How to fix: The Crafting System (breaking the locks without actually removing them)

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
1

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

  • The crafting system is nothing like what was promised.

These shortcomings can be solved all at once and without completely removing Perk and Blessing locks from the system (because apparently, FS do not want to do that).

All of the problems would be solved with the following changes:

  1. Change the locking system to lock the Perk/Blessing that is customized, instead of locking the Perk/Blessing that is not changed.
Elaboration to point 1:

This would allow players to change both Perks and both Blessings once per weapon.

It would also allow to change all three Perks once per Curio.

Players would be stuck with the Perks and Blessings they decided to put on their items (whereas now, we are stuck with what we did not decide to put on our items).

The resulting items would have all their Perks and Blessings locked, but all of these Perks and Blessings were chosen and put there by the player.

For the purpose of variety, players could customize two or more copies of the same weapon, and more than 3 curios. This would be fine, since every weapon and curio would be 100% customized by player choice, with no RNG involved.

Any visual representation of actual locks has to be removed from all equipment.
The current visual representation uses the image of an actual lock in red color. Both the lock and the red color look like something negative. Especially when combined.
Considering that hundreds of people have voiced their dislike for the current lock system, it is important to not only change the system itself, but to also change how it looks in order to remove the negative visual image of these locks.

Any Perk or Blessing that is customized and thereby locked via the system i suggest above, should have an icon or a border with a golden glow instead. This conveys a positive feeling when looking at it.

With the current system, we perceive “This annoying red lock prevents me from changing this Perk/Blessing that i did not even choose to put there, just because i changed the other one to something that i like.”.

What i suggest, would be perceived as “This Perk/Blessing is shiny because i put it there myself. All of the things on my item are shiny, because i customized it to perfection.”

In order to transition into this system, all existing locks should simply be removed from existing items.

  1. Add weapon Modifier upgrades.
Elaboration to point 2.:

Allow players to upgrade all the modifiers of their weapons by spending diamantine.

This would allow players to invest diamantine in their weapons to fix a low stat, or to maximize the power of a favorite by putting time and effort into grinding for it.

With enough time and Diamantine invested, the resulting weapons would have all their Modifiers upgraded to 100. Alternatively, the max upgrade level could be temporarily kept at 80 or 90 for all stats, until a higher difficulty is available in the game.

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%

  1. Allow Perks to be selected from a catalogue. (just like Blessings are selected)

No elaboration required.

  1. Add the ability to “learn” a Blessing of choice to unlock it in the catalogue.
Elaboration to point 4:

Unless we have the ability to “learn” a specific Blessing of choice, to be able to apply it to our weapons, players will never be able to properly experiment with all of the available Blessings, or finish their weapon build without heavily relying on luck.

The originally proposed idea of allowing players to fuse 3 copies of the same Blessing in order to increase their tier, does not solve the problem because this system still relies on luck, and many Blessings only exist on a single tier (often T4) anyway.

Learning a blessing without needing a weapon to extract it from, could cost something like 5k Melk Bucks or 5k Diamantine for T4 Blessings. It could also be limited to 1 learned T4 Blessing per week per character.

  1. Add the ability to upgrade Perks/Blessings.
Elaboration to point 5:

With Perks and Blessings now getting locked when customized, a player should still have the option to upgrade the tier of their locked Perks and Blessings.

Maybe you just unlocked the T4 version of a Blessing, or you could not afford the T4 version of a Perk before. Having originally selected a lower tier version of a Perk or Blessing, should not permanently ruin a weapon.

  1. Add the ability to desecrate a weapon to lower the rarity and then reset the Perks/Blessings by upgrading it again via consecration.
Elaboration to point 6:

Consecrating an item increases the rarity by 1 step at a time.

Players should be able to reduce the rarity of their items by desecrating them (either by 1 step at a time, or straight back to grey) without changing the modifiers of the item.

After desecrating an item, it can be consecrated again, to add fresh and customizable Perks and Blessings.

If a Perk or Blessing gets nerfed or buffed, players should be able to adjust their items in response.

