Dev Blog: Deep Dive into the Shrine

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Announcements
383

Lol, I’m not obsessed by anything, I haven’t even played the game in weeks. Came here after YT recommended video about this announcement.
I’m just doing basic math, and the real kicker is that this math doesn’t change with these announced changes (!)
It’s the same RNG, just with more starting points (base weapons).
Oh, and they are adding another slot machine in the armory - great!

Don’t get me wrong, this is definitively an improvement if they seriously increase both the number of base weapons you get and the amount of plasteel, but these are more like quickfixes then addressing the grindy RNG elephant in the room.

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384

My point is it is utterly contradictory to allowing experimentation and build variety. And trying new load outs to see effectiveness. Compared to just being about luck. Especially if difficulties are balanced around strong meta perk/blessing combinations. I would argue most players perceptions will make them chase the impossible perfect items causing burn out and lack of fun.

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385

Let’s summarize… you don’t play the game but you complain about a system you don’t even try to understand and use… great.
If you had played the game more, you would have see that perks, blessing etc are just helping.
I play with a combat axe that has not brutal momentum. It has Thrust +15% (so tier 3), Thunderous 3 (tier 3 again), +20% against flak, rerolled perk +25% against carapace.
I love my axe… this is an anti crusher. When I hit a crusher, I make its armor weak for the entire team. That’s really great. I can use the axe in horde cleaning… iot works great.
And what I wanted is brutal momentum + Thrust… Guess what… This axe is great.

I will be able to experiment it as I have a second with thrust +15% and a blessing I don’t care. So when they give us crafting, I will put brutal momentum to test it… From my test, I am not even sure it is as good as several claim it is.

386

I’m not saying you cannot play the game as it is.
I’m saying the system sucks.

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387

Stop with that idiotic argument. Some of us played thousands of hours in V1 and V2 and hundreds in DT and perks and blessings are not just “helping”. They are big power boosts and ways to make build and loadouts different, more interesting. They change gameplay and how weapon behaves, what roles that can fill and how they interact with different classes/talents etc. Such things are supposed to be ways to enchance gameplay, increase build variety and let us experiment in different combinations. Freely.

Currently it’s not allowed as you have to luck on RNG to be able to experiement with anything you want to try out. Want to try Blessings X with Y? Luck out on RNG first. Want to try Perk X with Z but them compare on same weapon with A and B perk? Luck out on RNG first. Someone told you his weapon worked awesome with Perk A and B and blessings Z and Y? Well, tough luck, you can’t check that yourself. You first need to waste tons of hours to luck out on RNG before you can even freaking TRY OUT same combination.

It’s garbage system made to waste our time instead of enchancing our time so we can try out new stuff and define our own playstyle and fun/effective loadouts.

Wanna see how it’s done properly? Go play Deep Rock Galactic.

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388

It’s been years and years and multiple games have come and gone. All with broadly similar attitudes of huge amounts of player hostile grind and RNG in the name of driving ‘retention.’ I believe we are beyond the point where Hanlon’s Razor can reasonably be applied to Fatshark’s decision making.

Instead they should be viewed as actively malicious. And have their asses filed under the same umbrella of corporate scum as EA/ABK/Microsoft/etc.

Fatshark is no Hello Games or Creative Business Unit 3. There is no visionary leader at the helm who deeply wants to fix their game up into a product worth selling and make amends towards the players whose money got them this far. There is only a desire to put the bare minimum of effort into turning a raging inferno into a smaller fire that they can ignore long enough to squeeze more blood from the stone.

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389

Great! it seems you have found the game you need.

390

Brilliant counterargument. Bravo.

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391

Sarcasm right?

392

Obviously

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393

Ok Fartshark, I see that in the comments you have a lot of negative reactions about why people are not happy about the crafting system. So I won’t add to it, instead I’ll just give you ideas. You may like them or not, it’s obviously your game so do as you wish, but at least you can’t say I didn’t try my best :slight_smile: .
Oh yeah and by the way, I’m not a native speaker, so sorry for the clumsiness, the mistakes and the heaviness of my English.

I) ARMS and EQUIPMENTS:
Sell them at “profane” level only, with rng stats so players will have to check regularly for the opportunities. Also, rise the prices, or lower the “ordo” rewards for a mission. We have way too much money. After all, we are “rejects”, right?

