Your regular reminder that the game doesn’t respect your time:
9 Likes
Tbh, no insult or so… but always this “The game doesn´t respect the players time…”.
This sounds so hard like you need to work for it, than having fun just playing a game. And not any game out there really “respects the players time”. Just look at other games where you lose against a boss or other players. Suddenly a hour of gametime is gone into nowhere and the first sentence will be like “Yes… time wasted, fking randoms, etc…”.
It´s just you wasting your time on something unproductive, which will be “lost time” once the server shutdown or you die anyway. And you can boil it down into any directions…
I can just give you and others the same tip as always: Play a game as long as it´s fun and if it´s going to cause frustrations for whatever reasons, leave it for now or forever. Or just get over such minor-issues like a missing blessing in this case.
Not saying you should “eat everything”. It´s just way more fun to play in the end.
I have plenty of fun playing the game. It would to hard for me to say otherwise. However I would find it hard to argue that RNG is not getting in the way of enjoying the game by those who don’t have much time, yet would like to theory-craft / experiment with different builds.
Players pressing a button 1000000 times at Hadron’s desk to re-roll a specific perk & blessings add little to the game’s depth or gameplay longevity. You have better chances at winning a lottery than landing a weapon with a decent base score, which has specific perk and blessings you want. Never mind supporting perks on Curios, which is even a bigger joke*
Despite the insane time I personally can spend in this game, I have grown sympathetic to the plight of those who cannot, yet would like to enjoy everything the game has to offer.
- you are allowed to disagree with me. you are welcome.
6 Likes
So are we supposed to not criticize anything and not suggest any changes at all?
Just take it quietly, or leave?
Sounds like a really bad attitude.
Yeah… no.
There are many games, where you spend your time farming for something, and it is guaranteed that you get something from it.
There are many games, that do not have any RNG involved in upgrading gear for example.
How many games (that are not p2w) have an itemization system, where most of the time, the ressources you gathered will be effectively deleted by RNG? I would say that it is pretty rare.
A bad argument.
When a bossfight poses a challenge, you fail it, and the game just respawns you one room back and lets you try again, that is not the game disrespecting your time.
When you farm ressources and spend them to craft a specific item, or to get a specific upgrade (and you actually get that specific item or upgrade), that is not the game disrespecting your time.
You know what is disrespectful of your time?
- When there is an unskippable cutscene of 2 minutes, every time you attempt the bossfight.
- When you have to run through the entire dungeon again, each time after you wipe on a boss.
- When you farm a ton of ressources for a few hours, just for the outcome of you spending all of these ressources on “upgrades” to be, that everything you tried to “upgrade” turns to garbage.
- When you have an interaction that literally costs you no ressources at all, and that can be repeated as many times as you want, which gives you a random perk each time, instead of you just letting to pick one from a list.
That is the game disrespecting your time.
7 Likes
Yeah that’s just unnecessary and obnoxious, there is really no reason for it. If it cost crafting mats every time sure but a person shouldn’t need to install a mod just to not wear their mouse button out when it’s free and statistically you will get it at some point.
Sitting at 400 hours the main thing stopping me from trying new stuff is realizing im going to need to interact with the crafting system and it’s various collective headaches. Sure i could roll up an auto pistol to try on Damnation but i know exactly what that process entails.
I just gotta say this is THE BIGGEST reach i have ever seen regarding this topic.
Even then going into more detail we have a system that has gone backwards since Vermintide 2 as far as player usability goes and defending it seems to get sillier and sillier by the day.
4 Likes
Bingo! I would prefer if Fatshark stopped locking away gameplay variety behind casino gameplay. If that meant that players who don’t have time for RNG actually stayed and played the game it would benefit us all.
4 Likes
Honestly, at this point i would be fine with one perk and blessing per weapon to be locked, if we could:
- upgrade the locked perk to T4 for diamantine
- upgrade the locked blessing to higher tier (if unlocked in blessing inventory)
- select the unlocked perk from a list, once the cost for rerolling has reached 0 (T3 for free, T4 for diamantine)
- upgrade all modifiers of an item (at least to 80%)
This would add a lot of player agency and convenience, while also allowing to make use of a lot of items that would otherwise land in the trash.
The menu could be changed slightly.
“Upgrade Modifiers”
- Modifiers 1-5 → upgrade modifier
“Modify Perks”
- Perk A (locked) → upgrade Perk
- Perk B (unlocked) → change Perk → list
“Modify Blessings”
- Blessing A (locked) → upgrade Blessing
- Blessing B (unlocked) → change Blessing → list
2 Likes
All good asks but in addition to this is just want character siloing gone.
The biggest problem with the current system as far as resources spent vs actual progress goes is that there are hard limits on stuff like Malks of effectively 1 item per 1 character week of contracts.
Without siloing it would actually give incentive to do those contracts and check different characters even if their gearing is effectively done and it would make tying to remember what resources you have on what character less of a pain to keep track of. This would also make playing characters you already have effectively done more worth it since if they come out with say a new character or similar you actually have some resources to spent on their new stuff.
Tell the truth without removing siloing i do not see how they don’t expect to just burn their player base out whenever a new character is released.
3 Likes
This is just begging for scraps, you know.
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But it wouldn’t be fine. The current system is just so terrible that anything even slightly better would be an improvement. It still wouldn’t be good enough. I get where you’re coming from, but you’re basically asking the person that’s beating you over the head with a stick, to please use a slightly smaller stick.
3 Likes
Correct.
But it is the best thing that i dare to hope for (within forseeable future).
I have made elaborate suggestions to eliminate RNG entirely, on multiple occasions since release, but since FS seem to be set to keep the RNG in the game, this is probably the best we are realistically going to get.
