Itemization Rework Q&A Part 2 - Dev Blog

[CobaltNinja]

Something I haven’t considered; how long will it take new players to reach a state of progression where they can start sandboxing? I want to recommend this game to my friends, but I want to know if it would be worth their time to invest into.

By “sandboxing”, I mean being able to play around and experiment with at least tier 2/3 blessings of a majority of weapon classes for a single character archetype - I only played Veteran for my first couple dozen hours of DT, and I suspect a lot of people also stuck to one archetype before branching out.

[Ryshek]

o=

[FatsharkStrawHat]

Noted and to be answered in the full dev blog that is coming!

[Flawless]

Max stats of items should not be random. This sucks.
With enough ressource investment, any item should be upgradeable to have all 5 stats upgraded to 80/80 (as well as both perks and blessings at max lvl option of choice).
This could be an option that only becomes available, once the weapon family is mastered, but it definitely should be an option.
(The effective power difference between 380 and 400 base stats is not relevant for balancing, but it makes a massive difference for players, when looking at their items. It would also be nice, if fully maxed weapons would change to red quality. People would actually grind to get a red version of every weapon family.)

Also, why is 80/100 still the max?
It makes no sense. Never did.

[Khorne_Dawg]

Thank you for the news!

@FatsharkStrawHat

We are also introducing a “sacrificing” system to allow players to sacrifice weapons to get Mastery experience for a weapon family. This gives players even more avenues to gain Mastery within a weapon family outside of only playing with the weapon. For example, when a new weapon comes out, players will be able to sacrifice ANY other unwanted weapon, even those from completely different weapon families, to get a headstart on Mastery. Note: If it’s the same weapon, more Mastery XP will be given versus if it’s a different weapon.

TL;DR: Weapons a player no longer wants can be sacrificed to get a headstart.

That’s wonderful! This “Sacrificing” System will definitely prove useful in mitigating a lot of the potential grind, especially for those of us who haven’t managed to snag every Blessing in time!

@FatsharkStrawHat

Curios are not a part of this overhaul. We are however thinking of ways to make curios more fun and engaging. We felt that we would tackle the bigger problem of weapons first and give curios the time and attention that they need to become a more interesting part of a player’s loadout at a later time. However, we will note that the locks will be removed from Curios, as well. This means players will be able to change anything at any time, aside from the base property of the item itself.

The Curios’ locks will be broken too? I’ll be truly unstoppable! Mwahahahahahahaha!!!

[supra898]

god forbid weapons get set stats like in vt2 without this statbar bulls##t

[Nuclearsimian]

I have a question.

Why did this take two years?

[Sidd]

they mentioned somewhere else at higher tier blessings are weighted higher, or something.

really wish we could just get a beta branch to mess with this lol.

[supra898]

@Nuclearsimian

Why did this take two years?

first fatshark game?

[Sidd]

even vt2 had weaves and beastmen by now

[hgjw]

Its bit contradictory that in 1 part we have " You need roughly 70-80% of blessings unlocked" for max mastery and in other “T4/T3 blessings are weighted more heavily and should be enough to complete mastery”.
So which one is it?

Also sacrificing items to skip most of the grind sounds like a big W.

[Hextechnician]

@FatsharkStrawHat

We are also introducing a “sacrificing” system to allow players to sacrifice weapons to get Mastery experience for a weapon family.

This is massive and addresses one of the biggest pain points a lot of us were concerned about. Love to see it!

[Vertraxxx]

will a whole new blessing be added?
most weapons have very few blessing options, and even if there are about 10 blessings to choose from, only half of them are actually useful.
and blessings that make a weapon unusable without them, like the “Power Cycler”, are probably not ideal

[BatlordCarcas]

By what has been answered by StrawHat, we will not be able to lower any stat, especially in exchange for making other stats higher. Instead we use crafting currency (Diamantine, Plasteel, and Ordo Dockets respectively) to raise the stats, yet the stats will seem to increase a random stat slot. That means for Empowerment, being careful what weapon stats you already have, like the ones you already want to have high be as high as possible already, because the dump stat possibly may randomly bump up instead of any stat you expected to cap out. I am sure this system will be able to be learned quickly.

[CommanderJ]

@brosgw

This alone should make a lot of people pretty happy. @CommanderJ this should alleviate some of your main concerns? Stat bars, no, but the rest, yes?

It’s certainly a lot better than nothing. It’s obviously not as good as earning universal Mastery XP just by playing (or as good as no grind), but it’s a lot better than nothing.