II) THE TEMPLE:
Add a temple in the Mourningstar. Yeah it’s an Inquisition ship, but there is no temple for the Emperor of Mankind… In the current state the ship looks more like a goth mall to be honest. Add a temple! The adeptus mechanicus booth we currently have should be used for perks only, because you’ll obtain Blessings in the Temple.

The temple could also be used to remove the corruption we weren’t able to clear during the missions themselves (by a quick prayer to the emperor, it would take 10 seconds to the player), but that’s not the subject here.

III) BLESSINGS & PERKS:
Blessings (from the emperor) and perks (from the adeptus mechanicus) should ALL come at level 0 (the minimum) so no RNG on that.

Unlocking:
To unlock each level of perks or blessings, the player will have to perform missions, “special objectives” or contract.

Upgrade to level 4 or 5:
If a player want (and all players will) to upgrade the level of a perk or of a blessing up to 4 or 5, he will have to EARN it by performing tough special objectives in the game.

Decay:
Also, you should add a decay on the level of the blessings. In the way to maintain the level of the blessing you can:

  • Pray at the temple (but it will only maintain it to level 2 max).
  • Grind the game: you’ll have to perform missions, and special objectives to maintain a level 3, 4 or 5.

IV) SPECIAL OBJECTIVES:

a) Heretic shrines:
In all the maps you have those heretic shrines (where the players that have been killed are kept prisoners), and because we players are Inquisition agents, our job should be to destroy them. So if a player dares to trigger the heretic shrine, “something” (see below for some examples) will happen to him and to the team, and they’ll have to overcome it, and thus: reward! Depending on the kind of the “something”, the reward will be different.

examples of the “something” will happen to the players:

  • Spawn enemies: an obvious one for sure. A monstruosity spawns, or a carefully selected group of powerfull mobs, or even a demon host with the task of defending the shrine. Kill the thing(s) and you’ll earn the reward.
  • Curse: the players will have to finish the mission with some handicap. Different reward could mean different handicap (ultimate not available, clip ammo divided by 2, life points or toughness divided by 2… and so on.
  • Adding special condition: the map is now upgraded to “high intensity”. Or all the lights go dim. Maybe little be complicated to implement haha.
  • Warp thing going on: attacking the heretic shrine causes a warp surge. Players are subject to illusions and creepy visions… let your imagination going wild here.

b) Praying at temples:
Some maps feature some good looking churches with books, candles and all the stuff. Create a mechanic in game where these places have to be “reactivated” by the players performing a prayer or something… under the pressure of the ennemies of course!

c) Rescue mission: (I know this one is probably impossible to implement but I like the idea) Level heresy or damnation mission are super hard you know? of course you know. More often than not the mission is a complete disaster and all the team is wiped out. When this happens a special message is aired in the Mourningstar, asking for 1 or 2 brave level 30 volunteers to dive right into hell to deliver the unfortunate prisoners. Let the call longing for 60 or 90 seconds max, and if no one answer, the mission is endeed, and the emperor is disappointed.

d) Kill / capture the preachers. So there are a lot of ennemies, monsters, soldiers, maniacs or whatever they are, all corrupted grunts dedicated to uncle Nurgle… but where are the preachers? So add a unit, hidden in the most remote area of a map or powerful of very well protected (or all of that), and set a good reward for the players killing or (why not) capture the preacher.

Voilà! Wish you the best, thanks for the game and bon courage!

For the emperor!

394

No… Seriously.
When we read your posts (of people that complain), it looks like the game is a torture for you.

At this point, I think this is not even rational.
Blessings change things? yes, off course.
T4 blessings are great? yes absolutely
You cannot play if you don’t have a T4 blessing? No absolute no
Can you use a T3 blessing and enjoy the game? yes, obviously and the weapon can yet be effective

So, all what you all repeat is RNG RNG RNG RNG…
So I will let you repeat it until you are bored of repeating it. Cause, this won’t change anything to the situation, and also cause, with the system they will give us, you can perfectly play any gamestyle you want.
If you refuse to see it… then you’re blind.

Ok, I leave and let you repeat in loop RNG is bad…

395

“you can perfectly play any gamestyle you want”

^The whole point is you cannot. It’s statistically, practically, impossible. That’s assuming they don’t patch any changes to it which will require to you to try again anyways. Buffing/Nerfing blessings and perks, which should be common place, will make it a nightmare to get what you want and to try how you want.