Or maybe you changed your mind regarding a Perk or Blessing that you chose to put on your item, and you do not want to spend thousands of diamantine to upgrade the modifiers of a new weapon.

Having the ability to desecrate an item, then pay ressources to consecrate it again, would effectively allow to reset the Perks and Blessings for a price.

This is the same as getting a new weapon and upgrading it, except you do not lose the modifier upgrades that you spent thousands of diamantine on.

  1. Adjust the pricing of Perk/Blessing swaps.
Elaboration to point 7:

Since modified weapons can be customized to perfection and are no longer disposable, the pricing of Perk and Blessing swaps should be increased.

More specifically, the pricing of the high tier variants should be increased.

At lvl 30, T3 Perks and Blessing should be cheap enough for everyone.

T4 Perks and Blessings should become a bit more expensive to represent their function as being the pinnacle bonuses. Applying them to a weapon should cost the equivalent of the ressources gained from something like 5 Damnation missions.

  1. Remove diamantine cost from weapon quality upgrades.
Elaboration to point 8:

In order to remove the Plasteel bottleneck from crafting, and to make both Diamantine and Plasteel useful, they should have different uses.

Upgrading the rarity of an item should only or mostly cost plasteel.

Customizing an item (Modifier upgrades and Perk/Blessing swaps/upgrades) should only or mostly cost diamantine.

Diamantine would be valuable and players would have to evaluate if they want to spend it on T4 Perks/Blessings, or if they would rather have more diamantine to spend on modifier upgrades.

Plasteel would only be used for quality upgrades, and allow players to dump any excess quantity into weapons to try and get random T4 Blessings.

Ressource imbalance, endgame and everything regarding itemization, solved at the same time, without removing locks.

Got excess diamantine? Spend it on the systems i mentioned above.

Improve the good items that you already have, or save up to buy that specific T4 blessing that you want to use, but could not get your hands on.

Got excess plasteel? Upgrade grey items.

Maybe you pop out a new T4 blessing that you do not yet have.

Problems with endgame and progression would be solved.

Players could invest in the improvement of items that they already have and actually want to use, with the guarantee that no ressources are wasted to bad RNG.

A guaranteed and steady progression towards the perfect items.

Itemization would no longer exclusively rely on RNG.

People would have the additional option to spend large amounts of diamantine to circumvent all RNG, while the option to hope for good RNG persists.

“bricked items” would no longer be a thing.

The player could choose to spend more plasteel, hoping to get a better “base item”, or decide to work with the “base item” they have, spending more diamantine to shape it into the item they want.

Both Diamantine and Plasteel would be valuable.

The two ressources would have different uses and would be the limiting factor for each use.

Both ressources would stay valuable and useful, basically forever.

8 Likes
2

Added it.

2 Likes
3

I only got so far that maybe let us remove the locks by paying a few thousand Diamantine/lock, since it would be easier to implement.

That being said I like your idea better :wink:

3 Likes
4

I don’t know why you’re pushing for locks. The issue isn’t that locks exist in-materia, but rather that the system as it’s designed limits people’s ability to freely experiment and is just generally a waste of time to interact with. Your “point 1” doesn’t solve those issues, and just displaces them. People would also still have to deal with poor weapon stat rolls, so pulling the slots to get a decent roll for them would remain a source of pain same as it is now. We need far fewer gambling interactions and more free-form control.

2 Likes
5

“It is the story of a man who did insane things because he put in practice what many Saints have preached.” - the Ministorum Libra Martyr

image
image600Ă—804 74.3 KB

2 Likes
6

I am not.
I am simply showing an option that allows some type of locks to stay in the game, while still allowing players to get the exact items that they want and to circumvent every single bit of randomness that is currently involved.

Maybe you would prefer my original proposal?

————

If you do not look at point 1 in isolation, but include the other points as well, you would notice that every one of these problems is solved.
The specific things you mentioned, are solved by points 2 and 6.
If you think that i really left something out, feel free to point it out, so that i can solve that as well.

