You have literally missed the point in all of your points.
RNG is a tried and true method to add a bit of variation to systems. It isn’t something that you stack on a system until getting an output you want is worse than winning a lottery.
The issue isn’t the existence of RNG, it’s that in DT it has too much RNG, even with the upcoming additions to crafting.
RNG is not game design, and the itemisation system is currently and in the near future is too reliant on a long, almost purely RNG crutch to hide the lack of content the game has.
If there were more maps. characters, etc, the RNG for items wouldn’t be quite so aggravating.
If the RNG system wasn’t so stingy in giving items that are wanted, the lack of content wouldn’t be felt as much, as you can use it to vary your playstyles, try new builds, etc.
Right now it’s in the worst of both situations, little content and no rewards or anything to work or aim towards. You cannot work towards RNG.
Stop trying to reason with people. You obviously are not a reasonable person.
I will just say that much to break down everything wrong with what you said.
This is our current system (and this will still be the case after the update):
Everything is RNG. RNG sucks. It is not possible to earn anything at all. Looking at RNG numbers sucks.
There is (almost) no progression. The entire system wastes the player’s time.
Knowing that you will never get what you want, sucks.
The entire system sucks because there is no incentive to play, when you know that you will realistically never get what you want.
Even if you ever get what you want, the entire experience until then will suck, and there is no progression until that point.
What we want is 100% clear (you just seem to lack any kind of reading comprehension):
Low to no RNG. Everything should be earned. Looking at earned numbers is nice.
Meaningful progression that rewards the player for their time and effort.
Knowing exactly, how you can get what you want, is nice.
The entire experience with the system will be nice, because it allows for a constant progress towards the final goal.
You certainly do not understand this, but i will write it down for other people who might read it:
Darktide is a software program. It is not evolved, but designed.
Everything is by design. Everything that sucks, sucks because of the way it is designed.
Items are not real world objects, that will break if you change both perks and both blessings.
When we change one perk, the other one gets locked, because additional work and effort were put in to make it that way.
When the update comes, changing one blessing will lock the other one, because additional work and effort were put in to make it that way.
Stop defending a system with multiple instances of stupid limitations, that were actively put in place as a design choice that almost everyone hates.
If RNG in-core idea - it’s really fun and dandy. Against the Storm for example is RNG-based game, where RNG plays core role in gameplay process, so replayability is not strict to diffuculty, but also for randomly aquired insturments and recepies.
In Darktide RNG was implemented lately as time consuming solution, none of devs will ever prove it’s true, but that strong feeling of lame and wobly implemented RNG crap, stupid shop with stupid algoritm and useless sire Melk just showing us all signs of badly implemented appendix.
I agree on that. However I see lots of comments on how “they just want crafting” etc etc. Same with making crafting even better by making everything able to be recrafted and thus getting whatever you want.
That’s not the direction Fatshark is going though, but dunno. Maybe it’ll become that.
I would prefer if they sort out regular progression and rewards FIRST, then rework crafting. Because if they implement crafting now, it’ll most likely have to be tweaked when they get around to solve the fundamental progression loop. Or they will have it work in conjuction with crafting because they have already reworked it. To me this is just backwards priority.
But I understand since crafting was promised it gets priority. Hence my comment on that it’ll probably won’t make me stay for long since running missions to grab crafting materials from containers isn’t exactly fun for me progression wise.
I’ll prefer they make playing the game more valuable. Reward based on performance. I think they have mentioned that they are looking into progression overall and they did some tweak to emperors gift, but eh, from what I remember it isn’t enough for me.
Progression, rewards and crafting are usually interwoven with each other.
You get rewards and feed them into the crafting system to progress your stuff.
Since progression and rewards are connected to crafting in this game, why should they not fix the glaring issues with crafting first?
No matter how many rewards you get, they are worth nothing (and not even rewarding) if they are just being burned by a bad crafting system that in reality does not actually allow you to progress at all.
If progression and rewards were not connected to crafting in this game, what else would they be?
They are connected as I think my post implied. They do affect each other.
Interwoven doesn’t mean they contribute equally much though. That’s my personal opinion of course and I know others who enjoy crafting more probably won’t agree. The foundation of progression should be from playing. Just to give some % I probably want ~80% of your progression coming from playing, drops and doing challenges and what not. To push it to 100% you should use crafting to help it along.
Take Diablo II for example, there’s crafting there and it’s probably a great way to get specific amulets and such. But the main progression is still killing bosses and champions to get that loot and ONTOP of that loop you can craft. I don’t think you disagree with that the foundation for that games progression is the loot game, not crafting even if crafting can be very helpful to push it a bit further. Those systems are also interwoven but hardly at equal value.
Your assumption to both of those questions are that I don’t think they are connected. I’m confused how you got that interpretation when I said they do affect each other.