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396

Theres a point here in that should a balance patch nerf a weapon youve worked bloody hard to get itll cause such rage.

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397

When I’m allowed to customize my weapons to same level as the previous game lol?

Why are you defending the trait lock feature. I’m not asking that we can set the stat bars of the weapons to what we like

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398

This guy has to be a troll, there’s another post earlier in this thread where he claims people are ‘only’ mad because they thought the crafting system described as

Would be this and not ‘more RNG’. Like how disingenuous a shill do you have to be? Yes, people are mad that they took our ‘feedback’ to heart, wrote this dumb not apology admitting they botched the game and continue to botch the crafting? Like no way that ends up sliding the game to Overwhelmingly Negative right? Just a bunch of whiners and not yet another game system delivered late, non functioning and completely absent of any player engagement or agency.

It’s like if you went to an ATM and the currency notes it’d give you back are random. What, you didn’t want Euros? Better keep grinding and try again.

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399

Putting in my 2 credits.

While there are steps forward in this announcement, they show a fundamental lack of understanding with what the community wants.

  • Perk / Trait locking is fundamentally flawed and disrespects the player’s time
  • Forcing players to roll and roll and roll weapons, traits, perks instead of just unlocking and picking what we want once again is fundamentally flawed and disrespects the player’s time
  • No addressing of the siloed nature of player rewards - earning any rewards on psyker means nothing for your veteran, etc. - a problem that didn’t exist in VT and doesn’t exist in your major competitors

Put this back in the oven, it isn’t done yet, guys. For now, my friends and I have uninstalled Darktide. When you respect your players’ time, we’ll consider coming back.

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400

Great another locking on the crafting, so if i want to tailor my build i need to first randomly get the weapon that i want with good stats in the right places, then hope it to have at least one of the perks that i want and at least one of the blessing that i want at max level…
I was holding on making revew giving fatshark a chance of redemtion but that’s it, bad revew coming right up.
I genuinely would like to know who thought that locking stuff would be a good idea and why? is this a sneak attempt to prevent the creation of a meta? no one is running the same thing because you have only 0,000000000001% to get the item that you want? That’s fun.

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401

Everything they have communicated to the players since their Holiday radio silence (after releasing the game in an unfinished state) has been nothing of substance and have been nothing more than corpo word salads trying to appease the masses all the while their player numbers and review scores are tanking so fast their is no way they can recover with just meaningless word salads.

Then we get to this “deep dive” which is the exact same thing they said they were going to do with the removal of combine blessings as far as crafting goes. Apparently they expect some grand reception to their changing of the shop and weeklies but the current implementation should never have been released to begin with.

Then, on top of all this nonsense, we have the fact that the item perks and blessings actually don’t impact the game in any significant amount anyway. Skilled players can literally take profane weapons and win on the highest difficulty.

Their two blessings on weapons seems to hail back to the original design they described without feats. Maybe this also explains why the equipment we have access to now only go to max 80, if there were to be no higher item values why is it not 100?

The feats seem like they were added the day before the beta and are even worse than what V2 had. Literally shrapnel (bomb charm trait to give 20% damage to an enemy for all players) is a psyker feat that no one would take over the only good pick in that row. Zealot can use/waste a feat to basically get swift slaying on his ult… It gets worse.

Other than the artwork, combat, and soundtrack this game is an obvious mish mash of TERRIBLE design decisions to the point of not being able to pivot to anything new or worthwhile and it is what it is.

Keep an eye on the review scores and player numbers because of you thought they were bad before yesterday, it’s about to get worse.

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402

I feel this has been said but… Has anything actually fundamentally changed with crafting from how it was ‘planned’ at release? It seems like instead of making meaningful changes they just tried to put lipstick on a pig, and then declared ‘mission accomplished!’ to the community.

I think everyone appreciates the increased communication, but it feels kinda disingenuous to release an ‘open letter to players’ saying ‘we heard you’ and then release a blog that basically says ‘lol, jk. The core system is remaining the same’. The post is mostly about them attempting to justify their design decisions rather than making real changes and listening to the community.

There are a ton of ways to encourage players to experiment and change gameplay via weapon modifications, with many successful examples throughout the industry. Adding ridiculous amounts of RNG and masquerading it as deep and complex is disappointing. The trashing of the attachment system? That makes absolutely no sense and that in itself would add worlds more complexity and be far more enjoyable than this RNG fest.

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