Crafting in retrospect from Beta and a Suggestion

[Cerebrophage]

Thanks for your questions, I had considered them myself when spitballing the idea together. I was undecided on whether or not you choose what your dumpstat was. I saw the value in it, but then we once again we inch closer to extreme uniformity. Someone voiced the frustration earlier that there is no control over the RNG whatsoever. I like the idea of diminishing returns for super-refined builds and that’s what I’d like to keep seeing. A sort of balance where players need to decide for themselves at what line is the sacrifice for power that much more worth it. The idea of complete control is an extremely bland concept to me. This is one of the few first person ARPGFPSs that has it, and that’s what I like about it so much. I don’t want that choice taken away from me. I don’t want to have to choose to nerf myself. I want to work with what I have and do great at it. It’s not impressive these days to use extreme OP weapons. Not in my opinion. THey have their value sure, but there are weapons that I would have never used because I was given a blessing I would have never tried beforehand. One of them being Bloodthirsty on the Illisi blade. At first glance, I thought it was garbage, but then I kept seeing it in the rolls, and decided to test it out a bit. I’m glad I did.

I don’t really use sustained fire, and the quell speed on it is garbage, not what I wanted at all. I don’t remember what the perk was, but it was a worse choice than infested enemies I’ll tell ya that. And so I theory crafted and used this other weird blessing I wouldn’t normally use - transfer peril. Maybe these could work together, and lo! They did! I was able to keep in in Auric Maelstroms with it too. Making it a versatile CC weapon (charge only for CC) and a pretty great long range engagement bolt staff essentially. I would’ve never tried this if it hadn’t been forced on me as it did.
I was told this was hot garbage.

I love this gun. It’s got some very unfortunate rolls, I’ve been told, but I enjoy it. For me, it sings with Scrier’s Gaze. Also did an Illisi stick with exorcist and transfer peril, that was pretty awesome.

[Bankrotas]

That’s some crappy weapons. Here’s what I consider mediocre collection Collection of barely passable inventory. - Album on Imgur

[zaygr]

I do not believe this game is meant to be an ARPG or even a looter shooter. It doesn’t give enough loot to offset the extreme amount of RNG per item, but none of the systems and UI are built to deal with large amounts of loot either.

Hey, if you enjoy the items you get, that’s great. But that’s your personal experience and not everyone will have the same experience (especially because of RNG) and different standards.

I and a lot of others don’t like the current process of acquiring and modifying weapons; even to your point of testing out blessings they wouldn’t usually use, there also the chance that they don’t test it because they never got it in the first place. Again, RNG.

[Cerebrophage]

Those are what I would consider my strong weapons. You certainly have a lot more than I do. I think I have a strong Voidstrike, Trauma, Gorgunum (for Ogryn) mk IV DD, Illisi, and Deimos. You got a lot more Though, that axe though, I feel that. I got one of those. I think my suicidal psyker axe is this baby

Thanks for sharing though!

[Cerebrophage]

By ARPG I meant that it has a level-up and talent selection system and gear you equip as opposed to a standard FPS. That is the RPG element, sorry for the confusion.

[Bankrotas]

@Cerebrophage

Those are what I would consider my strong weapons. You certainly have a lot more than I do.

Aside maybe from Plasma Gun I have, rest I consider mediocre at best. Anything below that is trash, like your lasgun , staff or that axe.

[Flawless]

@Bankrotas

Here’s what I consider mediocre collection

Damn, may i ask, why you roll weakspot damage onto your melee weapons?

As far as i can tell, the only people who use weakspot dmg bonus and crit dmg bonus as perk in darktide, are those who do not know how that bonus is calculated.

[Bankrotas]

Cause I don’t want to bother with breakpoint calculation and manage to do many weak point hits with those weapons.

[Flawless]

In case you wonder, this is how it is calculated:

Weakspot dmg vs infested without weakspot dmg perk:

Weakspot dmg vs infested, with 10% melee weakspot damage perk:

As you can see, that is not a 10% dmg increase: 148 /139 = 1.0647
A 10% increase would result in: 139 * 1.1 = 152.9 dmg

The way it is actually calculated, is that 10% melee weakspot damage applies only to the damage that was dealt additionally, because it was a weakspot.
From the table below, we can see that the attack would deal 50 dmg on a bodyshot, and 139 on a headshot.
The headshot bonus damage is the difference between the two damage values: 139-50 = 89
THAT is the value that is increased by 10%
So we get a dmg value of 50 + 89 * 1.1 = 147.9
(reminder: the actual dmg value was displayed as 148)

Now for this example, i used the light attack 1 of the MK III knife.
This weapon has amazing damage bonuses for weakspot hits and critical strikes.

However, most other weapons deal less than double damage on weakspot hits and crits.
Which means that the 10% dmg bonus from the weakspot/crit dmg perk actually translates to less than 5% additional damage on weakspot hits/crits.

