Already addressed that in my earlier post. And I mean, it’s really obvious if you just stop to think about it for but a moment. There’s a reason all rank-equivalent modes in every game have some form of decay, whether weekly or seasonal or whatever. Even MMO’s achieve the same end result by adding dungeon & item tier levels, or staggered content.
So once more:
- Yes ofc player retention is a part of it, but so is community management
- Updates & changes + rust from a long break means any returning players won’t be performing on the same level as when they left
- Without decay active players would be forced to carry returners on their max skill level → The entire team would suffer as a result
- For the rank to have any relevance over time, decay is necessary
- With no decay, there’s no incentive to keep playing
- People would sit on their rewards without participating → over time the active community would die out, with new & active players unable to find others to play with
- This is especially important for Darktide given its small community
- Sure, all of the above are just different aspects of player retention, but then so is any and all content, whether it’s weapons, classes, skills, maps, etc.
Anyway.
Considering how blatantly obvious all of the above is, there’s no need for this pretense & misdirection when your desires here are so transparent: You want an easy & permanent access to the content for your own sake, and care nothing for the cost to the community. That’s fine, some people are like that, sadly. So don’t dance around with words, just say it as it is.
In a 40-tiered rank system, a decay of 1 rank per inactive week is EXTREMELY lenient. Even a full month away would only reduce your rank by 3.