You said they should FIRST rework progression and rewards. THEN rework crafting.
I said two things:
In darktide, progression, rewards and crafting are connected.
You play and get rewards. You feed the rewards into the crafting system and get progression (At least in theory. That is how it would work, if the crafting system was not garbage).
Because these three are connected, crafting should be fixed first.
Without proper crafting, there is no progression in darktide.
Without proper crafting, all items and ressources you get as rewards, will be burned by the bad crafting system and effectively be deleted.
Reworking ressource acquisition first, is pointless because the ressources will all be wasted and have no value (as long as crafting is not fixed).
Reworking progression by itself, is not really possible, unless you decouple gear progression from crafting, which would make ressources and crafting pretty much pointless.
Unless crafting is made good, reworking rewards (or changing progression, which is not possible without changing crafting) will not change the result of the system.
Reworking Progression and rewards without reworking crafting first (which is what you suggested), is only possible and reasonable, if crafting is largely decoupled from the other two, and if crafting is largely irrelevant.
If progression and rewards were not connected to crafting in this game, what else would they be?
How else would progression and rewards work?
What would crafting do?
You do a roundabout way to get to a conclusion and ask me about said conclusion. That’s not my conclusion though.
They are connected. We agree on that. So I can’t really answer this.
This is me saying they are connected. Otherwise they wouldn’t affect each other.
Granted the correct wording should be “fix crafting” or “implement a fix for crafting” rather than implement on it’s own. But that doesn’t change that I still have those 2 connected to each other. Otherwise crafting wouldn’t need to change when the reward loop is fixed.
I can’t really answer your questions on what they would be if not connected. Or how they would work if they aren’t nor what crafting would do if it wasn’t.
I mean technically, on the top of my head, crafting for cosmetics would probably be separate from the progression loop but still affected by the rewards. It just wouldn’t have any impact in reverse. But that’s beside the point.
Good.
In that case, it makes absolutely no sense that you would suggest to change rewards and progression before fixing the crafting system. I explained why. And i will do it again:
Progression, Rewards and Crafting are connected.
Rewards (gear and ressources) are fed into the Crafting system to give you better gear (Progression).
→ Because 1. and 2. are true: Prog and Rewards can not be fixed without fixing the Crafting system.
→ Fixing Prog and Rewards before fixing the Crafting system is impossible.
→ Because it is impossible, suggesting to fix Prog and Rewards before fixing the Crafting system is unreasonable.
I assume, that you are reasonable.
You suggested to fix Prog and Rewards first, then fix Crafting.
→ Because 1. and 2. are true: You suggested to do something that is impossible/unreasonable.
→ For your suggestion to be possible/reasonable (3), Premises 1 and 2 have to change.
Conclusion A: Yor your suggestion was not reasonably thought through, and is impossible and unreasonable, because it does not include a change to the connection between Prog, Rewards and Crafting (points 1 and 2 stand, point 3 is not true).
Conclusion B: Your suggestion was reasonably thought through, and is possible and reasonable, because it includes a change to the connection between Prog, Reewards and Crafting (point 3 stands, points 1 and 2 must change).
Still assuming that you are reasonable (conclusion B), i asked this:
If they’re going to do any sort of big change. They should definitely put out a 4:1 sale where one purchase of the game nets you 3 extra copies giftable to friends so you can get groups of players to join instead of solos whom in my personal experience tend to drop off more often than those who start together.
You seem to think they are linked 1-1. Which I don’t agree on.
I say gameplay rewards are the foundation. As the term implies the rest ontop of it will be affected by the foundation. But also the foundation needs to be adjusted and built with the everything going ontop of it in mind.
Doesn’t change the fact that the foundation still is the most important thing to get right and it’ll cause an effect on everything else more so than the reverse.
Your question makes little sense still.
They are connected. Just not equally weighted. You are making your bullet point based on that they are.
I didn’t say “Fix the foundation AND DON’T CARE ABOUT CRAFTING”. Not even close. You have to fix the foundation with crafting in mind. But I still think it should be fixed first. Personal opinion of course. It’s perfectly fine if you don’t think so.
Lets take combat for example. If you tweak a certain attack it will most likely not cause issues with the combat in place. If you change the foundation and tweak maybe combo executions, or movement or the speed for the combat it will most likely affect the individual attacks as well. My view is simply about efficiency.
Doesn’t mean it can’t ruin combat if it’s tweaked nor doesn’t it mean the inverse is true either.
If Fatshark want crafting to be the MAIN reward loop it’s fine if they 100% solve crafting before they even touch the loot. If they want the opposite then it makes no sense in fixing crafting first because it will most likely end up being tweaked again afterwards.
They still have to be taking into consideration together. This idea of “they can’t be solved independently” is mischaracterisation of my argument. I only said loot reward should be fixed first, not void of any influence from whatever crafting plans they have. They are connected after all.
