Item acquisition in general also feels pretty bad, from the low rate of good stats and cost from Brunts, the time locked shops and the complete RNG crapshoot that is the single emperor’s gift.
You get no information from playing the mission itself that anything you do will improve the drop at the end of it. Even though VT2’s box at the end of the mission is almost lootbox parallel, it gives the visual feedback that you did enough to have a higher chance at better loot, but because of the constant pivoting of design for the itemisation, the initial push of monetisation over player satisfaction design of the Mourningstar, you get none of that in Darktide.
Item acquisition feels completely divorced from gameplay, and the locks at the end of that process is a pretty big straw that breaks the camel’s back.
I don’t think Hadron would want to make new profaned gear, so the gear’s naming convention makes even less sense and divorces any narrative/lore cohesion as well.
All other gear apart from the Emperor’s Gift is sold to us, we don’t know if they were manufactured on the planet, on board, or fell off the back of a bulk cargo ship.
Shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone they’re not gonna unlock weapons you’ve already used your 2 rolls on. I’m just glad they’re retroactively unlocking curios, there was no guarantee they’d have the means to track that built in.
Yeah, but with Melk’s you’re still battling the base-weapon-type RNG. Realistically it’ll be like one T4 blessing every few weeks for the weapon you want. Upgrading weapons from brunt’s would dwarf that.
I just can’t see people caring much about Melk’s store if locks were fully removed.
Personally I hate Brunt’s far more and would probably continue doing so even if the steps you’ve outlined were taken. Probably because the slot machine nature of it is far more transparent.
Ok, I don’t hate this. So that’s a good thing I think.
Now if you allow for weapons to be sold for crafting resources, along side credits, that will improve this update IMHO.
However if you ALSO allow for the ability to wipe of all perks and blessings/upgrades from a weapon, you can limit it to 3, 2 or 1 time to “re-craft” before it “locks” the weapon, so that we can “re-craft” it, that would be GREAT! It would add a bit of “Bad Luck” protection. And would make this a winner IMHO.
Also I do like that ability to re-roll curios perks because those things are HORRENDOUS with RNG.
Lastly, why not allow for account wide inventory sharing? That way gear that can be used on most classes, non-Ogryn, can be shared to encourage veteran players re-roll alt’s and aide in leveling process to help boost up their leveling progression.
The rest of the item acquisition systems will work fine if a way to remove locks is added (for this discussion, let’s assume you pay 1,000 Diamantine to remove a lock and it comes back when you rebless again).
Let me explain…
Brunt’s will still suck and be mostly pointless, as it always has been. The odds are terrible for getting anything good. I dont know why people bother with this other than trying to buy a weapon to just try it out during leveling. So no real impact there.
Watching the armory exchange will be slightly MORE useful if you have an option to unlock a lock. If you’re keeping an eye out for good weapon stat distributions across many weapon types, every few rotations usually has something decent. You can even get good weapons (I.e. that hit key breakpoints) with somewhat lower base ratings (340-360) if the dump stats line up. Honestly, removing locks would make the armory exchange BETER because now you won’t care about the perks or blessings at all. All those blue 375 base rated items with a crappy tier 2 blessing or perk are more worth buying because you can swap out the bad element.
Melk remains useful as a source for farming tier 3 and tier 4 blessings, same as it currently is. You’ll sometimes get great base stat items too, and with being able to remove locks they will be more worthwhile since you don’t need to worry about it having a bad perk or blessing set.
Throughout all of this, and especially if temporarily removing a lock costs resources, you’ll still need to grind for materials and base items and blessings. But it can all be funneled towards more predictable outcomes.
TLDR: I REALLY dont know why people keep pushing this narrative that breaking locks will invalidate the rest of the item progression and crafting system. If you think through it all rationally, having a way to unlock the locks will make all the other crafting activists be and feel more worthwhile.
Let me explain then: FS has designed a gear system with goals in mind. Exactly what those goals are, we can only speculate on, however we can safely assume that all aspects of the system are meant to work together and are designed and tuned with the existence of locks being a constant factor. Removing the locks affects the whole system, and unless it’s handled carefully and deliberately, it will have impacts on the goals the system is meant to meet. Few are arguing that locks are good, just that they’re a gear in a machine.
This is separate from the discussion about whether we like the goals or not.
Personally, I think it’s incredibly optimistic to assume that Fatshark have a wider plan in mind with crafting and the locks.
If there was a plan, we should be hearing something of it in an annotated Dev blog (Not to be confused with the “comm link Dev blog” which is just patch notes in a rough essay format).
