Dear Fatshark,
I am but a humble player who just keeps clocking in hours at your game. Despite its faults, I enjoy your game and hope things will improve as you guys ramp up the updates and fixes. To that end, I like many others took some time to offer some feedback in the hope it might be put to good use.
While doing that, let me add that I do think that all the reviews and comments about Darktide are 100% deserved as this game is nowhere near where it should be.
The feedback I offer is not so much about game performance, bugs, content or balance issues, as it about itemisation. I will proceed by topics below before making a summary:
Armoury Exchange
While the armoury exhange offers affordable weapons, most of the time a quick sroll through the items on sale leads to the conclusion that absolutely nothing of it is desireable. The RNG on the store is just too high, and many weapons are just a mismatched mess of stats, perks and blessings.
Sir Melk’s Requisitorium
Unfortunately, the same can be said for Melk’s. The only difference being that these items are more costly and only rarely offer a decent item as this shop only refreshes daily. Chances are real a player will just as easily find a good weapon in the armoury exchange to upgrade anyway. This feels like the rewards for doing weeklies can feel rather lackluster and even redundant.
Upgrading Weapons
Upgrading weapons is a risky affair all on its own. Because the game - at this time - simply doesnt allow for any change of blessings at all, its best to find the weapon you need with the right blessings and start upgrading from there. Upgrading from a grey item is just too random and requires some extreme luck.
Summary - How does this all add up?
All of this combines into a game that makes it VERY HARD to get any proper itemisation done at all. The current state of affairs leads to players spending litteraly days to find a weapon they are looking for. I will list a few examples of my own:
- I needed a Force Sword with the Deflector skill. While leveling my Psyker up to 30 , I found no such weapon at the armoury exchange at all. When I finally did, the Force Sword on sale had very low damage which made it undesireable. Finding a decent Sword with proper blessing took me over a week.
- To this day, I am still trying to get a Thunder Hammer with good stats, and the Momentum and Shock & Awe blessing. The few suitable Thunder Hammers I found and upgraded so far have been unsuccesfull because I cant change blessings. Imagine how much plasteel and diamantine I have wasted on these attempts, and how much time it took to farm only for dissapointment. The “Open Soon” next to the Re-Bless button at Hardon is just a taunt to the playerbase at this point.
- Curio’s are the worst as they get 3 perks, but the game only allows only allow for one of these perks to be refined. This makes a good curio to match your characters build extremely rare.
If I could offer some tips on how to improve this, I would suggest the following:
- Hadrons shop should be fully released asap as this is now severely limiting players in their ability to get proper items to try out builds and diferent playstyles.
- Give players the option to craft grey items as the shop often simply refuses players the option to even buy a specific kind of weapon.
- There should be more allowance to refine perks on Curio’s than just one perk.
- Sir Melk’s Requisitorium should offer more than just purple and orange versions of the same mismatched mess of weapons at the armoury exchange - Like cosmetics, unlocking locked perks/blessings for additional refinement, selling purple and orange weapons for plasteel & diamantine, or offering different hairstyles.
- Some blessings on weapons simply dont make any sense. Examples are Blaze Away on a Kickback/Rumbler, or Hit and Run on a Staff. I would suggest a major think-over on which blessings should be available to specific weapons.
Lastly,
I do really think that if Darktide had better itemisation, it would just be one of the things that could go a long way into improving the game. While the game has other problems aswell that require attention, I hope this is just one of the things that gets picked up along they way. Hopefully sooner than later.
I wish the people at Fatshark good luck with getting this game into better shape.
Regards,
Just another player.