Darktide Is Gambling

I would pay to see what the original direction was like with the attachments and toolkit (was it toolkit? the one instead of the curios) and alike, before the rebuild. It sounded very interesting.

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I belive they were called ā€œgadgetsā€ specific to each class but I might be misremembering. I assume it would have been great but they realized it couldnā€™t be done in a reasonable amount of time so they downgraded VT 2 slapped a 40k skin on it and called it a day.

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Also they said in some interview about gadgets and stealth, i thought game will be more like Payday. Well, we kinda have stealth with demonhost eh.

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Ty for the vindication lol

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Also these cosmetics

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Idk where all the preview cosmetics from both promotional material and on game previews are but Iā€™ll be super disappointed if theyā€™re premium cosmetics (although thereā€™ll be people defending it on the forums like people asking for more premium cosmetics already).

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Donā€™t even get me started on the demonhost. The worst thing is the missed opportunity of needing to kill DHs to get the grims on grim maps or the ability to get grims from them on non-grim maps, I would like that so much. Itā€™s not like VT2 didnā€™t have loot die for the bosses for a while so, I guess it still a possibility, not keeping my hopes up tho.

I both think you are accurate and kinda downplaying it at the same time. Gunplay, toughness system, weapon attributes that are capped and 2 blessings instead of 1 with actual variety are all good improvements (even if the balance can be questionable), but they probably just used downgraded VT2 stuff for a lot of other things they couldnā€™t finish, and Iā€™m isnā€™t even talking about reused animations.

I have no idea if the game will ever recover, but i think that increased player agency in gear progression would make the game more enjoyable for a larger audience and result in a larger and more healthy playerbase.

I do not know what exactly the majority wants, but i would personally like a system with full player agency and the possibility to upgrade already existing weapons to absolute perfection (all stats at 100, free choice of perks and blessings) and i have seen many others mention something like this. This would mean that the gear progression would end at the point where all of your characters have every available weapon fully upgraded to perfection (until new weapons are released).
I do not know how much most people care about a progression system having a clear end or not, but i think that if the itemization is great and the rest of the game is also great, then it probably does not matter all that much.

This could be achieved by making a few additions to the existing system (diamantine sink, yay):

  • add the ability to upgrade item modifiers
  • add the ability to remove perk and blessing lock from an item
  • add the option to select perks from a list, once the cost to reroll has reached 0
  • add the option to selectively unlock blessings to circumvent bad RNG

If you want something more elaborate, feel free:

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I would appreciate if blessings were cool/unique/functional/useful before I would consider this an upgrade lol. I didnā€™t get too far into all VT 2 had to offer so I canā€™t comment on the blessings etc there, but I donā€™t see why I still canā€™t ask for the blessings in DT to be a step up.

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About attachments there even was kantrael lasgun without scope in one trailer or on some early screenshot

But no blessings on trinkets like in V2, so its 4 in DT vs 5 in V2.

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They already started buffing underperforming/useless blessings, there are some weapons where you can use a lot of stuff. The balance is pretty questionable, as I said but I like the direction with blessings being as impactful as they are. Even if there arenā€™t a lot of weapons you can tailor them pretty well on items that donā€™t need 2 specific ones to be used.

Iā€™d choose 2 impactful weapon blessings instead of the defensive trinket blessings in VT2. Although I would choose both if I could.

Come on nowā€¦ Players tend to optimize the fun out of their games if they can. This is kind of beside your point btw, itā€™s just a buzzword for me. You can see some talks by game developers about how they have to work around this issue.

I kinda like the non-cappable stats. In a deterministic system, I would lower the point distribution to 360 and make things like mobility and ammo way more impactful. Maybe even add 2 levels of point buy. One at character, one at the individual item level, and capped total attributes. That would be pretty interesting to experiment in. Probably it would be a nightmare to balance, but stillā€¦

Just tried to craft a gun and this is exactly what it felt like. Materials wasted no gun :frowning:

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In some types of games, optimization would mean that the game basically plays itself and there is nothing left to actively do. In those types of games, it can make sense to try to prevent it.

In Darktide, optimization means that you can use any item that you want at its full potential and tailored to your exact build.
Optimization does not remove the fun in games like this. It is part of the fun and enhances the overall experience for most players.
Look at Vermintide 2 for example. Getting red items (optimal items) does not optimize the fun out of the game, but enables you to set yourself up exactly how you want, and to try out everything that the game has to offer at its full potential.

I went on and specified what i mean by ā€œplayer agencyā€ right after using the word, as well as adding the links to two other posts of mine, one of which is multiple pages of explanation.
Unless you ignored all of that, it is certainly not just a buzzword in this case.

And you are very likely in a minority when it comes to this.

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I believe the bots still use a kantrael without a sight or a flashlight. They might have changed that but I at least know at launch they did.

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thatā€™s not gambling, itā€™s a skinner box. Skinner Box: What Is an Operant Conditioning Chamber? gambling relies on skinner box modeling to be profitable, but here itā€™s just to compensate for lackluster gameplay.

still bad, not the same kind.

I think itā€™s also important for these defenders to really objectively provide some numbers. Like what is the average amount of hours for a specific good weapon (specific perks and blessings) and the hours needed for (a max specific weapon with 380 modifiers T4 perks and blessings). I barely get commitments to that answer. One person said 1000 hours. For one weapon. So thatā€™s the kinda mentality I expect people who defend this system to have.

4 characters and letā€™s say 20 weapons each you want to grind out? Hope you got 20,000 hours.

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Iā€™ve already commented on this one so Iā€™ll justā€¦
image

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Yeahā€¦ that is kinda nuts.
You can not even expect anyone to play any single game for such a long time.
Unless it is an MMORPG or something like that, that is maintained for years and years with insane amounts of content.

I am aware that people (including myself) have played Vermintide 2 for more than 1000 hours, but that is mostly time played after already owning a red version of every weapon in the game, and not a constant chase for a single perfect item.

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