Whomever at Fatshark thought locking perks and blessings really needs to have a quick look at a probability math course.
Things that are purely RNG based:
-Rolled stats
-Rolled perks
-Rolled perks rank
-Rolled traits
-Rolled traits rank
Being able to reroll one while locking the other still means that the player needs to find the perfect base.
The design PHILOSOPHY behind this is wrong.
At some point it’s good to recognise something is not working and just letting it go.
My lead designers always used to tell me: “kill your darlings”
Hell, if Fatshark wants us to grind, a fusion system is a LOT better.
Where the player fuses two items of equal rarity and decides which perks/traits he wants to keep.
Price them accordingly in resources and THERE. Done.
2min of thinking, we keep the “grind” and get rid of the RNG.
Edit: and fusion would be loreful. Taking the best parts of said weapons, and tossing the rest.
As many others that said same thing: you are correct. Bah! As many of us were telling them SINCE VERMINTIDE 1: the RNG is one of the drawbacks of the game. Still, till this day, after all their failures they refuse to give up on whole RNG idea.
There is someone there at their studio, some lunatic, that still thinks that RNG like that is a way to keep players playing the game. Someone stuck in the past of early 2000s where grind MMOs were at highest and never let go of that idea. Market is different, Fatshark just can’t adapt. If game is wasting our time as players (by RNG in this case): we simply move on to another game, it’s that simple. There are so many games available right now, that noone will waste their limited time on RNG chase if instead they can just play a new game, lol.
I am telling you, there is some dinosaur there at Fatshark for whom RNG is the solution to everything when it comes to player engagement. It’s sad.
Simply freeing the locks would be the best but what OP suggested is not a bad idea. I can add to it the fusion of 3 weapons, from one you keep the stats, form one you keep the perks, from the last you keep the blessings. Then you can choose what to reroll and there can be locks.
removing the lock doesn’t remove the pure RNG fest of rerolling though
We should ask Fatshark for the best gameplay system, not one that is simply “working”
How does a 378 Rated item end up with a 6% perk on it! You find an item worthy of upgrading to be given the FS fu treatment! Had more items bricked that anything else!
There is a misguided notion, especially in games as a live service and mmos, that RNG increases player retention/engagement because it keeps players on an endless treadmill of pulling that slot machine wheel to try and get the endorphin high.
I think nowadays people dont need full time job games, and its okay to sit down, play a few sessions for fun with some friends, and then take a break, maybe play again next week. Not all games need to be 24/7 work to progress.
I mean tl;dr Money. The reason companies do anything nowadays.
oh… I made something like that today…
1200 plasteels wasted
I have got a good revolver with 2 crappy blessings… a dream… i mean… a nightmare
I search for Surgical +4% or +5% (i don’t really dream of +5%) and hand cannon 40%…
However the best I could get is one with +3% surgical and an other blessing. I will use it to put hand cannon. However only a +20%… so I keep trying to get this blessing.
With this volume of RNG… good for them sticking to their guns, sadly it means the game is dead for me.
May return if they get a clue, but unlikely I keep up with darktide news.
I assume part of this is Tencent ‘UX designers’ reading an article about slot machine design and trying to copy the idea, sans insight. Seems to be a pattern with games Tencent buys in to… hokey, ham fisted attempts at ‘subtle’ monetisation.
Tbh, with the crafting system that will be delivered, I think I would succeed to get good weapons.
Actually I use a lot of emperor’s gift or merk’s weapons… cause my crafting have always been unlucky (except a flamer / a combat blade / a bolter / a tactical axe but i want a revolver and a combat axe).
However between my tries, I have got interesting blessings to extract and also several weapons with 1 interesting blessing and the other crappy.
Best example is one combat axe where I have got brutal momentum (great) and limbsplitter (why these blessing exists?). With the new system, I can replace the second blessing and get something interesting (they just need to fix Rashad axes ).
The other thing is that other games have solved having this level of RNG by having fast / plentiful itemization and as a result it doesn’t feel bad.
Diablo 2 and 3 as well as Borderlands are a prime example.
Generally killing a boss or playing for an hour in game you get an absolute pile or weapons that fills your inventory. Sure only like 10% of them may be any good but when you get ~100 drops an hour you’re bound to find something ok.
For some reason they decided to hard time gate everything as well so no matter how fast you really play you are always limited by the in game shop. On top of that you don’t have a separate shop for primary, secondary, and curios so you end up getting a total of like 20 choices which often leads to there maybe being 1 item worth getting an hour if you are lucky.
Malk’s would be ok as a legendary shop but not only are the values too low but it’s the same problem as the actual shop. You usually get something like 3 primary, 3 secondary, 1 curio and that’s a 24 hour shop.
Generally if you want ARPG / Looter Shooter levels of RNG then you need to absolutely FLOOD your players with weapons to make it feel like you aren’t wasting their time.
Diablo 2/3/Borderland/PoE are all games that SHOWER you with loot.
Loot is the chase.
In Tide games, the chase is the skill ceiling. Just being able to continuously crank up the challenge and have the satisfaction of overcoming it.
This is why the devs in charge of game longevity are misguided.
They should have let us chose difficulties, modifiers, pile them on, etc, and have loot be a byproduct of those combos…
(PoE is a great example of loot generation through combination)
my current axe is a 325. I did not even modified the perks (+1 stamina (useless) and +20% against flak (good)). It has brutal momentum 3.5s and thunderous (2).
Let’s say it. this is not the dream
This is the first in the picture… Guess what, this axe is enough efficient to go in heresy (my main play field).
Tell the truth I miss the Vermintide Bounty system where they gave you a hard challenge but you got a guaranteed reward for it.
Wandering into a map with no real healing or ammo and having to beat it with increased spawns or having to deal with a goofy environmental hazard always felt good, especially because it gave you something after. Same with Chaos Wastes being an interesting challenge.
Being real if the game wants me to do 2 weeks worth of dailies the axe on the right plus good modifiers should be what to its giving me.
I fully understand the concept of minimum break points needed to get into H+ and Damnation but it still doesn’t make the loot feel any less crappy when the majorly of good stuff I got from the base store and upgraded vs the shop that arguably needs more work and more out of the way effort to acquire items for.
People forget the low odds of getting max stat rolls and good stat distribution at same time.
Now add the odds of getting a lv4 blessings instead of, you know, being able to fuse lv3s.
As long as blessings and perks are going to get locked + rng blessing acquisition, the system will continue being trash.
That doesn’t excuse a lot of content people paid for being locked behind unfair amount of rng.
Considering the fact that weapons are locked to 380 there will most likely be more to grind eventually.
So there is absolutely no reason to bend over for fatshark’s tonedeaf decisions. Because even at max stat roll, perfect distribution, best blessings at lv4, your gear is still at best 80% statroll. So not locking perk/blessing and allowing fusion of blessings would be only normal/expected(it wouldn’t even be called a “good” thing, it’s just “not as bad”).
).