Well yes… a Goal. a goal is always better than a rng casino roll.
There is already a perfectly useful progression system in the game that is completely ignored once you get to lv30.
That is experience points and leveling up.
You start the game, you immediately know you should be gaining levels, you gain incentive with each missions to get more exp, higher ranks gain more experience points. you’re always rewarded and always pushed forward. There are minor goals, gaining a new feat or a new weapon type unlocked, it is the perfect system, and that’s why it’s used in every game these days.
A good question is why they felt it was a good idea to simply remove it once we hit lv30 and turn it into RNG grinding.
The cynical answer is that it probably sells more Cosmetics, since shopping is actually one of the highest types of addiction and we often fall prey to that kind of thinking when we are sad/down, and not getting the RNG you were hoping for will keep making you feel down/sad… so… new outfit! weee
The more likely answer is that RNG prolongs game time, and when the game is unfinished, lacking content and variety, they have to increase it as best they can, and RNG is probably the easiest and cheapest way of doing it. Sucks for those playing the game, but not time consuming for devs.
The Issue in Darktide however isn’t that RNG is good or bad, but rather how they’re using it is really bad.
Everyone kind of likes the thrill of rolling a dice and hoping for a number. This is why a casino is so insanely successful, even though it’s a mathematical loss just walking in the door. You are not suppose to be winning in a casino, you’re suppose to lose over a long period of time. So short term victory/hook, long time loss.
Successfully using RNG in a game means making short term gain while also rewarding long time gain, this means dungeon runs with a 1/6 for the item you actually want, while also rewarding experience points for a long term gain, like getting a new level or getting towards max level.
This means you might get lucky and get the item you wanted after one run, or two, or really unlucky and get it after 8, but you’ll always be making headway towards that long term goal and you’ll soon get a new minor/short term goal.
This is a successful use of RNG.
You should be able to plan a goal and see it realized withing a reasonable time, otherwise the RNG becomes predatory and detrimental to health, like a casino. Which is the path Darktide has taken and why they are getting flak for their choices.
Darktide has compounded their RNG into layers,
since you’ve first got the Stat rolling RNG of gaining 80% Stats.
Then you have to get the Perks you want.
Then you have to get the Blessings you want.
With each layer they are making it more and more difficult to actually get the thing you want and this drags the game length and turns the idea of RNG into a predatory system, since the idea of short term gain is used to promote long time loss, instead of rewarding short term gains.
So their system now spoon-feeds us the idea of progression by showing a close to 80% rolled item in the armoury.
We buy it, rush to the crafting to roll the RNG, hoping we’ll get a good blessing.
No it sucked… ok wait for the next roll armoury roll…
This is not a fun and engaging design, since you cannot plan or create goals around it. Your only goal is looking at the armoury shop every hour. which is the same thing as using a Slot machine over and over hoping you’ll get that elusive jackpot.
you might get lucky and get something close to it, and than slightly modify it using their crafting, but you’ll still be left without the roll you wanted… forcing you to keep rolling.
I’m not sure if you’ve seen or witnessed Slot machine people?
I worked in an establishment that had 4 of them and I paid out whenever someone got a jackpot or wanted to stop playing. I remember all of their faces, because they all looked the same… they looked ruined and they all said the same thing. After a certain amount of time they were simply forced to keep playing because they had to break even and after awhile they had to keep going because they had to mitigate the loss.
The sad thing is that they all knew the math of the machines, they knew a jackpot was 1 / 40.000~. so they were counting, eventually they knew they were in the 30.000s, so they had to camp out the machine so they got the jackpot and NO one else. they would camp outside the store and rush in as I opened the doors in the morning, so no one took their machine, and once a jackpot was gained no one touched that machine for weeks.
Sry for rambling on, but this is the mentality that this kind of RNG system encourages and the reason why people are upset and giving Fatshark flak for their design choice. This is NOT a healthy gameplay loop or design choice, since you cannot build any sort of meaningful choice or goal from their progression system. Only a monotone updating of the armoury shop.
The closest thing they have is testing weapons and getting lucky every day by getting a new combination of perks/blessings/stats that might make a minuscule difference in how you play, but it might make you feel like you’re discovering something.
Personally I think that is a bad choice.
A better one would be making grindable goals of gaining weapons with maybe 60-70% rolls and rank 2-3s of the perks and weapons people actually want. This way you can work towards these items you want, while also having the RNG chance of getting a better weapon all the time.
This is a very short term adjustment that would mitigate some of the RNG. It’s not a good system, but it shouldn’t take long to add something like that.
I believe they’ve attempted to do this with their changes to Crafting, but it isn’t there yet, as it is still very disrespectful of Player time, especially since every single player is a paying customer.
The best choice would be simply remove the pointless crafting system and instead make an experience point level system where you’re working towards a certain weapon with a certain combination of perks/builds.
Open the armoury, see the weapon you wanna use. Pick it and all experience points is used to unlock that weapon. Then you start using and experimenting with that weapon, while you’ve picked the next weapon you wanna pick and you gain experience towards THAT weapon while experimenting with the one you just got.
This is a continued short term/long term reward and a straightforward goal every time you login.
This would also promote their idea of gameplay, as they want people to focus on completing each mission, but now they’ve all of a sudden made it more important to focus on collecting crafting resources and side objectives, which breaks up the party and makes the game mechanics work against us. Very strange choice.
what I’m suggesting is also similar to how Warframe functions. With their level up weapons/frames, coupled with loot drops and mods etc, Guild Wars 2 actually has a similar system as well.
This means you’re playing and experimenting, while passively grinding towards the next gameplay change/adjustment that you actually want. It’s continued incentive over and over again and always gives you something too look forward to.
The funny thing here is that they’ve already laid the foundation for this mechanic with the new armoury addition of… brute? forgot his name. That can very well be turned into what I’m suggesting.
p.s sry for the wall of text. 