Title says it all really. I was excited when crafting finally got released, and I was able to get an Orange Evciserator that had the rolls I wanted fairly quickly from all my saved up weapons and materials. However trying to grind for literally any other weapon is pretty abysmal. I was hoping we would get the comm-link for the March update this week but unfortunately it appears not.
Honestly as I was playing last night, exclusively on Zealot so I could try grind dockets and materials on him, I realized that so much more of this game would be better if we had subclasses. Grinding my Zealot was boring after awhile, and I wouldāve loved to switch to a different sub class to vary things up. Just a very unfortunate situation in general, and I probably wouldnāt even be giving this game a chance if it wasnāt 40k.
I mean, I donāt blame you. I got a whole lot of nothing when I blew my saved resources on my zealot, and looking into the future with how much Iām going to have to pull the lever on the one arm bandit isnāt something that Iām looking forward to.
We canāt even grind on our somewhat decently geared characters to get resources for our other characters, since each one is a resource island. Iād love to be able to switch over to another class when Iām bored of the zealot, but that just means any and all progress done on one is worthless for another. No point in trying to diversify if it just multiplies the already atrocious grind we have for gear.
I got really excited about the crafting update, so much so that I returned too. After a week and a half of daily playing and farming tho, I have been unable to make any progress regarding my goals (Trying builds, improving my gear, etc), and with each failed try that results in having to trash the weapon and restart the process, I have grown to feel beaten by the game and too frustrated and demotivated to keep playing.
And itās a real pity because the gameplay of the actual run is fantastic. I love playing Damnation Hi-Int. Itās such a great experience.
But at the same time, the game stops me from coming up with personal goals to chase after, actively reducing its own lifespan, by showing me that I have no control over my progress. With no goals to pursue, or with a system that makes me lose all progress whenever something external (RNG) doesnāt decide that I ādeserveā what I want, what reason is left to play once damnation hi-int doesnāt give the same adrenaline kick anymore?
This is one problem, true.
At least we can switch operatives (how bad would it be if we had only one (sub)class?!), still, while I was leveling the others (so I have four at level 30), I found another problem:
it feels tedious
-We can not use coins for fun (because we have none)
-We can not craft stuff (because there is no crafting or we have no mats)
So while we have e.g. three max operatives we have 0. And I mean Z E R O boons or benefits or fun to use on the new one(s). We even hinder our progress (again mats and coins) on the others/ on the main while we level.
This will get worse if they release more subclasses, because they all will start at 0 again.
RNG for new weapons/ upgrading comes to this on top.
I really hope they do quite a the rework in the near future/ before the new subclasses arrive (rework as in give more agency and fun to the players).
My biggest problem right now is performance and stability. At this point Iām on a three strikes system ā if the game disconnects more than three times before I can join a run I donāt bother wasting more time trying to play for the day. Iām lucky to get two runs in before it hits three strikes and Iām well above minimum system specs.
If the supposedly big March update doesnāt come with some big performance fixes Darktide is going back on the shelf for a while.
I worded what I meant poorly, I was trying to say that even if we had resource siloing, I wish it was like VT 2 in that lets say the Zealot had 3 subclasses, Vet had 3 subclasses, etc. So if I was just grinding out my Zealot, at the VERY LEAST i could switch my playstyle up between 3 different subclasses.
Thankfully Iāve been rather lucky in this regard. While sometimes Iāll be kicked before the mission starts, or randomly crash out of nowhere, it has been a lot rarer for me than at launch. It really sucks that itās apparently still an issue, and yes hopefully the March update can address that first and foremost.
Exactly what I was thinking. I mean I guess I couldāve grinded out VII lasgun blessings sonce I use it on Vet and Zealot, but I wanted to try and get some other good melee options on Zealot first and apparently that was a mistake.
For me this was one of the stickers. Like you said, going into T5 high intense was really fun with my kitted Evis and alright bolter, but I donāt want to run that same build over and over again. Especially doesnāt help when the highest rolled axe I got (not even a 370 btw) rolled level 2 limb-splitter.
I need to make a āPrOfAnE WeApOnS PoTeNtIAlā compilation of 375+ weapons with great bars and awful blessings/perks to where the rating is under 470. The Power Sword I just made is worth a midi flute titantic theme.
Yeah, the RNG and lack of ability to try things out made me quit. If blessings were unlocked it would be enough. Perks being locked? Ok (but something would need to be done about curios).
Or at the very least upgrade the tiers on the locked perks/blessings.
But honestly I think the best solution is to spend a bunch of resources to switch the locked perks/blessing to a different perk/blessing.
Or just rip up the entire crafting system and have something like athanor where its more about choices. You have like 600 points (you have to grind to it for awhile on a weapon type after level 30) and you spend points on modifiers, perks, and blessings, and perfect weapons arenāt possible, youāre forced to make choices and sacrifices. And maybe some perks or blessings costs more or less based on type to help with balancing issues.
There arenāt enough classes or different playstyles. They released the game with only 4. What is worse for me is the inventories arenāt shared across characters which makes wanting to play different classes a headache. Canāt build up one character while playing another.
I would love for them to remove the locks and then decide if they want us to reroll stuff on them until death (perks and blessings) or make us earn them (Rip blessing and perks from weapons).
If we go with the first option, it will be just about finding one weapon with good basestats and then using a bunch of resources to make it perfect.
