How a 6th rarity could fix gear RNG

[sleepy]

TL;DR - Upgrade to 6th rarity for a very high consecration cost. 6th rarity unlocks all perks and blessings and caps stats or gives point buy system to allocate stats at player discretion.

This system would, in theory, allow players who are willing to put in the work a way to escape RNG on gear, while not invalidating the systems FS has designed by letting players who don’t want to invest that much instead settle for the best rolled weapon they can find

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A solution where FS and anti-RNG players get what they want

FS clearly thinks that there needs to be friction in-between the player and their “perfect weapon” roll. Why this is I don’t know, whether it’s a good decision or a mistake I also don’t know, but what I do know is that they want it, have designed a very complex system around it, and don’t seem to be willing to budge away from it. So how do we fix this in a way that makes both FS and the player base happy? 6th rarity, above orange.

What makes 6th rarity, let’s call it red rarity, special

• Red rarity weapons have no perk or blessing locks and both can be re-rolled for free
• Red rarity weapons have capped stats or a point buy system for stats which can be re-allocated for free

How FS gets what they want too, the cost

Consecrating to this rarity would be extremely expensive. This is because, again, FS clearly really wants their RNG systems and if we can turn one of each weapon into a red rarity god-roll after a couple sessions then this would invalidate them almost instantly. So, if we’re going to ask FS to allow us to permanently exempt certain weapons from RNG, the most agreeable “bargain” that I think can be struck is for us to have to pay a lot to do so. It’d be sort of like the difference between paying rent over time for an apartment vs. forking over one massive lump sum for a house. Rolling on orange weapons is cheaper and easier in the short term, but saving up a ton of currency to blow it all on a perfect red weapon pays off in the long term.

Why bother with stats

I might be reading into this too much but I think random stats will become a bigger problem down the line for really dedicated players. Even if FS unlocks perks and blessings we’ll still be stuck with a system where you’re effectively pulling the handle on Brunt’s slot machine over and over just hoping for all five stats to have the ideal 0-100 variance you’re looking for. That’s gacha tier RNG with no pity system. I mean, imagine if they did unlock perks and blessings, and you’ve got your highest rolled THammer now with ideal tier IVs, only to then see a fresh level 30 walk in with a THammer that has even luckier base stats. Are you going to feel incentivized to dump another 200 hours into pulling THammers? Or are you going to feel incentivized to play something else.

My solution to this is to either cap all stats at 100% on red rarity weapons, or if that would be too OP, instead have a point buy system wherein the player would be given an amount of total stats, maybe 400, that they could allocated (and re-allocate) freely on that weapon where 1 point = 1 %. For example, a Rashad axe could be assigned the following stats : 100% Damage 20% Mobility 100% Penetration 80% Finesse 100% First Target. While staying within the 400 point limit.

Don’t use the VT2 red rarity system

Relying on RNG to get five red weapons so you can scrap them to make one red weapon you want goes straight back to the problem DT is having which is that it doesn’t reward dedication or skill, but just luck. Make upgrading from orange to red in DT just another consecration, one that doesn’t require an RNG-only currency, just tons of Plasteel, Diamantine, and Ordo Dockets, or at absolute most, a currency you can only get from completing some kind of tier 6 difficulty.

Another option could be a weekly cap on a grindable currency (e.g. Get 1 bright dust per clear of a tier 6 map, with only 5 bright dust per week possible). It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world and I’d take it over nothing, but… c’mon.

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Conclusion

Having characters fully equipped with this red rarity gear would be seen as the product of dedication, not the norm. The RNG systems they’ve created would remain the norm for casual players, those who don’t care to grind for the perfection of red rarity, gear you use before having enough currency to create a red rarity version of it, and characters you don’t have much interest in playing often. But for those dedicated enough to desire perfect rolls, and skilled enough to farm out the cost, the option will be available, and the payoff will be permanently best-in-slot gear, on which you have near total creative freedom, and never have to worry about RNG ever again.

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Just gonna leave this here.

