Map selection feedback: I'm tired of not being able to pick the missions I want at a difficulty I want

I play with a variety of friends. Some of them are very good at the same, some of them are very new.

When playing with new friends, we obviously do the lower difficulty ones, and higher difficulty for my advanced friends. It’s tiring to not be able to pick the maps we want with the difficulty we want. Some of the new friends haven’t played the maps that released yesterday and today. We get ready to play a mission, and what’s this? Oh, they’re only level 1 (too easy) and 4&5. Guess we’ll play a different map that we’ve already played at so we can play something at an appropriate skill level, or play the map we want to play, but at an inappropriate skill level.

It makes no sense to me why we cannot pick what missions we want with what difficulty & objectives. I think having special missions pop up at random on a board can be cool if there’s something unique about them - give them the special conditions, give them more monetary/XP reward, higher chance for an Emp’s gift, something. Make me be interested/excited to see what’s on the random map board. Right now I hate looking at it because it just limits what we can play because I have to hope that the RNG favours what I want to do. If it doesn’t, then I either don’t play at all or I have to play something I don’t want to do.

It honestly saps a lot of my enjoyment from the game and playing with my friends if we have to play missions we don’t want to do, or have to play at a difficulty we don’t want to play at. This seems compounded that there’s only a few available missions instead of the full amount. Just…why?

42 Likes

I was ambivalent about the map selection being fixed choices throughout the Closed Beta, but as I play the Pre-Order Beta more and more, I’m beginning to feel like I’m going to have very strong negative opinions as I continue to play DT.

For example, yesterday I hopped on with friends to play the new Consignment map. We’re a crew that play Diff 4-5 regularly. The only option was a Diff 1, no special operation, no secondaries. We waited for 2 more maps to time out and refresh and got no other options. At that point no other nodes were close to timing out, so our choice was to either wait 10-15 minutes and pray, play the diff 1, or quit. I expect once I choke through enough missions without the difficulties or parameters I’m interested in, that third option will become increasingly more compelling. “I’ll come back in a few hours, maybe it’ll have what I want.”

So we sleepwalked through a diff 1. No one had fun. Zero challenge. We just boringly walked through the empty map. Literally was never forced to play difficulties or mission types that I didn’t want to in VT2, and here in the Beta it’s already happened once. I expect it’ll keep happening, as the gulf between what is possible vs what is available widens.

Ultimately, I think preventing the players from choosing what maps they want to play or what parameters they want to play with and pretending you can come up with a selection for them was a mistake, and only hampers the longevity of the game. If you have to keep putting up with choices you’re not interested in, eventually people will play something else that won’t arbitrarily lop off its own content.

9 Likes

it’s annoying not to have choice (which might be an attempt to mask having not that many maps? And it seems like we only have like 3 areas we constantly revisit…), feels, ironically, unnecessarily gamefied… and amusicly it’s also somehwat unimmersive, because the missions, that are set in a specific place, just pop up at random places on the map.

VT 1 at least had the specific, fixed spots set on the map…

2 Likes

Like right now

There’s a new map out. There’s only one, which is level 4. Too high for the group I’m playing with right now.

So now we’re forced to do something else even though we want to try this map.

Cool.

5 Likes

The rotating missions is a horrible AWEFUL choice here.

It works in games like deep rock, but fails in Darktide because in deep rock, there are random maps, the maps are procedurally generated, they are not in darktide. I hate being stuck doing the SAME missions over, and over, and over, and over again back to back, because its all thats up.

This is, once again, a horrible choice by fatshark, i hope this is just for beta.

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Agreed, I don’t know what it is with Fatshark and trying to fix what isn’t broken. Just give us VT2’s mission selection back, this isn’t difficult.

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It was fine for the first 10 hours. Now, it’s really getting on my nerves. I have a level 30 Psyker kitted out in purple and orange, and 2/3 of the missions available pose zero challenge at all. Great !

Outside of some maps getting pretty repetitive, I don’t mind the new system. My issue is when there’s a melk mission to do that’s map specific and that map isn’t available.

