The Weaves is a great idea that needed more work with every season that was supposed to come to it instead of being abandoned to Papa Nurgle to rot and fester. The 2 things that killed it were FS’ non commitment and splitting every single ranked weave’s matchmaking.
The crafting system that was attached to it solved the crafting problem that they’ve had with both VT1 and VT2 and is so much better than the slot machine that we got with DT its not even in the same universe in terms of comparison.
Rather than devoting time and resources in trying to salvage this garbage it would save everyone a lot of headache if they just recognized that fact and just copy pasted it in DT.
But I guess it wouldn’t be as much of a timesink. They are scared that once their players craft the equipment they want they will have no reason to stick in between updates. Scummy player retention tactics ahoy. Deterministic crafting is something that will never come to “service” games.
@FatsharkCatfish please get them to remove the locks next hotfix I can’t keep doing this, literally none of these benefit me, two changes isn’t enough I need to be able to change ALL 3 perks, I do not want to waste my time checking the store every hour for a chance to get a max toughness curio only for it to be consecrated into a brick, this is abhorrent get rid of it
The crafting system is very obviously not finished. It’s so clear when you look at how diamantine is used in conjunction to plasteel, and their original crafting blog.
The above photo is such a clear demonstration: How can any crafting system that’s “working as intended” have such a disparity between two resources? What is even the point of diamantine right now? There is none. There’s literally no reason for it to exist. They could remove it and nothing would change at all.
What still haunts me about this whole thing is the line
I got so frustrated trying to find a good shield & Mk4 knife for my Ogryn, which took multiple days before I got something that wasn’t complete dogwater. I know weapons don’t have to be perfect, but I was having bad luck and simply got ones that would be unusable in Auric. It was a very frustrating experience that almost entirely negated how excited I was about the updated classes. Why give us so much freedom with the classes and completely stonewall us with the equipment?
There is literally no progression present in this system. The diamantine resource is RIGHT THERE for that to be the case. But, it’s not implemented. Crafting is simply still not complete, and I really hope it’s the next system to go through a revamp like they did with the classes. Because it desperately needs it. As multiple ideas posted above, give us the weaves crafting system using diamantine as the currency involved for adjustment, and plasteel as the currency for upgrading. It would be perfect.
It would be perfect, and they can expand on it making the truly great achievements harder to unlock, or requiring maelstrom missions, or certain missions with certain modifiers. Challenge runs. WoW used to have a dungeon (Zul Aman or Zul Gurub) I don’t remember anymore that if you completed it in an hour you got a mount. Our guild grinded that for anyone who wanted to join. It was just a mount, but it was unique and it was fun.
I need numbers going up to keep interest (boring, I know) but in Vermintide 2 in the end, that was get 500 deeds. There are tons of silly numbers that can go up and I still played because it was fun. I had maxed out my gear long ago. New content helped. I really liked the weaves. Their deterministic spawns made for a completely different challenge, I liked the Chaos Wastes, and I liked the new classes that FS released. Gear was never the reason that I played.
Now gear is the reason that I don’t play. There are games that respect my time better. It’s sad. I did jump in for a few rounds after the latest update, and I really like what they’ve done to the classes. My tanky Ogryn is finally viable. I won’t stay with it. I’m playing Baldur’s Gate III with my friends, and Trackmania with my children… and Factorio when I’m lonely.
The vast majority don’t give feedback and hardly anyone engages on forums, Reddit, or similar sites. The devs have metrics to see engagement numbers, but we have no way of knowing (or guessing) what these are. The loud voices on forums can safely be ignored if the metrics say that you really do not have a problem. The loud voices are also often wrong and should be ignored, but that’s another story.
It also doesn’t help that it seems like most of the engagement that they go through is their carefully curated and tightly controlled discord channel that they can lock down and have 10 minute timers on a live chat forum if the discussion isn’t going a way that they like, and even this forum has a 7 day response timer on it, so if there’s a discussion that has been talked about, has no headway, but is still relevant weeks later, it’s buried.
Fatshark’s engagement with the community, as a whole, leaves a lot to be desired.
But those who do give feedback, seemingly agree ~100% on the issues with the crafting system.
Strangely, this is not the case with any other topic. There are always at least two sides and there is always a lot of discussion.
Yet somehow, absolutely nobody says that they like the crafting system as it is.
Yes the loud voices are often wrong.
Stupid and uninformed people often talk the most and shout the loudest.
But not all loud voices are wrong.
Sometimes, the loud voices are right.
In regard to the crafting system, they are.
Those voices are not only loud, but also say a lot of reasonable things.
When something is incredibly bad, it is completely reasonable to be vocal about it.
The crafting system is the polar opposite of what FS advertised.
Nobody can argue with that, because it is a simple fact, and as obvious as it can be.
This fact alone is a valid reason for ANYONE to complain about it, independent of personal opinions regarding what a good crafting system would be.
