How about this idea for a crafting idea to replace the RNG

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
1

Crafting is a RNG joke at the moment, that does nothing but spit in the face of players who have devoted their time and effort to the game.

The majority of players know this, as we can tell by the numbers of players who left the game for this exact reason.

Instead of bashing what we already know is broken, I think throwing some idea’s about of what the majority of us like and can get behind could be interesting.

Obviously if the likes of TenCents and others are pushing for mechanics to keep players then fine, there is always a right way and wrong way.

Personally I think that crafting as it is needs to be scrapped entirely, start from fresh.

The way I would do is this:

You buy a weapon from brutes as normal, weapons obviously limited by class as normal.

You get a basic weapon score of 300 (at level 30, base level increases with player level to a maximum of 300). This also means you can by weapons as soon as you start leveling, enabling you to keep the same weapon as you level all the way through to the end game, your old reliable auto-gun that been through the wars with you.

From Hadron you buy tier 1 Blessing and perks with Dockets, all blessing and all perks are available (no locks).

So now you have your basic 300 (at level 30, base level increases with player level to a maximum of 300) modifier rated weapon, to a maximum score of 380.

You run missions and find resources, get rewards etc.

Plasteel - Is used to increase modifier score up to a maximum of 80% in whatever modifier you want (use these need a rework too to make them all essential to the build of the weapon)

Diamantine - Is used to level up Perks

New Rare resources - are used at Handron’s to upgrade blessings and are collected from completing weeklies and depending on the difficulty the rare the resources for higher tier crafting, collecting scripture and grim’s with grim’s rewarding higher tier resources (So there is an actual reason for doing them, maybe they are the only source of a specific resource you need)

And most importantly, done at rate that players can earn rewards quick enough as to not spend months grinding to try new and interesting combinations on a regular basis… If the build doesn’t work, it’s couple of days or no more than 10 damnation run’s to get 99% of the build done

And every time you buy a new weapon the process starts again. Of course, if you hate a build, you can break it down and get % of all resource types used back in return.

All of this has zero RNG, players are rewarded for their time and they get to build their choice of weapon exactly how they like it… And if it doesn;t work out in the build, it’s not millions of Dockets down the drain fighting RNG.

Scriptures and grims now have a reason, as does Diamantine, weeklies become more important, rather than working for random garbage in the hope they may have level 4 blessing you might not have…

And players get to experiment without wasting time and effort fighting the RNG BS too.

Of course, this is just the way I would have done it, of course, being a forum post it’s not exactly super detailed, but it roughly in the ball park of what I would do. Also I am not saying my idea is the best, just throwing it out there to the wind… Then watch a barrel of hate and resentment come my way… Oh the internet.

Maybe someone else has a better idea, who knows, but it would be intersting to see people idea’s and what they would do… We know crafting is garbage, but it would be nice to see the alternatives.

3 Likes
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Honestly it’s hard to make the system any worse than it is now.

For base weapons being raised with player level I think this makes sense but I would go past 30. So if 380 is the true max at level 110 all weapons should be 380 base. Brunts, Armoury, Melks, and emps gifts. If you played one class to level 110 you deserve it. Do that 4 times for each character and new DLC class/characters likely that’s a big time sink on it’s own.

And they’re probably going to release 400 base weapons so level 130.

I do think modifiers going past 80% would be good too. And playing with those modifiers (tweaking where you want your limited points. Can’t just max everything out). Damage is one everyone will go for so maybe have that modifier cost more/others cost less. Or modifiers past 80 cost more just for damage or something.

Maybe only reds can get to 400 base and past 80% modifiers.

I think as long as it’s sensible to upgrade a weapon rarity and modifiers for newer players to be able to feel they can compete and not feel their gear is holding them back/not able to clearly achieve the vision they have for what they want their gear to do; I think it will be a good balance. One way to do that is like you said allow some cost for someone to keep putting it into the same weapon, it’s just it invalidates melk and armoury and brunts. So not sure if they will do that. You could make it so only reds have the kind of customization you are asking for but can’t get it until level 30 and requires a lot of resources to make a weapon red.

Or make it a mile stone. Every level after 30 gives you something to spend to transcend a weapon to red. So people aren’t spamming whatever difficulty gives you the best chance when they aren’t ready for damnation and such.

