Empty boxes are kind of a problem in Darktide. It’s not that opening a box and having it be empty is really hurting the game as an individual incident, but when it happens hundreds of times over a play session it starts to kind of wear away at the fun of exploring the level. People stop opening boxes all together, and that small, fun element of taking a little extra risk to fully explore the level just kind of dies the death of a thousand papercuts.
The levels in this game are relatively linear, but there is still a small element of exploration and risk vs. reward to it with the possibility of finding useful things off the beaten path. I personally really like running around and looking for stuff, but I feel like most of the time people just want to get on with the level, and it’s hard to find anything that makes taking a little more time worth their while.
I think the boxes in the levels need to contain better loot. For one, you should be able to just straight up find an item that grants you an additional emperor’s gift at the end of the run. There should also be an item that grants you additional dockets and requisitorium marks just by picking it up. If every box at the very least contains about 100 Dockets you never feel like you wasted your time opening them, and if every box had a chance to grant you additional loot you’d be a lot more incentivized to try and open them all.
Also I think the game should really have a loot crawl on screen somewhere when a team member picks something up. People aren’t even notified if you find a big box of Diamantine unless you tag it before you pick it up. Taking a little detour to grab extra loot wouldn’t feel like you’re delaying the game so much if your team was informed that they are getting free things for your effort.
Overall I think it would be a positive for the game if the element of fully exploring the level was more rewarding. Better loot, less disappointment, and just generally an added element to the game where if you’re doing good enough in a level where you can afford to split up and search the room every so often you actually get a bigger reward for it.
A little notification when picking up materials would be nice (like when killing specials)
At least it gives a bit of validation feeling to those that pick mats up and maybe “steer” those that usually rush ahead to get the special kills to also spend that extra 5 sec to open a chest
I agree there should be more kind of loot / materials in the missions. I highly welcome colors to color our weapon / armorskins aswell, which might be rare-loot i guess.
But also the “empty box” issue is more a thing on malice and lower difficulties. There are already more on higher difficulties. So either more drops in general, or the lower ones need tweaks, so the overall amount is more spreaded across all boxes.
TBH, I don’t mind poking around, but the ‘fallout’ syndrome of searching a house for everything in it where you spend a lot of time just looking in drawers and behind sofas and the like, isn’t to me a fun game mechanic.
How about an auspex that shows us where everything is, so we can cut the time spent looking around down a tad? Perhaps matched to big drops in distant side rooms…?
It’s the fact that the boxes are often off the beaten path that makes it annoying. You’re taking an extra risk by spending more time or wandering off from your team for a moment to check for useful resources and half the time you simply come up with nothing.
Why not just have an empty room instead of an empty box if there was nothing there?
