Crafting and RNG re-worked - following design intent(?)

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
1

I wasn’t planning on writing this down and posting it, because it’s not my job and it will most likely be ignored even if it would turn out to be a good idea. Anyway, since @dwOd_v4nd4hl tricked me into writing it down, I might as well post it.

This is mainly about shops and crafting but it also contain a small note on the Emperor’s gifts and siloing. It’s not really a re-work on any of the base mechanics that Fatshark has in place. It’s boils down to tuning of RNG parameters, adding a minor function or two and making minor changes to a few shop menus.

RNG store with base weapons (ordo dockets)

  • One of each weapon type at all times (grey)
  • A way smaller (or no) span in regards to modifier score (all 380 or e.g. 360-380, when at lvl 30)
  • Shop sells grey, green, blue & purple tiers (when at lvl 30)
  • A chance of good blessings & perks pre-rolled (tier 1 - 3 or 1 - 4)

Perk crafting

  • You can choose perk after investing enough to re-roll for free
  • You can re-roll all perks
    (Optional: Purchase the unlock for re-rolling second and third perk-slot)
    (Optional: Sell blessings of tier 1-3 separately - se Melk’s shop for context)

Blessing crafting

  • You can change both blessings
  • When you unlock a blessing you can re-use it multiple times (infinite use)
  • Blessings are account wide (depends on resource siloing)
  • You can retrieve a blessing by dismantling a weapon with that blessing (you only get the unlocked blessing tier - weapon goes poof)
    (Optional: Purchase the unlock for changing the second blessing-slot)
    (Optional: Option to upgrade lower tier blessings by combining them with other lower tier blessings)
  • You can purchase blessings (see Melks’ shop)

Melk’s shop

  • Melk’s Weapons: Only orange weapons with a 380 modifier score + best tier blessings (random blessings/perks/modifier distribution)
  • Melk’s Blessings: Max tier blessings to add to your pool of unlocked blessings
    (Suggestion: Weeklies that are more engaging)
    (Suggestion: Weeklies that are character wide)
    (Optional: It would be fine to add separate cosmetics to Melk’s shop, if that was the plan)

Curios

  • Stay as is OR sell curio template (grey curios) and let the player unlock per 2 & 3

Emperor’s gifts

  • More gift drops and no weekly cap
  • Add rarity and quality based on e.g. tier / secondary objetive / modifier (/ possibly: performance e.g. no-one dying)

Additionally

  • The material cost for unlocking blessing slots, perk slots, purchasin from Melk’s etc. have to be looked over.
  • Material costs have to consider which resources are shared and if unlocked blessings are shared.
  • Consider Obvious QoLs like replace tier 2 rending with tier 3 rending, when it’s unlocked, to avoid clutter.
  • Consider the time it will take to create a good weapon, that not everyone is as invested, etc. The people that play the most most won’t stop playing just because they found or crafted one perfect weapon.
13 Likes
2

It would take a week to gear all chars… being lucky in some ways is fun and having a rare item needs to stay special… buying perfect rolls by just investing materials would be boring as hell… back 4 blood time gated everything by using supply points - boring

1 Like
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A lot of good ideas, and most of them shouldn’t take a lot of coding, either. It’s baffling it’s not already like what you suggest here.

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I wasn’t planning on correcting and posting it, because it’s not my job and it will most likely be ignored even if it would turn out to be a good idea. Anyway, since i have the urge to post my opinion here we go:

RNG store with base weapons (ordo dockets)

  • This should be a leveling help - nothing more
  • if you want to keep it make sure, that class weapons appear more often
  • the base value needs to be random - yet every weapon needs to stay potentially useful at 30 by giving it a base range of 350+

Perk crafting

  • oh my - both tide games had better systems in place - don’t make us roll for 30 mins to get a t4 perk we are aiming for
  • respect our time and let us pick one Perk at max value for the cost of 400 diamantite or Plasteel - why would our tech priest slam his head onto our weapon hundreds of times until we have what we want - besides - your server lag while rolling triggers me even more as it takes up to 10 seconds to catch up
  • make red rare drops a thing and maybe let us pick 2 perks on them then

Blessing crafting

  • You can change one blessing by exstracting it of a other weapon
  • When you unlock a blessing you can re-use it multiple times for that specific item
  • upgrading both Blessings to t4 needs to be a thing - also your rng store would get much more useful
  • One Blessing needs to be changable

Melk’s shop

  • Melk’s Weapons stay the way they are but are more class specific and have higher base values

Curios

  • by the love of god - get rid of xp/curio/money gain at once - if you want utility stats create a slot for them - same goes for resistances… creating curios would become a lot better in general if the insane amount of perks was divided into categories

Emperor’s gifts

  • a drop every run - maybe a selection out of 3 items
  • difficulty, conditions, side quests matter and enhance the loot quality
  • rewards for a certain mission could be communicated in the mission select like “75% chance for a curio with x blessing” or “90% chance for a gun with x rating”
  • commendation chests need to be a thing

Additionally

Scrap the weekly currency - just reward that amount of diamantite and tripple the amount of plasteel… makes a lot more sence… let the weapons cost diamantite und give us a decent amount of materials once a week to waste them on potentially good stuff

3 Likes
5

Everything is working as intended. This is a game built around a premium currency store. Everything is there to entice you to buy Aquilas. Every bit of RNG and inconvenience is in place to keep you in the game as long as possible. Four characters doing the usual “shopping route” is 4x the chance that you will eventually cave in to yourself and by the premium cosmetic that you’ve seen on other players. The cosmetics store is deliberately placed between the item store on one side and Melk and the “crafting” station on the other. That is also why Aquilas are the only thing shared between all characters.