Of course, experimenting would require you to either upgrade a few greys and slap different blessing combinations on them, or to desecrate an item to swap out the 2nd blessing a bunch of times.

I would prefer if we had „test weapons“ that can be modified freely, but can only be equipped in the meatgrinder, to allow players to experiment in there, without having to waste ressources.
But this might go too far for FS, so i did not add it to the OP.
Maybe i will add it anyway.

2 Likes
7

I agree, but it’s a question of if fatshark, hypothetically, was never willing to do it, what would allow you to more easily craft perfect weapons and make it more likely for FS to change something? If they made it so that the blessing (and perk) that gets locked is the one you swap, you can much more easily get what you want, but yes can’t experiment with the same weapon. But all you would need is a good mod base. Looking at blues, greens, etc. Is more viable now as all that matters is their base.

1 Like
8

No, they are not solved in your other points. People would still have to gamble for high rolls to avoid spending excess crafting resources to boost stats. And your “point 6” (reducing rarity) seems about as arbitrary and pointless, adding unnecessary complexity that just plainly doesn’t have to exist if the locks were removed in their entirety. You don’t have to overcomplicate things.

9

There’s no reason to speak to hypotheticals of whether or not they’ll do anything because they’ve been stone silent on the issue. We can come up with ideas all day, but they just really need to solve the core tenants of the issue, which is to remove parts of the system that restrict player agency and time bloat. Everybody agrees the locks have to go to increase agency, and it has a doubling effect of lessening the time bloat to crafting an item. Brainstorming more complicated ideas is fine, but as of right now we just need a cohesive and simple stance that everybody can easily get behind (which is to just simply #breakthelocks).

1 Like
10

The problems are solved.
You may not like the way i did it, but they are solved.
Instead of lying, you could just say what you actually mean.

And apparently you lack the reading comprehension to understand the part about not entirely removing the locks because FS apparently do not want to…

11

Using the “just because” response doesn’t help.

12

???
I linked the thread that i originally made. Where i elaborated a solution that would remove the locks.

Many other have asked for a straight up removal of locks.

Now i suggest a viable alternative that does not entirely remove the locks „just because“ it seems like there is no way to make them get rid of locks.
An alternative that still solves every single problem with the crafting system.

And you come at me with this bs and claim that i am „pushing for locks“?
Get a grip.

Unless you have something useful to say, i suggest you stop posting here.

13

Why are you bringing up other topics? I responded to this one (specifically to your first one, and indirectly to your second). Don’t move goalposts.

Here’s my general stance:
I don’t agree with overcomplicating locks. I advocate for their complete removal. I don’t agree with creating an entirely new economy and complicated system for removing or moving around locks and translating the current issues into an increased resource grind that’s just going to take even more time to balance out.

And, if it were up to me, I’d completely remove having to run around each map like chickens looking in every nook and cranny for little macguffin dopamine hits. For an alternate system, I’m an advocate of the athanor: you complete a run, get a single point resource to spend, and choose where to spend them. Simple, and no distractions to gameplay. Things don’t have to be like a casino game or so damn complicated.

And like I said in my reply to brosgw, we don’t need to go into any of that right now. We just need to all get together under one roof and have them simply remove the locks. Nearly everybody hates them, and they gotta go. We can discuss particulars after they’re gone.

Having cohesion in our message is more important at the moment.

14

You ignored my explanation for suggesting a system with a different kind of locks.
Then you replied to the OP (which includes this explanation) by lying about me “pushing for locks” and making the false claim that certan problems would not be solved (which is quite obvious to anyone who has read and understood the message).

In order to show you that you are lying (and apparently lacking reading comprehension), i quoted my statement from the OP, explaining that the reason for me suggesting a system that still has some kind of locks: FS apparently are not willing to remove locks in their entirety.
Then i brought up the other thread to show you just how wrong you are, since i have been pushing to remove locks for months.

I am not moving goal posts. You lied and i showed the receipts.

