So I’ve been a bit obsessed with wanting to track and understand how the conversion from our new system to the mastery system was going to work. Overall, I have been supportive of the change to the new system. But I’ve also had my concerns regarding the details how this will all work.
As evidenced by posts, “bug reports” and new topics popping up now that we’re out of the maintenance period on the update, there are surprises in store for everyone about how much “less progress” they have in reality versus how much they assumed they’d be getting.
I’ll dig into details in a moment - but I gotta ask: Fatshark, why are you so hellbent on trying to screw over your players at every turn? You’re awful at setting expectations, even worse at sticking to them, and all the while oblivious to what your player base wants.
Alright, back to the mastery system.
We were sold on this new system in part because we were assured that our current blessing libraries would translate into the mastery system in a faithful manner where if you 100%'d the blessings for a given weapon, that you’d max the mastery out of the gate.
As is quite apparent, this isn’t the case. And for the vast majority of players that probably haven’t 100%'d a blessing family pre-patch, the amount of progress you can expect your blessings to translate into is markedly worse than what we were led to believe.
There are a number of substiles to the conversion process and new mastery system that drive this new reality. Understanding how this all works is made even more challenging because Fatshark was VERY slow to release details (no surprises) and even ended up changing their story multiple times over the course of things. More business as usual from Fatshark.
But let’s talk technical details. Below are all the subtle ways that Fatshark designed the conversion to not give people what they were led to expect:
#1) First of all, the NEW blessings that have been added to a weapon family count towards the total XP needed. So even if you 100%'d every blessing at every tier for a given weapon family, if one or more blessings were added you’ll be at less than max XP. 8/8 blessings translates to 8/10 (80% progress) in the new system for example. Fatshark clarified their original message on this AFTER the update rolled out. Nice one.
#2) We were told that having most of the Tier 3 or Tier 4 blessings would be enough to max out the XP. Ignoring point #1 above, this is also not misleading. Each blessing (across its four tiers) can only count towards 1/X of the XP progress (where X is the number of total blessings). So having Tier 3 and Tier 4 for ONE blessing ends up being worth less than if you had Tier 3 on one blessing and a Tier 4 on a different one. In practice, this means that if you were trying to focus on 3-4 key blessings (i.e. the good ones) under a weapon, the “overage” in XP you get for having multiple blessing tiers is lost. This sets your progress back even further.
#3) The amount of XP Tier 1 and 2 blessings provide is unclear and likely quite low. When pressed for numbers, Fatshark said they couldn’t reveal those numbers. Go figure. So anyone that was chasing Tier 1 and Tier 2 blessings in the run up to the patch probably got very little value out of it.
#4) We were told initially that each new blessing tier would require investing 5 blessing points in the prior tier. Meaning 15 points were needed to unlock Tier 4. This is NOT true, and was later corrected that Tier 3 requires 7 points and Tier 4 requires 8 points. Great. So now getting Tier 4 blessings are even further away. Instead of needing 15 points, now you need 20 points.
#5) And of course, blessing points are not awarded linearly in the mastery track. You typically need to get about 75% of the way through the track now to be able to unlock Tier 4 blessings and earn one.
So what is the net effect of all this? What sounded great on paper means in reality that for most players they have actually LOST progression on items. If you have access to a few Tier 4 blessings and didn’t have your blessing library near its max, then chances are you won’t even have enough mastery to unlock tier 4 blessings period, let alone all the tier 4 blessings you may have had.
Fatshark - why all the cloak and daggers? Why make a system that flagrantly disregards the expectations you established with your players earlier?
There is/was so much excitement around “finally locks being removed” yet you’ve erected a giant grindwall for most of us to be able to actually apply blessings now that the locks are removed. There are some concessions, like being able to sacrifice weapons. But the whole system just feels laced with contempt for your players and fans. Why? And why be so cagey and non-forthright with what the system looks like?
Long term, this will be a change for the best - but how it was all rolled out and handled was sadly par for the course for Fatshark.
