I’m overall having a lot of fun with the new Penance overhaul!
My one piece of feedback would be: in future, please steer clear of Penances like, “Complete X number of consecutive missions without dying/going down.” And especially avoid “Complete X number of consecutive missions without ANYONE dying/going down.”
There are a lot of little ways the game can screw you without it being a matter of player skill (a barrel or Plague Ogryn launching you off the map to insta-death, for instance - still especially a problem in Hab Dreko).
I’ve seen a lot of people just quit instantly when they go down - either in an effort to avoid ruining their streak, or just from the rage that their streak is already ruined, which - given that people rarely go down in low-stress situations - can throw a match for the rest of the team.
I’ve also seen this lead to a lot of toxicity, with people venting their frustration over losing all their hard work by yelling at their teammates for perceived faults. Usually right before rage-quitting.
I think this problem can be solved by not having multiple missions worth of progress lost in a single match. My opinion is that Penances like, “X number of missions (does not need to be consecutive) where you do not die/go down,” are much better for the community and the general atmosphere of the game.
This comes down to map knowledge and positioning, and does have a degree of skill to it
The problem with the consecutive missions penances are that you can force close the gane and then the match u die in doesnt count so you can literally cheat the system. So yes it being like 100x damination auric missions without dying just as a total not consecutive would be much better and would be a longer grind to get a cool reward at the end.
Technically you are correct; a degree of skill. However, it appears to be a high enough degree that a lot of people are not able to consistently achieve it. I’ve seen numerous Veterans with high rate-of-fire weapons accidentally trigger (and double-tap) barrels (which usually kills someone other than them), people who don’t realize the reach of their melee weapons is very slightly longer than the weapon model also triggering barrels, people who have to dodge Trappers/Bombers in a confined space ending up in just the wrong place to be hit by a Plague Ogryn (again, see Hab Dreko - made even worse by Dreg Bombers taking up so much space with their tox cloud), etc, etc.
Also: @Flawless , you are correct; for “Consecutive missions without ANYONE doing X, Y, Z,” I was mostly trying to head off a problem before it happened.
Is there “lack of skill” involved in being thrown into a 3/4 dead nurgle blessed monstrous maelstrom? tard that designed that “challenge” only did so to waste people time. Maybe implement a “dont join active lobbies” tickbox before you do that?
edit: is me not restarting the game after every 3 new maps so i dont get oom crash a lack of skill too? peak stupidity. if that bunch of sadistic restrictions + a couple of reskins passes as content i’ll just stay the hell off until you actually deliver
edit2: still not a single tome or grimoire on maelstroms for no reason other than making you hunt every trash mission that has them down and roll the dice on quickplay. what is the point in not having a single damn book there? maybe you should delete the damn weekly then if you’re gonna make that junk random and completely abscent from maelstroms(the only potentially fun content left after you buffed the classes so much)
This is my biggest gripe with the system. My regular group quit long ago so I have no option to force a fresh lobby. I got cucked out of the maelstrom title twice yesterday at 4/5 because I was thrown into a loss screen.
Yeah I think these should all just be changed so that they only rely on the player’s own performance instead of being subject to factors outside of the player’s control. Not the least of which being the actions of your teammates who often do stupid things in pursuit of their own specific penances. The biggest culprit I’ve encountered so far is Loner zealots farming ranged mob kills, which involves running off ahead of the party and then quitting as soon as they die, leaving us to clean up the mess after they aggro half the map.
Just off the top of my head, the way I would change the penance is to remove the “streak” part and just greatly increase the number of individual missions you have to complete without dying/downing.
Not getting downed even once on auric damnation is already difficult enough, bordering on impossible for your average pub player. Hence, if the achievement requires you to achieve a streak of 5, then you can just remove the streak part and multiply the required games by ten. Only a sweaty tryhard would call surviving 50 games without getting downed once “easy”.
This solves the issue of the penance being luck based instead of skill based. As nemy points out joining a maelstrom game is a total dice roll that can easily land you in an unwinnable situation, which kills your streak with no possible recourse.
For any expirienced player it’s not? Well atleast it wasn’t before, now when there are some players came back for update, maybe. But it’s a matter of time they will stop jumping on auric-maelstorm.