A <5% damage increase on headshots, is quite unlikely to grant you any benefit, really.

[CommanderJ]

You spend at least 60% of your original post talking about how the minor crafting mitigations have induced power creep, removed the ‘status’ of having good weapons, changed the endgame and ‘meta’ and heavily imply this is a negative because the developers have to keep creating more content to make the game more difficult.

The crafting changes have barely moved the needle at all. Getting the blessing and perk combo you want, on a good weapon, will still statistically require an enormous amount of time investment and resources.

Further, it was impossible to know which weapons anyone had (without mods) until very recently. Your status argument is null and void for that reason alone. It would also be null and void in the opinion of most people for the simple fact that no skill was involved in getting an item, only RNG and luck.

What has moved the needle is balancing patches and the talent tree update. Thus in my opinion the entire first 60-70% of your post, where you justify why an element of randomness is good, is completely flawed.

[Flawless]

@Cerebrophage

Owning the perfect weapon became a status symbol, elevating the gameplay and reputation of those few who possessed them.

When something is entirely about luck, that is not what happens.
As others have pointed out, this was never really a thing outside of small circles of people.

That is like claiming “to win the lottery is a status symbol and elevates the winner’s reputation”.
Something that is entirely down to luck, can not really be a status symbol.

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@Cerebrophage

These changes have made the crafting system more balanced, offering a good mix between uniformity and the randomness that characterized the early game.

Considering how universally disliked it is, i would not call it a good mix.

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@Cerebrophage

With each improvement, the endgame shifted. Hi Intensity Damnation, Shock Gauntlet Damnation, and other challenging modes are no longer the pinnacle of player achievement. Now, Auric Maelstrom, with its intense modifiers, blessings, and powerful bosses, represents the ultimate challenge.

Multiple updates also rebalanced weapons and blessings as well as enemy hp. On top of that, we got the talent tree rework.
I do not think that you can tie the shift of endgame difficulty to the crafting system at all.

If you want to talk about the current crafting system (compared to the beginning of the game, where gear was 100% random) in the context of difficulty, all you could really say is, that it made the game more skill based.
The power difference betwen someone who got lucky and someone who did not, is relatively small now. A noob can no longer have a massive edge over an experienced player, due to having gotten lucky.

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@Cerebrophage

When people tell me they want the perfect weapon with the perfect modifiers, perfect blessings, and to make it a guaranteed eventuality which is gated by who has the most time to spend farming out the requirements reminds me of my final days in WoW when we were all given legendary weapons that had their own talent trees… Seeing every player with the perfect weapon gives me the same vibes here…

Not sure how legendary weapons were handled in the situation that you are talking about.

The reason why a legendary weapon (or high end gear in general) was/is a status symbol in WoW, is that it required you to repeatedly beat the hardest content.
It likely meant that you were in a good guild and if you had the best gear early, that likely meant that you were one of the best players in your guild.

If anyone could now get the best gear very easily, that would take away the prestige that came with owning the best gear. It would no longer show that you are one of the best.

However, in a game like darktide, there is no such factor involved. There never was any prestige tied to having good gear, because it never indicated that you did something special.
All that matters for getting your gear, is time and luck. Lowering the luck component in this system does not take away any status from anyone.
It would simply add the potential for players to see perfect items at status symbol, since they would now mean that you put in time and effort to get them.

[Flawless]

@CommanderJ

Further, it was impossible to know which weapons anyone had (without mods) until very recently. Your status argument is null and void for that reason alone. It would also be null and void in the opinion of most people for the simple fact that no skill was involved in getting an item, only RNG and luck.

A few people actually posted their best weapons on discord and on the forum early on, trying to show how cool they are.

But yeah… showing off what you won in a lottery, does not really accomplish anything outside of making people envious and mad about the bad system.

[Rainman]

That cerebro guy is flagging them all. Calling everybody else abusive when he’s the one abusing the forum. Classic narcissistic coping tactic.

[zaygr]

I thought posts were hidden only after multiple reports, was the threshold lowered?

[Rainman]

He either has an alt account(s), or it takes just the one report. He flagged my latest response to him almost instantly.

[Flawless]

@zaygr

I thought posts were hidden only after multiple reports, was the threshold lowered?

I think if the OP flags something, that one flag might already be enough.

[zaygr]

It’s happening in the other thread too.

[Bankrotas]

The question here is, how much DMG vs infested increase damage to groaner or anything else for that matter?

[Flawless]

“DMG vs health type” perks actually increase your full damage by that percentage.
Any hit with +25% dmg vs unarmored will deal 1.25x dmg to unarmored.

[Headhunter]

Well there is already a crafting thread. But I suppose better for OP to create separate one for his own personal text dumping ground.