okay so, i hate not being able to play the missions i actually want to play. some people have actual jobs and can’t play stuff for weeks or even a full month after it gets released and it makes penances take longer than they should because of the fact that waiting for refinery delta 17 or warren 6 19 is something that we NEED to do and not everybody has the time to do that after getting home from work. not everybody wants to just constantly play darktide either, most people would rather play at least a few games rather than just one. vermintide 2 had a much better system of choosing missions.
as for the FOMO.
vermintide 2 had an entire catalog of stuff to choose from and you could pay with real money instead of buying shillings to pay for the stuff that you want. it let you just buy the the things that you wanted by just looking for it instead of having to wait for week after week after week after week and so on until you finally get the thing that you want. when you finally see the thing you want, you see that you have a lack of funds, okay, you buy more and you buy the thing you want, you have money left over and you can’t buy anything with the left over money, not even a trinket. that means that you need to but MORE money so that you can buy something new. this is the worst cash shop i’ve seen in ages. VT2 had a much better one
in conclusion: let us play whatever mission we want from the get go with whatever modifiers and difficulty we want and let us just buy whatever we want without needing to wait for it or buy any in game money. and if you don’t want to get rid of aquillas, make it so that we can EARN them like shillings, even though it would be best to just make this the VT2 cash shop templet instead of the one we have now.
Working as intended. It’s to try and plant an itch in your brain that makes you want to log in to see if your favourite is there. It’s part of the fomo.
It also extends the life of the asset. By rationing our exposure, the devs don’t need to add new content as frequently because we don’t get too familiar too fast with what there is.
It also expands the pool of players who can be marketed to. If there’s a handful of favourite maps/missions and most people play those, the less popular ones will have a much smaller pool of players. People who like those less popular maps, but not any of the handful of favourites, will leave to play other things because there’s not enough people to fill out runs.
It also improves exposure to MTX items (and thus increases the likelihood of getting someone engaged) since many people will just queue for something if their favourite maps aren’t in rotation, and be matched with people who use those MTX items.
@FatsharkStrawHat Seems like after crafting, mission select is the next most contentious aspect of the game, at least anecdotally from spending a fair bit of time on these forums since DT release.
While many of us can probably take a good guess at what the advantages of keeping things this way would be from the Dev team’s perspective, this could be another very good topic for a dev blog/Q&A. At least hearing “this is why we’ve done it this way” and how open the team is to further adjustments (I say further since Auric board was obviously a measure to mitigate some of the complaints here) could go a long way!
Heyo, alsozara! Thank you for this message. I agree, I see it brought up as a contentious topic.
I also agree with your point about sharing another Darktide 101 blog to share the dev perspective and continue the conversation there. Thank you! Writing it down.
Games as a Service, or GaaS, basically means the game and its future content is provided on a continual basis versus a one and done cartridge. Microtransactions or FOMO aren’t actually a requirement for GaaS, they’re just low hanging fruits developers use to a) create revenue to support the continual service’s upkeep costs, and b) increase player retention. The only thing that makes GaaS is that updates are provided continually. I would argue randomization of the maps does not increase life of the asset so much as a regular update cadence does (there is some argument with progression grind here, but it’s a fine line). Rather, I’d venture a guess that Darktide is a game of its time and takes cues from competitors such as DRG as that’s what’s popular at the time. The issue is its implementation is lacking, especially with a less large player base that’s already frustrated with other gameplay elements. I don’t think it breaks the game, per se; but I don’t think it’s helping it either.
Side note: V2 is also GaaS, despite people thinking otherwise. Most games these days are, at least when it comes to online multiplayer ones.
Examples:
Baldur’s Gate 3: Not really GaaS
Street Fighter 6: Yes, it’s GaaS
Paid cosmetics are the favorite mode of MTX in Darktide, which is not tied to missions at all, an exposure to that wouldn’t change if you just hit quick play (or even took the V2 route and chose a map while people QP into it).
I’m pro map selection. Nothing hurts more than trying to play Malestrom and it’s just lights out half the time. I’d rather not have to wait X amount of time for that condition to leave the board.
If I say “mentally picture a car”, I’d bet real money that the image you came up with has 4 wheels. A cars doesn’t have to have 4 wheels to be a car, but the vast majority of them do. Same deal with GaaS and shady monetisation/engagement tactics.
The ‘X-As-A-Service’ model in general is guilty of this sort of thing, not just games.
Sure, but not selecting maps doesn’t really have much to do with monetization; it’s just to extend grind, and you don’t need to be GaaS for that. One is not the other.
Could also be population consolidation. So that people queue for the same (limited/controlled) options at any given time and can find other players for their groups more easily.
Remember that VT2 still has quickplay to let you hop in to any running game. It’s a bit of a shame that you can’t exclude some maps (looking at you, Tower of Treachery) but if you’re not particularly interested in completionism or playing a specific map/modifier set and you just want to play some ratclick (or hereclick) you can always just queue for QP and get dropped into any map anytime.
Players are also encouraged to do QP via slightly better rewards. It’s enough to psychologically manipulate people into wanting to do it and backfilling lobbies, while not so much that you HAVE to quickplay if you want to progress at all - you can just as easily pick your favorite map and not lose too much value for your time.
In short, population consolidation is a stupid reason because quickplay exists. Everyone does quickplay.
quickplay existing doesn’t really mean anything. just because you have the option to let the game decide for you doesn’t mean that you want to pick it or you will pick it. its like if your at a fast food joint and you just tell the waiter “i don’t care, just bring me whatever is on the menu”, the waiter can just bring you a banana peel soaked in a bag of urine for a year or they can bring you the best tasting unicorn steak in the history of every multiverse. you probably wouldn’t wanna take that chance and you’d probably also prefer to just order the pizza or the taco and eat those instead.
Providing a limited map pool has an awful lot to do with monetisation.
All of what I identified in my earlier post are examples of proven engagement-promoting tactics, and engagement is how games like this make money. All of it can be independently verified by anyone here through any number of reputable channels.
I’m basically only looking for “mostly melee” auric maps and they are few and far between.
I don’t have any desire to open discord and make a 4 man team and use a mod to play the missions I want. Just let us play the missions with the modifiers we want since people are already doing this. Thanks