I repeat: They won’t budge on any of these decisions other than lip service and minor tweaks that look like compromises, because this game is made for their shareholders and their venture capital, not for players to enjoy. There should be no compromises. They know their design choices are objectifiably bad. They know they released the game in an unfinished state. They say they are very pleased with the state of the game and its reception. They downplay the crashes many players are experiencing to a minor occurence, a footnote. They publicly deny that item modification was intended to be vast and expansive, with modifiers being transferable, sights, fire modes etc., and claim this is not CoD. They say that the reason no real crafting is in this game is because that it would not fit the setting.

There is absolutely no reason to believe that they will backtrack on ANY of those decisions by any reasonable margin.

5 Likes
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About perks
If we can reroll both, I would say that it would be better to have to use ressources each time we want to reroll one. No more free choice. No more increasing cost.

About blessing
I really like the system they described. Off course, I want a system where I can change both blessing.

About useless Melk’ shop
I disagree with the idea of 380 weapons. However, I would say that the weapons should be, at least 330 and more. No weapon under that. And there’s should be orange with only tier 3 to 5 as blessings.

About curios
Agree about XP curio chances etc.

1 Like
7

Maybe also you can combine lower tier blessings to make higher tier blessings at hadrons shop

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Yep…

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I do not have high hopes that FS will completely rework the progression system. However, there is still a small chance that they will notice how almost the entire playerbase is leaving because of the bad progression system (and those who have not yet left, use a tool to avoid it as much as possible).
There still is a chance that they will bring us a good itemization system, because if there are no players left, there is nobody to buy skins, no matter how cool they look.

Overall, i find that the systems we have in game right now are pretty much fine for the early game: leveling to 30 and playing difficulty 1-3.
However, we need a better system to follow, in order to keep people playing and to have rewards for playing, once our character is leveled to 30.

The existing system allows to progress to a certain point through rng and limited customization, without requiring to play at a high difficulty.
Although I think that when ever a new weapon is unlocked, that weapon should be just given to the player (along a little pop up message), so that the player can test a weapon as soon as it gets unlocked. Aside from that, i think that limited gear choice is fine while leveling, because I think it promotes trying out different weapons and blessings. However, upon reaching lvl 30, the players should have full agency and free choice regarding the weapons they use.

To make the gear/crafting system actually feel good and rewarding after leveling to 30, i think it is important for players to :

  • gain power through successfully finishing missions (not by being lucky with the rng store)
  • have agency over what exactly is being improved (minimal to no rng)
  • be able to maximize the stats of any given item, if enough effort is put in
  • require success in higher difficulty missions, in order to fully maximize a weapon‘s potential

I suggest a new currency that is obtained from diff 4 and 5 missions upon successful completion, which allows players to upgrade and modify their gear without involvement of RNG, once they get past difficulty 3. The tokens should only be rewarded to lvl 30 characters to keep low level players from flooding high difficulties in hopes of gaining power by leeching.

For example:
Upgrade tokens obtained from each successfully cleared heresy (diff 4) mission:

  • can be used to increase item stats to 80% (all stats can be boosted to 80% one by one, 5 % per token)
  • change perks and blessings to any lvl 3 bonus of choice (selected from a list without rng roll, no limitations to how often it can be done per item, no perks/blessings get locked)

Upgrade tokens obtained from each successfully cleared damnation (diff 5) mission:

  • used to increase item stats to 100% (all stats can be boosted to 100% one by one, 5% per token)
  • change perks and blessings to any lvl 4 bonus of choice (same as above)

This system would allow you to keep using any beloved weapon you already have and slowly turn it into a full 100% stat beast wih 2 max lvl perks of choice and 2 max lvl blessings of choice. You could also swap around your perks and blessings in order to test out different builds.

Assuming the item starts with all 5 stats at 70%, 2 unwanted perks and 2 unwanted blessings, it would take

  • 5x2 + 2 + 2 = 14 heresy missions to get all 80% stats with lvl3 perks and blessings of choice
  • 5x4 + 2 + 2 = 24 damnation missions to maximze (after heresy upgrades are done)

With just over 30min per successful mission, maximizing one item would take around 20 hours (assuming 100% success rate across 36 missions), and every single successfully cleared heresy/damnation mission would actually increase your power slightly.
That is 40+ hours of rewarding grind per class, for just one set of weapons. Realistically it is going to be more than 80 hrs of rewarding grind per class, due to more than one weapon being used per slot and due to the win rate likely not being 100%.