Of course there’s always the goals and roadmap excuse with Fatshark in that they can’t keep to either and that’s why they don’t share them. But if they can’t keep to either then that invalidates the whole argument which prevents them from removing locks, because they may very well have no greater purpose in the end anyway.
I figure, 9 months after release, with as many issues as the game has, it’s put up or shut up time for Fatshark. Unless they actually share some sort of details on direction they’re wanting to take things, then it’s pretty safe to assume that they’ve got nothing and that they’re just stalling for time. Again.
I can not believe that i have to say this again, but that is not what i suggested.
Does everyone really need to repeat EVERYTHING they would like to see changed, every single time they talk about the crafting system, so that nobody comes and claims „you want the system to stay exactly the same, except without locks“?
Yes. That is exactly what i am saying every single time that i am a bit more elaborate in my explanation of what i think should be done.
And in the post that you just replied to, i said
Instead of changing everything EXCEPT the locks in order to make the system slightly better, you should change a few things INCLUDING the locks, and make the system actually good.
When you cook a dish and turns out bad, maybe your rework of the recipe should include the removal of dog poop from the ingredients.
Instead, FS (and a few others) want to desperately keep the dog poop in, and make minor changes to the other ingredients, trying to make the result a tiny bit less worthy of instantly being thrown in the trash (hint: you can‘t).
But well…
Apparently, it is not possible to say anything here, without someone taking it out of context and misrepresenting what was said.
That is something that basically everyone who is asking for lock removal, understands.
It is FS‘s job to do it in a good way.
Another misguided soul…
How can you think that the system would not still be absolute trash, when you get slightly more ressources, but still have to expect to just delete your newly upgraded items at a rate of 99%?
A system that simply wastes your time, is a bad system and that is what many of you guys do not seem to understand.
As long as the crafting system wastes your time, it will always be a bad system.
Because you keep making up excuses for the locks being kept in the game.
You act like lock removal is incredibly difficult to pull off in a good way, and as if changing the system is an impossible thing to do.
They had 9 months to change it.
If you want to tell me, that it is not possible to come up with, and implement a good crafting system, i will not take you serious.
They could lieterally have copy pasted one of the about 4 working systems that i have personally layed out for them (probably with some number adjustments), and every single problem with the crafting system would have been fixed months ago.
If you could respond without being so goddamn patronising that’d be greatly appreciated. I’m extremely clear with what my main pain points with the current system are. Having a different experience and priorities to you does not make me straight wrong. There are things about the system I’d put as much higher priority to change than locks. I’m not misguided, I’m not mistaken, but to be clear I’m also not saying any of those changes make the system good.
Because there’s no making a system that is actually good by tweaking what we have. Removing locks sure we hell wouldn’t qualify the system as good. For that it’d need a ground up redesign, but frankly the game can’t afford to put actual content on hold to continue fiddling with crafting any longer, so I don’t want a ground up redesign, and we’re left with tweaking, you’re welcome to think removing locks should be the number 1 priority there, it’s equally fine for me to prioritise other aspects of the economy.
Just don’t be condescending if I don’t fully agree with you.
Not true.
I personally layed out 3 full crafting systems that tweak the things we currently have in order to make for a great overall experience.
It took me just a few hours for each type of system and it is not my job.
If FS couldn‘t do it in the months before release, and in the 9 months since release, that is nothing that anyone should try to find an excuse for.
It is certainly not impossible.
My point is, what you suggested (better chances at brunt + double ressources) would not really make the system any better.
You would have a slightly smaller average time investment to get what you want (which you will still never get in practice), but it would still be a trashy slot machine with awful probabilities, that deletes all of your ressources (usually without giving you anything good in return).
Any new player will still be driven away.
New weapon releases will always feel bad.
And any veteran player will always eventually get annoyed, after upgrading hundreds or thousands of weapons and throwing them all away, because none of them were an upgrade to the equipment that is currently in use.
Unless our chances to get what we want are AMAZING, the system will be absolute garbage as long as locks are part of it.
And at that point, why not simply remove the locks (or give us the ability to remove them) and actually make a good system that does not rely on trashy slot machine rng with a bunch of bandaids tacked on in order to make the RNG slightly more tolerable?
lol, what excuses? If it was up to me we’d be using athanor. All I’ve ever said is that there are reasons that they’re not just ripping them out. If you think those reasons are stupid, go get pissy with FS about it. I’m not the one making the decisions.