How to fix: Endgame, Gear Progression and Ressource Imbalances all at once

Common complaints about the game include: lack of endgame and gear progression too much RNG in itemization makes it near impossible to get the desired items items can retroactively get bricked by balance changes that directly or indirectly affect the value of Perks and Blessings Diamantine is effectively pointless, since Plasteel is always the bottleneck As the title says, i think that these shortcomings can be solved all at once and potentially with relatively low effort. All of them would…

[Lt.DavinFelth]

At this point in time anything is better than what we have right now. I’m just worried Fatshark will not include anything requiring serious tinkering with the established code.

New cosmetics?
Old: Player_avaliable_cosmetics_slots: X
New: Player_avaliable_cosmetics_slots: X+1
X+1 file location //blaforlder/blafolder2/CowDoung.jpg

New blessing? (power cycler)
Copy, Paste, Blessing_3rd_LvL_slot: X+1, base value -1.

I have weird feeling that almost all (except for bugs) updates concerning balance looked like that.

PS: Oh, sorry. Yes - great idea. It would actually include crafting in “crafting system”.
Also it would allow players to try new wacky builds.

[MeowBeep]

It could cost like ~10k melk bucks, ~20k plasteel, and ~15k diama. If you’ve managed to bank that much without getting exactly what you want, then you probably deserve exactly what you want.

[Freaktacular]

How long did it take for red rarity to be introduced in VT2, or was it there from the start?

[sleepy]

I think reds were on launch in VT2? Don’t quote me on that though I didn’t play at launch. I do know that the system of breaking them down into bright dust to create new reds however was a long standing pain point that afaik was never changed

[Garfielf]

In at the start, but it took about half a year for players to be able to craft them.

[BFCInsomnia]

That’s way too high. If it took that much to get an orange of red level quality, what’s the point of upgrading to red?

The cost should also be low enough so you can experiment with new stuff and not take months to grind for melk currency, especially since these currencies are not shared currently.

Imho: It should only cost Dia, anything from 5k to 10k is probably fine. That’s a minimum of 12 to 24 runs in case you didn’t know. It shouldn’t cost Melk currency or plasteel, god knows we don’t ever have enough of that already.

@Garfielf

it took about half a year for players to be able to craft them

Maybe before they buffed the droprate for them but I was able to get a full loadout of reds after 40 hours of playing. This amount of effort would be ideal for how long it should take to get a loadout of reds in DT too.

[JanZamoysky]

I doubt you will find anyone against the changes to the crafting system, but what is the point of creating another rarity level? That way we would just push the problem upwards instead of solving it for all. Just remove the crafting restrictions in general and streamline the process so we don’t need to use 3rd party mods to make it bearable.

[Lt.DavinFelth]

I hear ya in terms of simple lock removal, but new rarity level should be there to scratch OCD of some people and allowing others to have their perfect weapon.

How to explain it… right now Rarity only gives perks and blessings for each new level. Completely new level should also bring something to the table stats wise. Like 500 base rating for example.

What was the point of max stat value if it is unreachable? (80% max per bar with total for all 5 - 380)
Will we ever have weapon with 100% in damage? What the total of all bars would be?

[Flawless]

I suggested this earlier:

• Perks should be picked from a catalogue
  (like Reblessing, small cost every time a Perk is swapped)
• permanently remove locks from Perk slots
  (2k Diamantine; or something like 200 since this is such an important function)
• permanently remove locks from Blessing slots
  (2k Diamantine; or something like 200 since this is such an important function)
• upgrade weapon modifiers (allow everything to go up to 80 or 100)
  price it something like
  → 100 Diamantine per 1% increase per modifier until 80%
  → 150 Diamantine per 1% increase per modifier 81-90%
  → 200 Diamantine per 1% increase per modifier 91-100%
• unlock a Blessing of choice for the library
  (5k Diamantine for T4)

Basically, rarity upgrades should cost only plasteel.
Modifying the item (perks/blessings/modifier upgrades) should only cost diamantine.

Of course lock removal could also be hidden behind an additional rarity upgrade instead.

Imo having to pay mats every time a perk or blessing is swapped, is completely fine, as long as we get exactly what we want (putting on T4 Perks/Blessings could even be made more expensive, so that players have to actually consider the current value of making this extra investment for the additional bonus, that costs diamantine which could have been spent on modifier upgrades).

