A few months ago a friend of mine asked if DT was worth looking into, and I recommended that they wait until the class update patch. Since that dropped, we’ve been leveling a couple of new characters together. They have zero prior experience with L4D style co-op PvE, including any of the former tide games, and have basically no warhammer/40k knowledge. At the time of writing, we’re both around L20 and have been playing around T3/T4. I think they’ll probably cap out at vanilla T5 and won’t really touch the auric board.
Some things they’ve talked about (completely unprompted) along the way:
Crafting - They seem generally happy with the crafting system and are enjoying trying out new weapons as they level.
Ammo and gunplay - They’re playing vet and enjoying the gunplay very much, but are constantly complaining about not having enough ammo. They definitely came in with the impression that the game could be played mostly with ranged and are a bit disappointed that it can’t.
They think it’s stupid that we can’t ping barrels.
They think the game would be rather boring played solo.
Assail psykers are incredibly anti-fun to have on your team. In one T4 run, they constantly complained about the psyker clearing areas before they could do anything.
They think the game’s social systems are lacking and that there’s not much of a sense of community.
They find the enemy armour system confusing and don’t understand why some attacks/weapons work well on one armoured-looking enemy, but not another. Maulers gave them a lot of trouble until I explained their armour layout, to which they answered “That’s stupid, they look the same all over.”.
I remembered another one: They think the story is a fat lot of nothing.
For my own experience leveling a new character, I can say that the changes are an improvement. The process of unlocking the talent tree for the first time is far more enjoyable than the old system. It feels like progress is stable and constant. Under the old system it was more like a series of plateaus.
Classes seem generally well balanced until those mid-level abilities unlock, at which point psyker just becomes a game-ruiner with assail. None of the other classes have anything that even comes close at that progression point.
That is very interesting! And I hope your friend and you will keep playing the game and having fun!
About barrels, I didn’t know I wanted this, but you convinced me.
Also, armour system in this game is literally impossible to understand without reading some guides.
(I wish for some book in game that explains some of it)
Yep. I showed my friend how to see the advanced stats for weapons (because they like that sort of thing) and they were like “6 types of armour is too many types.”, “What’s a maniac?”, “How do I know what enemy has what armour type?”, and so on…
Meanwhile they’re still trying to figure out things like why their “sprint meter” changes every time they change weapons.
You can figure this out by using the demo. Ppl are just not used to use their brains anymore. Thats the reason why fatshark wanted to hide these stats initially, because for the most ppl they are useless to them. Its too many numbers and factors, and ppls minds check out like in math classes.
There are still things that are not mentioned in the game, like dmg modifiers for body parts. Or dmg modifiers for players depending on their movement state. But all these things make the combat and gameplay systems more interesting.
Weird that you’ve found anyone who’s “happy” with the crafting system since it has universally been the deciding factor that has convinced my friends to quit the game early.
Remember when levelling didn’t even tell you you unlocked a weapon, and you had to wait for it to randomly appear in the armoury exchange before you could even try it? The armoury exchange that refreshed once an hour? Killed any hype for new weapons/variants because you couldn’t even get the new weapons unless RNG smiled on you?
They did improve that experience with both the unlock notification and Brunt’s exchange but it was a hilarious oversight on release.
They are happy with it now because they are leveling up, everything in the game is new to them.
If they would stick around and wanting to push to auric they would probably notice how bad it is.
Tbh crafting system like this and all the hidden mechanics are correct for new players. They give them the chance to focus on learning the skillset for the game, but then the game should give access to all the information, for example like someone suggested a book in the game, and freedom of crafting to play how you want.
I’ve taken to putting skull markers on barrels that could be useful - I still have regular situations where allies standing near them, but I’m seeing the more conveniently placed barrels get put to good use more frequently.
Sounds to me like you’re looking for reasons to invalidate their feeling about it. One person enjoying it while they level isn’t going to make the devs discount your opinion, don’t worry.
And no, they’re not just buying things, they’re upgrading, and switching blessings and perks.
Their feelings about the system kind of are invalid if they have barely touched it, if they’ve even really touched it at all yet. Have they even experienced Hadron bricking a single weapon yet?
I’ll repeat what I’ve already said: It’s true that they haven’t yet hit the glaring problems with the gear system.
However, the suggestion that the state of the crafting system and people’s perceptions of it are irrelevant before that point is nonsense. It’s part of the new player experience, and that’s a critical phase of anyone’s time with a game. Casual players are also less likely to get hit by it because they’re not hunting for perfect weapons.
Remember spending almost as much time reading the manuals over and over as you spent playing the game? Or was I just a weird child?
Interesting thread, especially because it is a somewhat unusual perspective from the casual crowd.
What strikes me is that some of their complaints absolutely do line up with what the pros say.
But some things are also very unexpected or “This is the type of stuff they think about?”.
I’m not sure how you did it, but you got ahold of a true normie. A rare chance to look into the machinations of… I jest I jest.
Anyway, @FatsharkCatfish is going to love this, I think. Some unusual feedback she doesn’t get to hear often.
Also generally some positive sentiment here.
Yeah, though a lot of it came around in pretty natural ways I think. For example, the talk about armour types came about after we tried to find information about crit chances in the advanced weapon info, which itself came from them trying to figure out if it was worth replacing a perk on a weapon with +crit chance to help make use of an on-crit vet talent.
Some of it I had to figure out and translate for my post. They were calling Assail “the psyker’s fairy lights”.
Generally speaking, they say they’re having a lot of fun with it.