Yeah, I think we agree completely here. My point is only that I never put much stock in what’s on the Internet. If they have high player retention despite the loot system they may seem it as working as intended, and we are just some loud people on the forums that don’t agree. I know people who quit because of loot but that’s just one data point.
With that said… I do think you are right. I don’t think anyone has any joy what so ever in this crafting system. We play despite it, not because of it. My gear is pretty sucky because I just cannot be bothered. I try to compensate for bad gear with good play (and there are so many better players than me).
The thing is I have never seen looter shooters done right. I just hate the process of having bags upon bags with gear that I have to compare. Yet Diablo sells, Borderlands sells, Destiny sells, The Division sells, the list goes on. I enjoy Diablo despite the loot, not because of it. I would be hard pressed to say that nobody likes it. These games are popular.
I would be interested to see anyone actually defend the loot system that we have here though.
The recent update brought the numbers up again, but look at the insane drop before that.
The drop off in the first few months is massive.
We got update #4 (Blessings of the Omnissiah) just before the last week of february, so i think that is why the numbers are up for march.
After that, it went back to a continuous loss of 10-20% per month.
Yesterday i dumped ~20k Plassteel to get hold of single specific blessing (Infernus) for recon lasgan. I did get few really good lasguns, but not the i was looking for blessing. And i am back to “kark this karking casino” again … with 107 plasteel and countless missions to play to gamble to NOT get that blessing again Good times good times… At least Damnation makes it a bit faster.
—update–
Hadron being Hadron not giving required blessing is one common occurance. And Sire Melk giving exactly what you needed on next day is another - he is our only hope of getting God Rolls we crave…
At this point just let us spend a chunk of diamantine to upgrade a weapon to a “red” state with perfect 80’s across the board and with no locks. There’s no need for anything more complex. Spend the dev time on making new maps and improving other aspects of the game.
removing emperor’s gifts and replacing them with blessings or perks at the end of missions
letting Melk sell blessings and perks rather that weapons.
Let Hadron (or someone) allow you to upgrade four identical level one blessings to a level two, four identical twos to a three and four identical threes to a four. Similar for perks.
Don’t have blessings be locked to certain weapons when weapons share blessings
At this point you’d have a passable system with little RNG nonsense which would be leaps and bounds better than what we have now.
An interesting bit from a recent interview with design director, Victor Magnuson:
“We will not be afraid of doing things like [the] class revamp, where we completely rethink a system and do something really new. I actually think this has sort of made us very eager to do these types of things, where we go and do things that players never expect us to do.”
“where we completely rethink a system and do something really new”
So, uh, what systems left are there in Darktide that this could apply to?
The mission board feels resolved with Auric, the class system feels resolved with the Skill Trees, so that only really leaves weapons/crafting right…? I can’t really think of any other in-game system left that this could likely be about…
And I’m gonna come in here with “an inconceivable hot-take here” (one might even say “immeasurably complex” hot-take)
We will see the playerbase drop back down to pre-patch#13 numbers in due time. My prediction was 4 to 6 weeks before patch#13 dropped and you can already see the decline if you look closely and it’s been two weeks since the patch came out…
And the reason for it is very very simple: the crafting and (lack of meaningful) progression will sour even the most hyped new or returning player into dropping the game. The entire crafting and itemization is just 100% RNG bullsh!t and nobody will put up with it indefinitely.
The game has so much potential for replayability and build experimentation but nobody will be able to satisfy their curiosity for experimenting with different equipment / builds before they get burned out by the slotmachines.
No sane person values their need to experiment more than their potential time wasted and it very much so feels like, hooking those individuals that can be exploited into flipping their priority, is the goal here
That feeling of trying to be constantly manipulated leaves a strong and long lasting sensation of disgust and hatred and even if you fix what caused this feeling, most people will not chose to come back. Just look at the player peaks: the biggest update to DT only brought the numbers back to less than 1/3rd of the launch numbers and to 1/5th of the average player numbers just 1 month after launch and the trend is going down already, just two weeks later.
Fixing the crafting is the simplest “W” they will ever be able to take and they are not doing it because it doesn’t manipulate the player into wasting their time or doesn’t sell their overpriced FOMO skins…
I have to push back on this, it sets the wrong expectations.
The poor player retention isn’t because of the crafting, it’s because casual players find this game repetitive after level 30 because it doesn’t have a real late game.
Grinding crafting for better numbers on your weapon isn’t going to keep people playing even if the way to grind those better numbers was good. Trying to do the same content but harder also isn’t going to keep casuals playing.
This is a general Tide game issue not unique to Darktide.
For example Vermintide 2, a much much much more complete game than Darktide, had a free to keep weekend where it hit 100k concurrent players. Player count still dropped of a f*cking cliff in the following weeks to where it was before.
Player retention with Darktide is a core issue with Tide games and fixing crafting won’t change that.
Good times good times… At least Damnation makes it a bit faster.