I also think that the ability to gradually upgrade the base modifiers of a weapon is important, because it would allow for constant gear progression (until it is maxed).
It would also respect the extra ressources you put in, when getting high modifier base weapons, because you would now have to spend less currency on maxing the weapon, than if you had just upgraded a 320 modifier item.
If you just upgraded the item to red and all the modifiers were maxed, you would have wasted your time earlier on, when trying to get an item with good modifiers.

Having access to the options mentioned above, would basically allow your weapon to grow with you, and you could gain a little bit of power after every single mission you play (until your gear is fully maxed at 100%).
The options mentioned, would still allow players to be lucky and get things a bit faster, but all RNG can be mitigated by simply farming a few extra ressources to spend on a guaranteed result.

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Click here for some additional details

Dockets pay for:

• new grey items

Plasteel pays for:

• upgrading rarity

Diamantine pays for:

• upgrading modifiers
• swapping perks and blessings
• removing locks from perks and blessings
• unlocking blessings of choice without RNG

Melk coins (store offerings are RNG, but at least you only pay for what you get) pay for:

• good items (already upgraded) to improve upon
• sacrificial items with good blessing

You buy base weapons with dockets. You decide if you want to pay more dockets to get better base items, or you use a weaker base item and spend more diamantine on modifier upgrades later.

You upgrade a grey item to orange by spending plasteel.
Either the item has Perks/blessings that you want, or some that you do not want.
You can choose to spend more dockets and plasteel to make a new orange item, or you can replace the stuff that you do not want, by spending diamantine to replace Perk/Blessing and remove locks (spending diamantine that you could have spent on modifier upgrades).

When you have an item that you like, you can choose to spend more diamantine on it, to turn it into the perfect killing machine with the exact perks and blessings that you want (and being able to switch them when ever you want).

If you want to test out a specific blessing, that you could not get with RNG yet, you just buy it for diamantine (that you could have spent on modifier upgrades).
Alternatively, you can buy and quality upgrade a bunch of items for dockets and plasteel, hoping to get the blessing by chance.

And here is the original post:

How to fix: Endgame, Gear Progression and Ressource Imbalances all at once

Common complaints about the game include: lack of endgame and gear progression too much RNG in itemization makes it near impossible to get the desired items items can retroactively get bricked by balance changes that directly or indirectly affect the value of Perks and Blessings Diamantine is effectively pointless, since Plasteel is always the bottleneck As the title says, i think that these shortcomings can be solved all at once and potentially with relatively low effort. All of them would…

[sleepy]

I kinda touched on this here

Why this is I don’t know, whether it’s a good decision or a mistake I also don’t know, but what I do know is that they want it, have designed a very complex system around it, and don’t seem to be willing to budge away from it.

This system seems pretty flawed at its core, I don’t think that’s any secret, but I also don’t think FS will be willing to just throw it all in the dumpster which is what removing those locks would sorta do. And even if they do just remove the locks

Even if FS unlocks perks and blessings we’ll still be stuck with a system where you’re effectively pulling the handle on Brunt’s slot machine over and over just hoping for all five stats to have the ideal 0-100 variance you’re looking for.

We’ve still got the RNG stats to deal with, so then the forums will shift from #BreakTheLocks to #CapTheStats because no one is going to be happy with the best perks and blessings to only then have to continue

pulling the handle on Brunt’s slot machine

So this was what I thought of as the best solution in that it doesn’t require FS to dumpster their entire gearing system by just getting rid of the RNG (which is pretty much the core of DT gearing) while also providing the players a way to circumvent said RNG

[sleepy]

I also think that the ability to gradually upgrade the base modifiers of a weapon is important, because it would allow for constant gear progression (until it is maxed).
It would also respect the extra ressources you put in, when getting base weapons, because you would now have to spend less currency on maxing the weapon, than if you had just upgraded a 320 modifier item.
If you just upgraded the item to red and all the modifiers were maxed, you would have wasted your time earlier on, when trying to get an item with good modifiers.

This is a very good point.

Also seems to fix the issue I felt my solution had of creating a jarring disconnect where some people are engaging infinitely for the perfect god roll in a complex crafting system and others just use that system as a way to get a “good enough” weapon to grind for reds.