Adding this idea to the wall of woes.

3 Likes
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I have zero standards i would be perfectly happy with one extra lock on curios/weapons. unbrickable curios and one locked thing in a weapon i can live with.

4

Take the fing locks off, easy quick and a few lines of code. Profit.

1 Like
5

Someone somewhere last year had this idea that I still think meets everyone’s needs in the best compromise:

  • Add a new resource, let’s call it X
  • You get one single X for the first set of weeklies completed on any character. You can only earn one per week per account.
  • X can be used to change any locked perk or blessing on any weapon, after which it will lock again and this time for good. So you can only ever spend a maximum of 2 X on a given weapon, and after that it’s now locked forever.
  • That’s it

For us players, our biggest problem is the lack of agency. For Fatshark, their biggest problem is that Darktide has very little unique content and is instead designed around extreme repetition (random missions, modifiers, variable AI spawns, etc, we do the same thing over and over with slight variations every single time)… So keeping that perfect gear ever elusive and out of reach is the necessary carrot to drive up player engagement, and keep us coming back. You don’t have to agree, neither do I, it simply is what it is. Our goals are mutually exclusive.

So proposing full player agency period is pointless, it’s not going to happen. Something like the above however would give us full agency, but do it in such small, controlled doses and over such a long period of time that it might be enough of a compromise.

On one hand, 2 weeks would be enough to let anyone take their favorite gun with the best rolls and perfect it. But that’s still only 26-52 weapons per year. Even a single character needs dozens of different weapons to cover every popular build (ranged & melee ofc.), and there will be a lot of new marks, weapons, and balance changes over a whole year to make sure we’ll still never have enough for all our needs.

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6

Why reinvent the wheel when we literally have their past game with normal crafting…

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I agree, if they bring out reds, then yeah, allow the modifiers, perks and blessings get higher to 100% and raise the max to 400 or whatever makes sense etc.

I was only working with what we have in the game now, if they release reds, then raise the maximums accordingly, if it makes sense, it would easy to implement anyway and no one would grumble.

If the whole trying new builds is a thing, then Melks and Brunts will always need to be around to purchase weapons from, get weeklies, collect rewards for missions, buy resourses… It’s just that they won’t sell insulting garbage.

But yeah, I agree with ya…

1 Like
8

I mentioned in my post that one of the things that will be needed is a system that needs to bring the back and keep them playing. As I said somewhere else, the biggest problem with the game is, that they released it far to earlier, everything was a filler, the game was buggy, as result, developer time was swallowed up finishing the game off, rather creating new maps, enemies, bosses, monstrosities to keep things interesting.

For me, never being able to reach that weapon I really want just annoy the hell out of me. It’s the sort of nasty move you do to force players to hand over $$$ and it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. But I fully understand the reasons why you said that.

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They’d really just have to emulate Athanor and they’d be good. It’s not hard.

3 Likes
10

This is not really a solution for the issues with the crafting system.
Now a balance change will permanently brick weapons, that have even more time and effort invested into them. Even worse, you can not just farm the ressource that you wasted.
Getting good modifiers would still be horrible.
Getting any specific blessing would still be horrible.
Testing out a few different builds would still be horrible.

I still advocate for this:
1. Remove diamantine cost from consecration.
This would serve to separate diamantine from the RNG systems.
2. Enable modifier upgrades for diamantine cost.
Allow all 5 modifiers of an item to be upgraded to 80%.
(Maybe change the max stats so that the current 80% is the new 100%. The bars should cap at either 80/80 or 100/100.
Having the bar cap at 80/100 makes no sense and is confusing. Especially with the “max stats” shown in the weapon info are not something that can actually be achieved.
If they intend to increase the max stats of items later on, they can still do that when it is time.)
3. Enable blessing “learning” for diamantine cost.
Spend diamantine to add any blessing of choice to your library, if you want to skip the RNG of getting it from consecration/melk/emp gift.
4. Enable permanent lock removal for diamantine cost.
Each additional slot being unlocked on the same item, costs an increasing amount of diamantine.
(Maybe lock all perk and blessing slots of an item by default, and let us unlock the first slot for free.)