Then it would be only about grind. Also, there should be a reward for sweaty tryhards, not everyone should play the highest difficulty, not everyone is good at it, and so not everyone should have a cosmetic reward. More over, there should be achivements for true solo (well there is no solo play without mod, but still) or some almost impossible stuff, only 1% of players will have.
Like that dude who killed Twins solo on hard mode, if i were a DT dev i would give him unique frame or title (and for other players who probably also did it, i suppose they are exist)
It basically forces a friend group check upon people and the ones that fail it have to treat Darktide as if it were a Raiding environment for the purposes of obtaining a penance. The game doesn’t have the infrastructure to properly support that as it’s not really a social game to begin with. The lobby is a place where people go afk between matches when they’re not navigating gameplay loop menus like penances, melk, brunt and so on. I know someone will likely say “Uh duh, just use Discord!” but why have this jank at all? If they wanted to be the auric related titles to be attainable but difficult in a reasonable way they would’ve made it x number of games rather than x number of consecutives.
I just completed mine. Without cheating the system. It can be done. I did it and I’m proud. It’s an achievement. If it’s too easy to get it’s meaningless.
Well, that just gets back to point the OP was making. Surviving five maelstrom missions in a row (or any other streak achievement) is not easy. You have to be skilled enough to actually do that and receive a reward, there’s nothing wrong with that idea and it plays out properly in 99% of penances.
The problem is that you can fail that streak for a variety of different reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with your skill level. This should not be the case. The achievement is specifically for surviving five maelstrom missions in a row. Not “be lucky enough to never join a game that transitions directly from loading screen to fail screen because that will reset your progress and you can’t do anything about it lol lmao”. That’s just garbage game design.
Only join maelstrom missions that just popped up on the board then.
No way to join a run that is already failing, if you do that.
Or go and make a premade group.
I usually queue with 1 buddy, so i only get 2 randoms instead of 3.
Within the past 10 or so auric maelstroms that we did (simply joining when ever we felt like it), there was a single occasion where we joined an ongoing mission. And that time we joined into the first engagement of the map.
Nobody is forcing you to do this penance.
It is supposed to be pretty much the most difficult one, hence it rewarding the only title with yellow letters.
If it is too difficult for you, do one of the 300 other penances.
If you are going out of your way, trying to beat the pinnacle penance, you might as well spend a few minutes looking for a teammate to do it with (if doing it with 3 randoms is too risky for you, which i would totally understand).
Unless you get a full team wipe (with you as last man standing), or get killed by a bug, not dying is pretty much entirely about your own skill.
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Edit:
Some of the most common deaths are:
getting overwhelmed after falling behind and not paying attention to where the others are
getting overwhelmed after running off to the side and not paying attention to where the others are
getting overwhlmed after running too far ahead and not paying attention to where the others are
getting overwhelmed after getting into a bad position during a „hold out“ event
getting thrown off the map by a barrel or a boss, after not paying attention to barrels as well as places where you could be thrown off the map
being bad at fighting and getting downed repeatedly, until the last wound is gone
All of those are entirely about your own skill.
Unless you end up with a garbage team that goes down and leaves you to be the last guy standing, or just does not help you when disabled or downed (which are states that you can almost entirely avoid by being good at the game), bugs and crashes are probably the only thing that can kill you without any fault of your own.
These Penances seem to cause toxic behaviour, like people throwing games once they get downed to not ruin their streak, instead of owing to their mistakes. At least I see it happen a lot more since Tuesday.
and you should be, that´s what achievements are there for.
if everything is a participation trophy then it´d be totally meaningless, bordering on insult to those investing time, energy and skill.
got my streak f´ed yesterday, had 7/10 auric missions counted for in fact 7/10 auric MAELSTROM missions, alas the bug didn´t count them prior to the hotfix and didn´t correct it afterwards as well.
so mission 9/10 was a pellet from my kickback somehow angering a daemonhost… you can guess the rest.
sucked it up and started from scratch, that´s what you do if the blingbling you get should have any meaning to you.
otherwise you look like those russian/north korean generals that can´t move for all the brass they wield around and haven´t fired a shot themselves in their whole lifes.