Since we have to unlock some number of T1, T2, T3 to even access T4 blessings and perks, in the end it will all rely on how big the grind is. Considering the QA suggests 1-2 games for mastery if you’re missing even some blessings, I’m pretty worried. Let’s not forget a single game is 25-45 minutes, depending.

[CommanderJ]

@Mezmorki

f you have the option to buy weapons, upgrade/consecrate, then sacrifice for expertise - why not just be able to spend X dockets/plasteel/diamantine to get a mastery level and skip all the button pushing in-between?

A million times this.

[Gideon404]

Not random. Lerp for all 5 together, moving up in proportion.

Linear Interpolation Functions | Trys Mudford

[Ragnarok101]

@FatsharkStrawHat

All tiers are taken into consideration for the specific weapon family. With higher tiers being more important in the calculation. To reach max Mastery, you will only need 70-80% of all the blessings available.

sets down shotgun

@FatsharkStrawHat

Yes, Melk will give higher-tier equipment than before (higher-tier referring to blessings and power of the weapon).

Heard this before (as in, iirc we got promised this when people complained about melk handing out garbage) and didn’t see much improvement.

@FatsharkStrawHat

Yes and no. It will depend on how you are building your new Mastery track. In the worst-case scenario, playing 1 or 2 games would be necessary to have it all. We saw that having T1/T2 blessings were less common for those at max level. It would feel too punishing if we put too much weight on asking players to have these lower tiers in order to reach max Mastery. Therefore, we will be weighing T4 blessings in such a way that you won’t encounter that grind.

Good! Exactly what I was hoping to hear!

@FatsharkStrawHat

We are also introducing a “sacrificing” system to allow players to sacrifice weapons to get Mastery experience for a weapon family. This gives players even more avenues to gain Mastery within a weapon family outside of only playing with the weapon. For example, when a new weapon comes out, players will be able to sacrifice ANY other unwanted weapon, even those from completely different weapon families, to get a headstart on Mastery. Note: If it’s the same weapon, more Mastery XP will be given versus if it’s a different weapon.

HECK YES. THIS IS HUGE. This means my duplicated weapons can get scrapped since with mark switches I only need one of each, and it means that random drops still have a purpose!

@FatsharkStrawHat

One nice aspect of the new system is that if/when we do add more marks to a weapon family, they will be unlocked in the Mastery system instead of diluting the loot pool and making it harder for you to obtain the weapon you want from the loot system. Previously, every time we released a new mark for a weapon, we made it harder to get any specific weapon from the loot pool. This new system removes that problem and will make the addition of new marks purely positive.

Ooh, yeah, this is a good point.

[Mezmorki]

@CommanderJ

ince we have to unlock some number of T1, T2, T3 to even access T4 blessings and perks, in the end it will all rely on how big the grind is.

Obviously I don’t know how the numbers will be exactly… but if you go back to the first dev blog in June about this, the mastery screen shows a wheel at the left that I believe shows how/where the blessing tier’s unlock. So the player had 5 tier 1 blessings and presumably unlocked tier 2 blessings, and then learned a tier 2.

If it’s only five blessings per tier (and you start at 1), then it would only take 15 blessings / mastery points to get tier 4 unlocked. At 17 mastery points you could have two tier 4 blessings going.

Who knows how/if this has changed or if my assumptions are correct.

If, for example, each tier of blessing your current library gives you 1 mastery point, having four tier 4 blessings in your library would be 16 points, which is enough to get your first tier 4 blessing unlocked.

From a progression standpoint, I mostly want to know how long it will take to get the first two tier 4 blessings unlocked (17 mastery point?) because once there I can use that weapon with a hand picked combo of blessings to pick up more mastery from there and unlock everything (i.e. not having to be forced to use a subpar weapon to grind with).

I’ll be curious to know how fast mastery points are earned through play, the exact math behind translating blessing library to mastery points, and how much mastery you gain from sacrificing weapons. All important details.

[MarxistDictator]

I don’t think they couldn’t add that in addition, but the function of that is to discharge all that garbage they force on you for completing games/brunt leftovers you don’t want to scrap. It would be a lot more value than 1/4 of the dockets you spent for breaking them down.

As for the news, wonderful to hear that 100% blessings is 100% mastery since I am only missing 3 total atm. Finding a solution for when you add new content is a bonus. Please tell me more about what weapons are being shared. Zealot needs to lead the chorus of shovel thwacking…