Everything else about itemization can stay as it is.

This would leave dockets and plasteel as ressources for RNG systems and make diamantine a ressource that is all about deterministic upgrades and unlocks.
Plasteel and dockets can still be spent to get good items or farm blessings via RNG, but now we would have the option to get anything without any RNG at all, by spending diamantine.
For the actual use case we would spend some dockets and plasteel to get something alright, then spend diamantine to polish it.

All existing systems of item acquisition and crafting could stay in place.
The three ressources involved, would automatically be balanced by the player’s engagement with the system.
Items could no longer be bricked.
If you wanted to try out any specific build, you could. If you wanted to go back to your previous setup, you could.

1 Like
11

The question is, how exactly it would be done.

Remove all actual items from the game and turn weapon type, perks and blessings into slots in your loadout?

Or keep all actual items in the game and change the crafting menu into something similar to the athanor, allowing players to upgrade the modifiers and swap unlocked perks and blessings at no cost?

Both options have pros and cons.
I think i would favor the second option. It would keep existing weapons relevant.

2 Likes
12

Crafting in this game should be RNG free.

All RNG does is screw you over, there is no benefit or reason to have it what-so-ever.

It’s just a sinister mechanic employed to keep people playing and is always stacked against the players.

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Thats why i suggested a way to reduce the impact of RNG in all aspects to a degree, that you can simply farm diamantine to get exactly what you want.

You might not want it to be the case, but if you like it or not, some degree of RNG actually makes it better for most people.
As long as RNG is an option and not the only way to get something, it is not really a problem.

1 Like
14

I have become rather jaded about crafting in terms of it not getting much better, because it’s kinda obvious at this point the complete overhaul is not gonna happen - it probably won’t be worth the time spent on it, even if they design the best system in the history of gaming.

I think the best we can hope for is maaaaaybe 3 changeable aspects of a weapon instead of 2 (out of 4), and some sort of additional system for acquiring blessings you want. Any more than that - they would have to admit they were wrong this whole time about locks and yeah… most likely not happening.

15

Then they kill off their game.

Lots of players are sticking around in the the hope they get ride of this garbage system, some are not playing until it is changed.

If they spit in the face of players again, the game dies. Simple as.

Never treat your fan base like mugs. GW are now finding that out.

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The 2nd one would be more in character and also lign up with what Catfish hinted at. She said something to the effect of “keep your bricked weapons” with a winky face.

Just essentially allow free reslotting of any slot, with an extra option for Hadron to also upgrade or rescale attributes (not random).

Building an interface for that with functionality should be easier than redoing crafting as a whole or any other shenanigan. And they can keep the already established base for what they have to begin with.

17

The best solutions are simplest ones.

You don’t have to anything fancy.

Run missions, earn money and resources, makes weapons you want. It really is that simple at the core of it.

You can’t have a no cost system, you have to have things in place that make players want/need to do to keep playing.

Every crafting system from D&D, board games, computer games always have a cost associated with it… It has to have a cost, otherwise it just gets boring.

1 Like
18

All that it would take is to remove the locks and make the base weapon stats integral to the weapon itself instead of randomised.

No more of this “80% Damage this, 21% Penetration that”, etc. Just make it so that a base weapon will perform the exact same way as everyone else’s version of that same base weapon.

Blessings and Perks should just be your “personal touches” to a base weapon.

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That sounds immeasurably complex. Almost as complex as giving players a means to remove locks (and letting them upgrade weapon stats (both of which they could have done in place of that update last August)) while they work on the crafting rework so the poor game, and the poor sods still playing it, don’t continue to be saddled with this sad sad of s*** system over a year after release.

I can see it now, the announcement from a (slightly) better universe…

Greetings Operatives

In today’s update we will giving you the ability to remove the locks on your weapons and curios, as well as upgrade the modifiers on your weapons. However, these are just measures to address the long-standing issues of RNG in Darktide’s crafting system while we work on a total overhaul. It’s something that’s still very much in progress, so we can’t say much about it right now, but we’re excited to share more details about it in the (hopefully!) near future!

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Being able to use resources to bump all weapons to 80% would be nice, allowing for a valid reason to grind missions.