Not even outta open beta and already my current play time is, log in, check for gear, and see what missions are up, if they are crappy ones i dont like, log out and wait another hour.

Again, another step back here.

4 Likes

I don’t mind the idea of having rotating, posted maps. But they need to be an extra, not the core.

My issue is that it limits playing what you want on a timer, which is a mobile game mechanic. Almost feels like it wants me to pay IRL currency to re-roll available maps.

“Fixing things that weren’t (that) Broken” seems like the design philosophy for DT compared to VT2 tbh.

1 Like

Imho you should have the “main” missions of the game be fixed… and then, randomised, SIDE missions. Maybe even some shorter missions ala the 3? “Side” missions in VT1 (against the grain, Screaming Bell etc.)

The “Important” missions would be available every time, and the side stuff of varying length would be a diversion. Could even be a mission at Melk’s. “Complete 5 Optional Deployments” or whatever.

2 Likes

I agree 100%. I would like that a lot because then I could look and see if anything interests me, which increases replayability.

There are penances for ‘flash maps’. Let us choose maps and their difficulties, they can randomly generate secondaries or not, leave the random mission rotation to the flash maps.

Like today’s my day off, and there is not a singe intel mission. Come on.
There are, as time of this post, 4 consignment yard raids, 3 relay station disruptions and no espionage or intel missions? Either do the rotations where all the maps are available or just let us choose.

Is the New Warzone Condition timer meant to rotate in a new set of maps/conditions too? if so, 10+hours for a map rotation is too long. With a timer that long you’re going to be screwing over someone, somewhere.

2 Likes

It’s been said before, but this game is incredibly disrespectful to your time and is seriously trending towards mobile game mechanics.

Shop is RNG based and time gated. Didn’t get the weapon/cosmetic you wanted? Oh well, better come back later and check. (I’m a level 28 zealot and I haven’t seen 1 bolter - a weapon I’d like to try)

Missions are RNG and time gated as explained above. Don’t have a map available you want to play? Oh well, better come back later and check.

Weekly quests are RNG (at least they let you reroll some), and are character based as opposed to account based? Better get grinding.

In the crafting dev blog: “Accordingly, each time you Refine an item, one Perk is discarded in favour of another, random Perk uncovered by Hadron’s repairs.” - crafting materials are character based and not account based. RNG, and grinding for material until you get what you want. For, each character. Want to play multiple characters with your friends? Have fun with that.

2 Likes

This system is 100% in place to obfuscate that they only have 4-5 maps to offer.

I honestly have serious concerns about the longevity of this game. The grind is unrewarding, the map selection is tiny which makes it mind-numbingly repetitive, the RNG gear is frustrating.

4 Likes

as far as I’ve seen, they have 3 main areas with ~ 3 maps each. And unfortunately you really have some very visibly reused areas… And then, I think of Vermintide 1 and 2 where, the VT1 redux maps in 2 aside, you basically always know on what map you are…

The importance of changing this to allow for the missions we want to play at any time, at the difficulty we want to play at any time Cannot be Understated

Fatshark is literally going to drive the playbase away if this is not fixed

Zone: Chasm Terminus
Terminus Logistratum (raid)
Consignment Yard (raid)
Terminus Station (assassinate)

Zone: Manufactory
Smelter Complex (strike)
Power Matrix (repair)

Zone: The Hourglass
Relay Station (disruption)

Zone: Torrent
Silo Cluster (strike)
Magistrati Oubleitte (assassinate)
Vigil Tower (espionage)
Hab Dreyko Quarantine Zone (investigation)

So that’s 10 over 4 zones. We’re missing 3, assuming one of intelligence, espionage and repair to round them out as much as possible.

It’s probably janky mission chooser RNG but still, locking out maps for 4-10 hours at a time sucks.

imo each mission should correspond to a zone on the map, and we should get to SELECT the mission, SELECT the difficulty, SELECT whether or not we want a random condition, and SELECT whether or not we want a secondary mission attached.

Give us that, I guarantee you everyone will have way more fun.

2 Likes