to mind this history to this though. You are not meant to play on auric. It gives you slightly more money, yay for that, but it exists purely because a few of the most dedicated players prefer the difficulty. It’s not for rewards, if you’re playing auric consistently then you either already have everything or just don’t care. FS does this, they did it in Vermintide, they brought it back for Darktide. The highest difficulty people are really meant to play on is regular damnation on the regular mission board.
Giving any kind of special rewards, including cosmetics or special leveling, shifts that and makes it the de facto difficulty you’re meant to play on. The average player is meant to max out on damnation.
Tthat’s just a small part of it all. Literally the last request.
And it was not a generic cosmetic, it was literally a gun mod given by all he said before.
I don’t get this attitude at all, is it an age thing? Am I too old to get it?
Because back in my day the point of playing games was having fun… derived from playing the game itself. For some this meant beating the game once, for others obsessing over game mechanics (hello, IAS breakpoints from Diablo II) and mastering the title completely.
Either way, the point was PLAYING. Not getting a shiny new skin or some other virtual nonsense.
OK, scratch that last line - bragging rights were always on the menu
