Not sure on the popularity of this or how many times it’s been brought it up before, but I would personally like to see weekly contracts be account wide (just like the wallets have been). Main reason for this, the weeklies encourage me to keep playing the same class (or character rather). If I start playing zealot, I am encouraged to keep playing it for that 1000 bonus at the end. Its pretty time consuming to get those done for 1-2 characters let alone 4. This, in my opinion causes more burn out. I feel like I have to dedicate myself to 1-2 characters a week.
This is especially problematic playing with friends where we maybe don’t want 4 psykers or what have you so you can remain flexible in what classes you can play (would also be nice to easily swap characters before loading into a mission). Because now you are playing a class/character where you know you don’t have enough time to complete the weeklies.
You could increase pay out of weeklies but also increase the amount required. Complete 8 missions, becomes 32, with 4x the pay out for example. Issue with this is that for new players with only one player or for people who play less than 4 classes wouldn’t care for this potentially, and not hitting the amounts would be more penalizing with the potential for wasted time. You could perhaps allow players to choose to “link” characters to increase the requirements and pay outs to have more flexibility on it.
Personal favourite suggestion
Have the weeklies have "stages" to them. Using the previous example of
completing missions it would have stages:
**Stage 1.)** Complete 8 missions (same pay out as now).
**Stage 2.)** Complete 16 missions double pay out
**Stage 3.)** Complete 24 missions tripe pay out
**Stage 4.)** Complete 32 missions quadrupole pay out.
**Weekly stages:**
All weeklies completed for stage 1: 1000 bonus
All weeklies completed for stage 2: 2000 bonus
All weeklies completed for stage 3: 3000 bonus
All weeklies completed for stage 4: 4000 bonus
This way you keep the same amount of possible rewards with 4 characters, one for each class. It’s fine if people only ever focus and play 1 character/class. It’s friendly for new players. And, you don’t waste progression between characters EITHER. For example, if you need to kill 1000 scab with range, and you are at 999 and you play an entire match where you kill a total of 200, the 199 extra gets put towards the next “stage” of that goal instead of being lost when you swap to another character that may have the same weekly contract.
I’ve just jumped back into the game with update 13, and yeah, trying to max out 4 characters’ contracts is kinda burn-out inducing even just a couple weeks in.
Hell, for a hot minute I was considering making a 5th alt repeat-class character or downloading the mod for 12 character slots for their corresponding Melk quests, then I regained my sanity.
So the solution for now feels like…I just need to stop trying for maxing out Melk bucks, because 60 Melk quests sounds hellish if not impossible, and since I’m already not min-maxing to that degree, I should just aim for fun.
I think the Melk contract system is to encourage regular check-ins from people who otherwise wouldn’t come back regularly, and maybe even intended to make you try other character classes, but if you’re like me and constantly playing multiple characters specifically just to get max Melk bucks for your main class, you’re not really the person the system needs to entice…
Anyway, another way to do this without having to opt-in might be to allow any character on an account to complete the contracts of other characters on the account as long as they’re not counted simultaneously? But we may be asking for workarounds to min-max a system that just isn’t for us.
Potentially, but at that point I would argue that Fatshark should want ideally players to play all classes to engage with all content and potentially buy DLC or premium cosmetics for any of those classes. As well as more chance for those classes to make them stick to the game more. If you develop new content it’s better to have players use it all, ideally, vs only using a quarter of it.
Good topic. It’s not that I don’t like playing repeatedly, I hate having to go to the NPC and to activate the weekly for all my chars.
Either making the weekly shared as your suggest or make it so that I can just pick the weekly for all the classes in one go, would work for me.
Also, having to pick/reroll weekly every week is annoying. Maybe FS should let us pick by categories (Easy, Medium, Hard). If we choose Hard, all the possible contracts will be listed (let’s say 10 total) for a player to complete, once you finish 5, the weekly is done.
I’ve always thought the weeklies were backwards. Like you go to the guy giving missions and he’s like “I have a mission for you! Pickup 16 books” and you’re like “here’s a $20” and he’s like “OK how about kill 8 monstrosities”…… makes no sense… Being able to swap was a quick fix QOL thing I know, but it’s just weird.
I think the entire thing needs a redesign.
I think it should be a bounty board, not a mission board. A bounty on books, bounty on killing XYZ, bounty on completing missions, etc, and they should pay out incrementally. If the bounty is picking up 16 books, we should get paid by the book. Doesn’t have to be linear, could be 25 for the first five books, 50 for the second five, 75 for the next five, and 250 for that last book.
As a bounty board, it would be the same for everyone. No more RNG missions, just the same bounties for everyone. Now they would change every week, different subset of all the possible bounties. This week there’s a bounty on X, Y, and Z probably 7-10 bounties per week. More than enough to keep everyone busy even if they don’t want to attempt some of them.
One of the benefits of being a shared bounty board is it can be incorporated into the narrative, when we start getting a narrative. For example, if we get a new enemy type, there could be a bounty on it for the first few weeks. If we get a narrative about us needing to gather intelligence, there could be a special version of the ‘find books’ bounty. New bounties could be made to support whatever the narrative becomes.
I would do away with the 1000 bonus for completing all of them. Seems kinda mean to people who only have a few hours a week to play. Having the bounties pay out incrementally would help them a lot too.
I would also be fine with a system like this. As long as the weekly bounties don’t feel like they pressure playing certain maps, missions, classes, etc. They would have to balance interesting and unique with also something that doesn’t get in the way of just wanting to play the game and get something out of it while doing it.
I know there’s lots of comparisons made between the two, but DRG is one. You have randomized missions but every week you have core hunt and priority missions as something to do. Maybe these can have interesting modifiers across all difficulties or something. They would encourage people to play together.
The way some things work in Darktide, you really have to just forget about engaging with some of the systems even though they spent so much time designing them.
I wouldn’t want anyone to feel pressured to play something they don’t want. I would hope there are enough options on the list that everyone found several things to go for.
Oh I want random-ish missions too. I made a recent post about it here but I don’t want to derail this thread.
I think we had global mission modifiers earlier, but it wasn’t implemented very well. There were not enough variation, and they lasted too long. Would be cool if there was a way to get rid of them. Like the power outage one, maybe enough people doing the coolant mission would stop it. Could be really annoying if it’s 3 am and you just want to play normal though.
I had a thing written for tiered contracts, based on the premise of 6 contracts and 4 tiers, you always start at T1 and as you complete it you unlock the next tier and tier completion gives rewards and bonus points.
I had this moment the other day where I went to Melk to check my contract progress, saw the pile of melk tokens I have and thought “I should buy something! Why am I holding on to all these anyway?” Took a look at what was on offer… nothing even remotely useful. Thought “oh well, let’s check on how the contracts are going, want to get that bonus!.. Wait… I’m doing this for melk tokens…” Just walked away.
I have played 900+ hours since launch and I also think that it takes too much time to earn melkbucks. I am just afraid that if FS combines the weekly tasks, we will see their amount reduced. And now melkbucks are very important, because they are the most reliable way to get T4 blessings.