Adding this would create hours upon hours of rewarding grind towards a clear goal, with 100% player agency and absolutely no annoying rng.

FS could even add a special shiny skin (like Vermintide 2 red weapon skins) as unlock for when an item is fully „perfected“ (or a weapon glow for a separate slot, so that it does not interfere with weapon skin sales).
Hell, put the token upgrade vendor next to the cash skin shop. That way we do not only walk past the cash skin shop 1x per hour (when checking the weapon store) but 2x per hour (once after every single successful mission) and feel good about it, because we are on our way to apply the upgrade we just earned.

Could even add an extra skin, portrait frame (looks cool and does not interfere with skin sales) or something similar for each class, which is unlocked once a maxed version of all class exclusive weapons is obtained.

But yeah… this is probably not gonna happen.
Yet, there is still hope.

4 Likes
10

Not at all. Depending on resources required it would take a medium to long time. Furthermore it would be slow at start, but eventually you’ll be able to swap out most thing pretty freely and without spending hours re-rolling or hoping to find the right blessing that you can use once.

I’m not sure if you realize, but your second post is full of pretty much the same or similar suggestions (except for red items and one or two other things).

I’ve seen it floating around as a suggestion before. :point_up: It’s a good idea.

:+1:

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It is not the same… we agree that the current system is bad… buying a 380 weapon from melk and changing all traits and blessings would make it a timed gated system… play 10 damnation missions and be done with an item… boring. No incentive to work towards something anymore. Also we do not need more and more currencies.

Just imagine each tier bumps up the base level with damnation being 360+.
Imagine red relics or mastercrafted rare items to hunt for with some unique skins and stuff and lore.
Problem is the cash shops skins would become obsolete.

Funny enough devs don‘t seem to play games these days and have no clue what fun progression is.

How about letting bosses drop unique stuff?

Sad.

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Unfortunately, this is the likely truth. Even in the scenario where they promised to scrap all of the systems that push people toward MTX and rebuild the game with the goal of putting players first, it would take an almost total redesign of everything outside of in-mission gameplay.

“Immeasurably complex” wasn’t fluff talk. It really would be a huge undertaking to rebuild the game around something other than MTX. It would likely take years to accomplish.

They best we can hope for is that they round off some of the especially pointy bits. The core of the game being built around the almighty aquila isn’t going anywhere.

2 Likes
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that’d be a nice dream to have.

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A lot of the long-term players for V1 and V2 only chase loot so that they don’t have to worry about it anymore.

Sure, there will be a subset who stop playing with no item progression, but for many who keep playing, personal skill is the true progression, and the game is fun enough. The only reason “perfect” weapons get brought up as a strawman is that those arguing against the idea ignore the fact that any improvement after that point is purely on player skill, they don’t have to worry about missing a breakpoint because of 3% lower damage stat or whatever and that they can refine their skill on stable equipment set(s). Part of item progression would also be to experiment or maintain multiple sets of equipment for variety, which the current DT systems makes it very hard to do at best.

Trying to stop people from getting “perfect” gear in a misguided attempt to have forever item progression (via ludicrous amounts of RNG) is, in my opinion, doing more damage on player retention than having a possible end to item progression. It locks new players out of new gear arbitrarily, and it locks out long-term players from refining their gear arbitrarily.

Remember, Fatshark was baffled that people kept playing the Vermintide games beyond the 100 or so hours they designed the game for, but it’s obvious with Darktide they still don’t know (or more cynically, they don’t care) why.

2 Likes
15

You need both… new challenges on a regular basis and rewards for overcoming them.

Best example were the later added vt1 achievements. As we have Penaces it should not be hard to implement. Getting a skin or something so display accomplishments is not bad. Also i personally liked the idea of the weaves in vt2 including new difficulties up to cata 3… great fun even though it was flawed… but man… having a goal like that open to complete is good and that feeling of beating weave 160 was very good even if the rewards were bad… a portrait? Imagine they would have given out the weave weapon skins at some point… it would draw loads of players to such a mode

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Yeah, some of the VT2 challenges were fun, like the Chaos Wastes completion ones, but some turned into RNG messes like the Grudge Marked monster challenges that got harder to do every update or cheesefests like Convo, Fort or Righteous Stand “challenges”

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How about landing consecutive headshots with the MWP on elites? Eh? EH!? EEEEEH!?

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Dunno what the obsession everybody has with keeping the 380 max rating when it’s not even the max rating. Where the hell is the max rating being stored anyways? When do we access it? Should add a way for people to increase the base stats while they’re at it.

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The “proper” way imho would be to have a tier of weapons with “maxed stats”, but total being capped at 400, and you get the ability to redistribute, maybe even beyond 100%, up to maybe 150%, but every point beyond 100 costs double. Something like that.

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I didn’t mean above 100%. That would just make whatever the maximum beyond 100 the actual 100, kinda like how 80% is the current 100%. Pointless. We just need to be able to bring it up to 100%.