Maybe we can slowly move from getting our head beaten with a stick, to a smaller stick, and finally to getting our butt slapped with a bare hand.
Some will really enjoy it, and those who do not, will likely still prefer it over what we have right now.
3 Likes
We understand, but this is exactly why I feel sorry for the effort people like you put into trying to suggest reasonable improvements - and when these suggestions are just band aids, you look like victims pleading with the captors.
FS has to be aware of all this and more. They just don’t want it, just like they don’t really want to change anything. And it is their right not to want it and to keep claiming they do listen and want to provide better experience, like they did with the open letter.
In the meantime, the ratio of my DT time to VTs time is likely to remain one to a high double digit number.
2 Likes
What really confounds me is people going out of their way to defend clearly psychologically predatory design like this (the in-game currency shops, crafting, and rotating stages+conditions). Stuff like this is bad for everyone, even for those of you that like it! Give it 5 to 10 years, time sink design like this is going to be outlawed in places where governments still care about consumer protection.
The longer people play the likelier people are to spend on the actual cash shop, stuff like this is designed to take advantage of this, and also hook in folks more susceptible to addictive tendencies. Game system design like this is ethically and morally bankrupt, and should be categorically opposed wherever it appears. It worsens the experience for everyone.
4 Likes
The problem is simply this:
This is a fun game, but once you’ve done all the levels, fought all the enemies, and used all the weapons you hit a point where in order to keep playing you need to switch to some other motivation than simply experiencing the content.
The really big systems that games can leverage to keep people motivated long term are, progression, expression and competition.
Competition in a PvE game is trying to beat the highest difficulty. Not everyone cares about that, and the people who do care seem to have no real problem with it. This part of long term motivation was solved pretty much in the first month.
Expression is building your own character and being able to determine how they play, look etc. This is where a significant portion of the monetization attaches with cosmetics, which is fine in my book, but the mechanical customization of characters is shallow in this game, and the RNG gear robs you of the ability to fully customize your loadout.
Progression is “Goopy Goblin Gamer Brain wants to make numbers big!” It’s easy to dismiss progression as kind of a psychological trick to keep people playing, but it is fun to just slowly improve the power of your character. This is also sabotaged by the extreme RNG in this game.
The only other reason to keep playing a game in the long term is if you simply enjoy the gameplay itself so much that you never get bored of it, but most people never feel that way about any game, and given that there are thousands of games to choose from and new ones keep coming out it’s not a good idea to rely on this phenomenon alone to keep numbers up.
So, basically the problem this game has is that out of the three main reasons why people keep playing long term, one is so quick and easy that it isn’t a long term motivator to anyone who genuinely dedicated themselves to beating all the difficulties, and the other two are sabotaged by the gear system being so random that neither expression nor progression are achievable within a reasonable time frame.
On top of that we know that new classes are going to be added, which means progressing one of the current classes is not super motivating if you’re mostly looking forward to future classes.
2 Likes
You do know that live-service games need some income? So what´s wrong paying 10 bucks for a skin you like if you got 1000 hours or so out of the game anyway?!
I personally would prefer to pay for a subscription and being able to get everything ingame just by playing the game. But those days are gone, because students or overall poor poeple either can´t or don´t want such systems anymore, because “They force you to play.” to get your 10 bucks worth each month. Meanwhile the same poeple invest even the last bit of money into gucchi and justify it with “I like the game so i support it…”. (Yes i know a bunch of them.)
No matter how… they need income and things will never change back. You can also go into the next market and normally you´ll find little sweet snacks right next to you while waiting at the checkout. Pretty much everything is made to force you into buying, i mean… also the whole internet tracks you.
Poor poeple will be happy to join games for less or even 0 costs, while rich poeple can be happy to have poeple to play with. The current systems have flaws and clearly sucks for poeple who know the better days. But it´ll also make sure that games will stay alive you might like so. It´s kinda hard to judge about it.
Nothing wrong there. Provided that I like the game enough, I would pay for the skin despite never putting it on. But that was not at all his point.
2 Likes
Yes, because when something becomes normalized it becomes good. Self defeating nonsense, logic like this is why alot of the examples you mentioned became normalized in the first place.
Also, this isn’t about being rich or poor, or spending habits or whatever, it’s about respecting that we’re effing human beings and not ATM machines. Systems like this are designed to, metaphorically, “hack” human psychology in order to artificially generate consumer demand while disregarding externalities. The externalities in question being inflating addiction risk, and encouraging unhealthy gaming habits. Multiply the issue by x2 or x3 when we’re talking about vulnerable populations, like kids, teens, and people with specific mental health problems. Stuff like this is why the suicide-case League of Legends player meme is a thing.
This ain’t about boomer gamer wants his games to be like classic Doom forever, it’s about publishers and devs needing to realize what their messing with and the damage they’re doing to people’s mental health to make an extra buck.
Seriously, game design like this is the lead in food and water of the information age, unironically, this stuff is the closest we’ll get to an IRL cognitohazard.
5 Likes
I am, please the Inquisiton won’t let me go I don’t want to go back down to Atoma please help me I’m innocent I swear.
1 Like
Tbf it´s not just the devs or so, it´s the time we´re living in and especially the internet that makes tracking and getting consumer-informations much easier.
It has never been different no matter where you look in RL. The circumstances have never been easier, just look at all the social-media platforms. And instead of feeling mad about stuff in RL caused by reasons, poeple now feel mad because they don´t get likes or get fomo´d out of existence.
It has always be a thing especially to weaker natures. It´s just more present right now, because the internet connects poeple all over the world.