Curio design is really boring, un-fun and uninspired - Examples and Suggestions

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
1

Curios are easily the worst aspect of Darktide’s gear system at the minute.

Thinking back to Vermintide 2, where each ‘Curio’ slot had its own aesthetic, own blessings (or traits, as they were called) and affected a different aspect of your available inventory (bombs, potions, healing/defence), Curios are by contrast, boring, homogeneous and, worst of all, absolutely bloated with crap no player wants, specifically when it comes to Perks.

So let’s talk about the problems here and what could be done to make this slot a bit more interesting to players, especially in regards to crafting goals:

Blessings
Real simple suggestion here, add more. The 4 we have are all fine, but also pretty boring. Currently I have the choice between Wounds, Toughness, HP and Stamina. What if I wanted to spec for utility or offence, like more ammo/an extra grenade. What about exploring the more interesting areas of design space like getting a conditional buff of some kind? What if I’m a Psyker and I want something specific to my class mechanic (Peril)? I’m sure there’s plenty that can be explored here, far be it from me to explore it but having a choice of 4 where 2 are clearly more optimal than the other 2 is just, well, BORING.

Perks

A lot that needs to be cleaned up here:

  • dmg vs ‘one specific special’: far too niche. None of these are particularly useful, the most applicable being vs Gunners (even though this only affects the Dreg and the Scab machine gunner) and maybe vs Snipers. The rest are just so low value that they don’t even make it into the picture. Maybe remove these and just have broader categories? Resistance vs shooting/melee/fire for example.

  • +Dockets and +Exp: so unbelievably useless these can just be scrapped from the pool. The leveling process from 1 to 30 is very short and these two perks only help with that part of the game and even then, they are not desirable. Absolutely no one at 30 wants or takes these perks, and as that is where the vast majority of this game’s lifespan happens, these should not exist.

  • resistance vs Corruption: why is this split into 2 categories (regular and vs grimoire flavoures)? Totally unnecessary and feels extremely contrived. Merge into one category please.

  • add more perks:
    give us 2-5% ranges of dmg vs X (same as weapons, maniacs/flak/carapace etc). Give us crit chance. Give us Peril resistance. Reload speed. Movement and/or sprint speed. Give us interesting things that can ACTUALLY IMPACT THE BUILDS PLAYERS WANT TO RUN. This isn’t rocket science Fatshark. If you want to make crafting and ‘the endgame’ engaging you have to give the player the option of MEANINGFUL choices and the option to SPECIALISE.

Tell me, what is exciting about having the option to have more experience? Or money in the useless shop that literally no one enjoys? I look at some of the design choices in this game and I think ‘Holy hell are these guys trying to suck the fun out of their game’?

You got it mostly right for weapons in this game (imo at least). I mean, I don’t like the ‘Perk’ lock (again, feels contrived), but I do like the concept of Perks and Blessings and when Blessing crafting finally arrives I think weapon crafting will get a lot more interesting. But the mark has truly been missed on Curios, please address.

9 Likes
2

I’m still thinking to VT1 when trinkets could be seen on your character.

4 Likes
3

I think that was originally planned. In cutscenes our characters have curios in their hands. Not sure if they fixed that by now since it’s been so long since I saw a cutscene.

4

I kind of do. I know why a lot of people don’t but to me it makes the decision on which Perks to be replacing feel more meaningful. When it comes to RPG aspects of a game the decisions you make should feel meaningful and impactful. You should agonize over which Perk to keep because it makes the end result feel more like your decision made it the special item that it is. What I don’t like is that there are so many crap Perks and Blessings that you might wind up agonizing over which crap perk you’re going to keep. It should be a decision of which of the useful Perks you have are you going to keep.

2 Likes
5

Back before when the accessory slots were gadget slots.

6

The perk lock has ruined so many of my trinkets… That’s just artificial lengthening of progression.

1 Like
7

You got the spirit of making hard choices right, but the solution wrong.

The interesting decision should NOT be “which of the two of these lesser options should I be stuck with,” but rather “which TWO options from a large list of options do I most want?”

Sticking people with a junk choice isn’t much fun. But making people agonize over only being able to pick two from a bunch of compelling options is much better. You can have a tough choice either way, but one is “fun” while the other is just discouraging.

3 Likes
8

I was really hoping for actual game changing equipment, with blessings. Like an ammo satchel that lets you hold 20% more ammo, and is blessed to give you 10% more health.

1 Like
9

I would definitely enjoy if we had a few more meaningful stats on Curios instead of so much bloat.

How about:

Blitz Power - Increases the power of your blitz ability. (Damage, duration, max number…)
Ammo Capacity - Increases how much ammo you can carry.
Toughness Regeneration - Gives slow toughness regeneration. (Something like 0.3-0.6% per second)
Ammo Scavenger - Grants a chance to loot ammo from enemies.
Coherency Radius - Increases your coherency radius.
Mobility - Just lets you get more mobility.
Backstab Bonus - Gives you more damage when you hit an enemy from behind.

I also think we should have some of the VT2 style trinket traits back that fundamentally alter how a character works. For example:

Cleansed by Conflict - You can no longer reduce corruption at Medicae stations, but you have a small chance to reduce your corruption when you kill an enemy.
Chirurgeon - You can no longer deploy medkits, but you can heal individual people with them up to 4 times. (Medkits work like they did in VT2, with multiple charges)
Unnatural Healing - You slowly regenerate health, but for every two points of health regenerated you gain one point of corruption.

1 Like
10

Good feedback. Honestly these curios are so god damn lazy and uninspired. They’re boring, uninteresting, barely matter and worst of all they’re just stat percentages. For the third thucking time they copied this bloody system that already felt annoying back in Vermintide. It annoys me to think about what a talented designer could’ve actually made here, but noooo… Instead we got Devs that… Well…
c358c2df-c523-494f-b13a-1f804c2a1199_text

11

I was hoping that would happen, but alas. I wish you could see them hang off your belt or something.

12

At least V1 attempted some interesting effects, that may or may not have broken the game in hilarious ways, like item dupe, the fish, the star of health share. V2 had railroaded stats with the traits silo’d between health/defense, potions and bombs. Curios as they are? Seems like full regression to try to make itemisation as boring as possible.

1 Like
13

Thanks for all the positive input and good reflection in this thread guys. Not sure if anyone that matters at Fatshark HQ even reads these threads, but lets hope they do.