[Mezmorki]

There are some missing gameplay loop items that they could tie into creating red items.

One thought is to add another crafting material that’s much more limited in quantity, call them “gems” for now. Maybe you need 50 gems to upgrade an orange item to red.

How do you get gems?

Killing a monster drops a gem. Killing a daemonhost drops 1-3 gems. Bringing back scripts/grims awards 1-5 gems, with the odds going up the more you bring back.

As part of this I’d tone down Daemonhosts a little, by making them only go after and kill the player that alerted them. Reduce their health a little. You’d have to kill the daemonhost before it soul-sucked their target and warps away.

The above is all about giving rewards for taking on added challenges during the mission, and having a real incentive to purse books and hunt daemonhosts would also be a way to increase the difficulty of the game at the same time.

[Flawless]

@Mezmorki

The above is all about giving rewards for taking on added challenges during the mission, and having a real incentive to purse books and hunt daemonhosts would also be a way to increase the difficulty of the game at the same time.

We already get some bonuses for bringing the books.
And books are a possible objective for the weekly task.

I think that making books an essential part of gear progression is not a good idea.
This is due to the way they work in this game.
In vermintide, it is no problem because books are always there, and you can bring all of them along.
But with the current implementation in Darktide, it is quite likely that any mission that does not have scriptures, would be pretty much dead.

Involving demon hosts could be fine, since with your suggested change, they would just force 1 player death if the party does not manage to kill it.
But still not a massive fan of that.

[sleepy]

One thought is to add another crafting material that’s much more limited in quantity, call them “gems” for now. Maybe you need 50 gems to upgrade an orange item to red.

I definitely don’t think this is a bad idea at its core, and there’s a lot of ways they could make a new currency work for w/e system, but a problem that comes up is this would really only work if there were optional mini-bosses so that a group could decide if the added risk was worth it. But as it stands mini-bosses either happen or they don’t, and if they do you can’t really skip them, so that’d basically just resign whether you obtain the currency or not to RNG. They could re-work grims / scriptures however to give some alternate currency instead of just extra dockets though, but that’s assuming they make them spawn in every mission à la VT2 like @Flawless said

In vermintide, it is no problem because books are always there, and you can bring all of them along.
But with the current implementation in Darktide, it is quite likely that any mission that does not have scriptures, would be pretty much dead.

Also if they made daemon-hosts drop anything, currency, loot dice, etc. They’d have to re-work them. They’re currently designed to be a “L4D witch” style monster, which is to say they are designed to be avoided and fighting them is only intended to happen by mistake. So incentivizing attacking them would be very counter-intuitive unless they re-worked them into a monstrosity like plague-ogryn.

They could also add a system of opt-in modifiers, I think there’s something similar in VT2 called bounties? Basically just a list of modifiers you can choose from that add in some form of new difficulty, like maybe “replace all maulers with crushers” or something like that, and in return your rewards are increased, or in this case it could reward a special currency. But that then creates the issue of there being no “true” lobby system, so you’d just end up dropped into a match that has some wacky modifier without any warning, whereas in VT2 you could decline the modifier when someone chose it in the lobby, or just leave before the match started if you didn’t want to do it.

[Mezmorki]

Vermintide 2 had the “deeds” which provided the bonus modifiers. You got an extra loot chest or two if you competed it.

Daemonhosts, IMHO, should be something the team I would want to hunt/purge, especially as a member of the inquisition. And FWIW the L4D witch was way way easier to kill. If you the players to line up at 30+ meters away and shoot it, or designate one player to draw it into the fire line of another player, the team can kill it reliably in 10 seconds or so. Daemonhosts have way too much life right now. If they become a challenge to take on, they’d need to have about half as much life and disappear after their first kill or something.

Collecting books: They could just put either scripts or grims on all missions automatically like in VT (and hopefully add some other secondaries options too). I also think reducing the variance in spawn locations would help. Maybe there is one spot in each map zone (the named sectios of maps) for grims and one for scripts, and it’s just a matter of checking that one spot in a zone on your way through.

Monsters dropping gems would be to set a baseline for gaining gems slowly but more reliably overtime. Then you have the extra challenges you can take on for more.