It is probably not a great idea to not discuss anything specific, until the locks are removed.
Considering that simply removing these locks is something that they could probably have done within a single week about 4 months ago, but have chosen not to do so…

15

I didn’t ignore anything. You either don’t understand what I said. or don’t like that I don’t agree with it. I commented on specifics of your post, and you don’t need to bring up other topics to help defend it. That’s moving goalposts.

And, your “point one” quite literally speaks to adding more locks.

I don’t know why your first reaction would be to call me a liar “with receipts” when you said yourself you’re adding locks in your own revisioning. You’re just redistributing locks around. We don’t need that in any form. It’s especially arbitrary to design it like that too (it doesn’t serve a particular purpose or give a means to an end).

16

Dey’ll neva get rid o da locks in totality cuz of player retention.
Dat bein said, I like dis git OP’s suggestions for da most part.

3 Likes
17

And this is where you are wrong again.

When your choices are semi permanent, you are incentivized to actually use your brain when choosing perks/blessings.
You can very quickly get the exact weapon that you want, but at the same time the system would also incentivize to get 2 or more versions of the same weapon if you want different perk/blessing combinations for different things.
Because of this, even if you already have one good weapon of type x, any new drop of weapon type x is not automatically 100% worthless.
It keeps the hourly and daily shop as well as the emperor’s gifts relevant for much longer.

What would you suggest?
You can’t remove modifiers. Otherwise basically the entire item and reward system would break apart you would have powerful weapons as soon as you play the game for the first time.
You can’t have the option to upgrade a weapon to instantly max all the modifiers. Modifier values would become completely irrelevant because they all just get maxed in the next upgrade anyway. No progression. Boring as hell. Does not feel good to interact with.

With what i suggest, any high modifier weapon from the hourly and daily shop as well as emp gifts, can be valuable. If you have not gotten lucky yet, you just use brunt instead.
You have the choice to either wait to get lucky, or to spend gold on brunt.

If you choose to go to brunt, you probably buy something like 10-20 weapons until you get one with near 380 modifier. This is completely fine considering that you can then modify that weapon to be exactly what you want. The only reason why brunt currently sucks, is that you have to buy hundreds of weapons since you need many good base items because almost all of them get bricked during upgrades.
Again, you have the choice to buy more high modifier weapons until the stat distribution is also the way you want it, or you just upgrade the modifiers with diamantine (which you would do anyway in the long run) and save your gold to buy skins.

Once you have your weapon perked and blessed up, every single mission rewards you enough diamantine to allow you to slightly improve the modifiers of your weapons. Every single time you upgrade your modifiers after a mission, or after a session of playing multiple missions, you will feel rewarded and like you actually accomplished something in the game. No rng. 100% straight forward progression that you get for playing the game.

This is basically perfect. It keeps all sources of loot as well as all currencies relevant, lets you make choices at multiple levels and allows you to spend more or less of a currency depending on which one of them you value more.
There is some RNG involved, which can allow you to progress a bit faster (or might make you try out a specific weapon if you just got a lucky drop), but there is absolutely nothing random in the system that can not be circumvented.
100% of the system is ultimately controlled by the player’s choice and nothing really relies on rng. With this system, anything that is determined by luck, is not punishing, but rewarding. You can basically only get lucky, but not unlucky.

You might think that you do not personally like it, but if you actually interacted with such a system, it is almost guaranteed that you would like it.

18

Normally we don’t conscript Orks, but these are desperate times. Welcome to the warband #352.

2 Likes
19

A lot of good idea but crafting is not the endgame, challenging content is. What will people do with their awesome now builds of the only options are low intensity and normal. You cant change crafting witout freeing the difficulty.

20

What i mean is, that this would fix the endgame in the sense of a purpose and something to work towards, when playing the game.

Although i think that for a lot of players, just having a well implemented grind will be enough to keep them around for longer, we should of course also have something in the game, that offers more „challenging gameplay“ to those who want that as their endgame.

Imo we should get an extra difficulty tier or an always available damnation HI+STG mission, but i also wonder what percentage of the playerbase even plays on damnation.
For everyone who does not care about a challenge beyond regular damnation, a well made crafting system should provide all the endgame they need.