If we go with the second option (which I prefer), youāll have a gradual progression where you can keep bettering your weapon as everytime you find a perk or a blessing thatās better than the one you have, you can rip it from the weapon that has it and apply it to your weapon. Would make wonders for keeping some RNG but giving us agency over the progression. As of now, weapons are just trashed along with all our efforts.
Iām still playing because Iām enjoying the core combat gameplay, but the crafting system is such a source of aggravation that itās wearing on me quickly.
Prior to the crafting update, I had a bunch of force swords and staffs stockpiled from over 100 hours of play so that I was mostly able to craft a couple of item builds I wanted.
However, since then I havenāt been able to put a single other item together that I want to build, after another 100 hours. I have bunch of half-made kark and itās getting really frustrating not being able to try things out or have weapons with āgreat potentialā getting bricked while simultaneously watching myself flush resources down the toilet. FATSHARK, THIS SYSTEM JUST SUCKS. @FatsharkCatfish
I havenāt even fully leveled up other classes because in my limited playtime it means stopping progress on main character entirely. Which means this crafting and siloing is causing a double-edged issue of burnout: the lack of shared resources means you canāt keep the gameplay fresh by switching around between characters without halting progress on your other character, and the hideous-levels of RNG makes it neigh impossible to experiment with different weapon builds to keep the gameplay fresh within a given character. This is just awful design.
The system is horrific and is actively stopping people from enjoying the game. Its actively stopping people from playing it. This is, by FatSharks claim, their third attempt at crafting and they still got it wrong in every way possible. Despite overwhelming feedback since launch, and the feedback when they proposed this system in the first place.
Their latest āolive branchā of raising the minimum from 280 to 300 is laughable, and only shows that they couldnāt care less.
Itās impossible to be so incompetent that you donāt understand how terrible these systems are. Thereās just no way. Which means that FatShark are desperately clinging to their malicious gacha āretentionā mechanics, despite overwhelming evidence that itās doing the opposite and actively driving players away.
Since they havenāt understood it by now, I donāt think there is any hope for the game. Even unlocking blessings and perks would really only be a bandaid. It wouldnāt fix siloing. It wouldnāt fix the RNG on everything else, including getting the blessings you want in the first place, nor the RNG involved with getting a good base item you actually want to invest into.
To actually fix this laughable attempt at a progression system they would need to remove all the locks, and then allow us to earn blessings, as well as allowing us to upgrade the stat bars on weapons to maximum over time.
Itās the only way to give us player agency and to make us actually feel invested in a weapon, having us upgrade it over time, and earn better and better blessings, and choose exactly which blessings and perks we want on whatever item we want. Thatās progression. Thatās player agency.
This game is nothing but a slot machine, and itās not even a good slot machine.
At this point it is almost as if they are being spiteful. Time and time again the players have told them exactly what they want from this game. They insist on being stubborn and giving the players only a mere fraction of what they want. We want locks removed, they donāt budge. We want better weapon rolls, they make it so there is a 80 point difference from the lowest to the highest rarity making it almost impossible to get something with the stats you want. We tell them psyker is weak, they nerf to make it even weaker. We tell them crafting is too expensive, they only increase the materials in the level slightly.
I took a two month break from playing the game and now completed the weeklies on my two characters. The gameplay was fun as ever for few missions, but then got a bit stale, since there was nothing changing from mission to mission. I canāt really change much in the way the characters play with feats. I got no gear I wanted, couldnāt craft anything worthwhile and thereās really no way to get anything worthwhile. After spending about half of my resources and not getting anywhere, I didnāt really feel like trying my luck wasting the other half. The whole itemization just utterly feels (and is) pointless. Play to get some stuff. Not the stuff you need probably, certainly not the stuff you want, except maybe if you played a bit moreā¦ Sigh
Also, why is there even a thing called Diamantium? Whatever purpose does it serve if you always run out of plasteel first, whatever you do?
This is why I feel more and more like the all important and mysterious ādesign intentā FS refuses to elaborate on has always been hostile to the player. It was always supposed to be a slot machine, the player retention was always supposed to be stretched and artificial, and that if/when more scummy forms of monetization are added to the game (rumored boosters probably) itāll be because they want to sell solutions to the problems they created and refuse to fix. Thatās why all of these fixes feel like such half measures, they canāt go too far away from the gacha mechanics because thatās what the ādesign intentā actually is.
As far as Iām concerned, Deep Rock Galactic is the best horde shooter in the business right now and FS knew they couldnāt compete. How could they when basically every change from VT ā DT has been for the worse? What they could do was skim as much money as possible off of the people who would have dropped this game long ago if not for the 40k connection. I know itās the only reason Iām still invested.
Glad Iām not the only one. The novelty of the crafting system wore off quickly, and all thatās left is a min/max slog. I feel in the same position I was after release, core parts of game are just not working for me.
Itās a real shame they ditched REAL weapon customization in favor of chasing magical modifier numbers. Instead of adding optics, or tinkering with my battery pack, or adding round capacity to my autogun, then managing the monkey-paw aspects of certain modifications, and playing around with the multitude of fun unique builds such a system allows; Iām stuck in tedious RNG grind to boost a modifier numbers a couple %. Itās boring, un-engaging, and clearly designed to simply boost a āplay-timeā metric.
Imagine what the game might have been if FatShark hadnāt decided to make a hard shift towards the āindustry standardā GaaS tropes and systems