That’s my argument.
Not this bullet point you cooked up to ask a silly question as an ultimatum.
Conclusion A - you’re not reasonable
Conclusion B - you’re reasonable so now you have to answer a question of something that isn’t your argument or position.
Your entire bullet point is a projection based on your view on this. You take my comment on that I think they are connected, throw out all nuance of what I’m saying and how they affect each other and how they can impact each other differently depending on goal and implementation; then make your bullet point based on what your view on “connected” means and not mine.
I’m not answering your questions because it has nothing to do with my view. It’s your view, or rather your belief of what my view is. From my POV you’re the unreasonable one (insert anakin meme) because this is very silly.
I’ve said enough of this topic. If you hink I’m unreasonable shrug
I explained why making any change at all to the rewards, does not effectively do anything as long as crafting is not fixed. Not based on my opinion, but based on how crafting actually works in the game.
I never said that they are equally weighted and nothing that i said is based on them being equally weighted.
Correct. And i did not claim that you said that.
Here is what you said:
And here is me correctly representing your statement, every time i mention it:
Yes. Lets.
If hit registration was so awful, that all attacks effectively do no damage, it would not matter how much you change attack patterns or cleave, stagger and damage values.
Until you fix the hit registration, the resulting experience will not change: attacks have no effect.
Or let’s say everyone disconnects from the game every 30 seconds.
Adding more maps and making them more interesting, would do absolutely nothing, as long as everyone is constantly disconnecting and can not play the maps in the first place.
Until you fix the disconnects, the resulting experience will not change: nobody can play the game.
The same is the case with crafting.
Until crafting is in a reasonable state, it does not really matter how many items or how many ressources you get, because they will all go straight into the garbage (unless you do not use them and leave them lying around, waiting for the crafting fix, but in that case, why not just fix crafting first?).
Until you fix crafting, the resulting experience will not change: you do not get the gear that you want, and all the gear and ressources that you pump into the system, will go straight in the garbage.
Yes that is your argument and it is pointless, because what you suggest makes no sense.
See above, or the multiple explanations i have to you in previous posts.
I will say it again, just for you to ignore it for a 3rd or 4th time by now:
As long as the crafting system just burns through your items and ressources without granting you actual progression, there is no point in touching ressource and item acquisition first. Everything you acquire, will still just be burned by the bad crafting system.
Fixing progression without fixing crafting is not possible.
Changing gear and ressource acquisition before fixing crafting, does not change the outcome for the player, until crafting is fixed.
When crafting finally gets fixed, ressource and item acquisition would probably have to be changed again, since they have to be tailored into the context of the crafting system.
Fixing the crafting system, without touching anything else at all, would already solve the entirety of progression, and pretty much all shortcomings of item acquisition. You would no longer need to get a massive amount of gear or ressources, because they would no longer be wasted by a garbage crafting system.
If there still are shortcomings, they can be fixed afterwards, but as soon as the crafting system itself is fixed, remaining shortcomings would only be a matter of final polishing.
Points 1 and 2 are literally how the game works. These are not my opinions.
Point 3 is my assumption of you being reasonable (which turned out to be incorrect).
Point 4 is actually exactly what you suggested.
It pains me to agree with going free to play to get players back, and to take up a battle pass. Free to play is 1 step away from being pay to win. I hope they wouldn’t start selling player power or my time with the game would be over.
I don’t think going free to play would do anything to get players back. The game sold pretty well, there were tons of people playing after launch. The issue is not bringing people into the game, it’s retaining them.
F2P with BP dropped the playerbase in Halo Infinite from 150k to 3-4k. It is the only title in the series that died so fast. So this doesn’t really sound a good idea for Darktide, especially in the state it is right now.
Fully implement and fix the crafting so it can be done and dusted for the forseeable future, however it seems like fatshark is adamant on this system being full rng so we seemingly have to deal with this hurdle for a good while still which will just keep good portion of players away.
Fix the core issues like crashing, make char talents more interesting, blessings more interesting/varied, interesting map modifiers other than just extra dogs, new difficulty/mutation system for those who want more challenge that damnation can’t bring, other fundamental issues that i’m just too bothered to type out now.
New content such as maps, careers, and weapon packs are probably a good place to start. This has always brought good injection of players back into vermintide2 but they also need to consistently put out that new content so it won’t dry out like it does in v2.
Don’t see what free to play will really bring to this game. Darktide sold insanely well and most who wanted to try this game have probably already bought it. The game needs to be in a really solid state before f2p does anything. It might even have negative effect after the inital boost of interest.
Introduce 2 more elements of randomness by having random grey weapons (95% of them will be completely useless) and removing blessing upgrade on weapons.
That patch will be great to limit excessive randomness of gear for sure.