I’m posting this in hope that we are going to get at least one more patch before FS goes on break. I would really appreciate some sort of change for crafting before the break, to actually make me want to play this summer. It doesn’t have to be a complete overhaul or removal of locks (although that would be nice), but just anything. Like reducing plassteel costs or something similar. This would make me want to play over the summer break, and maybe buy stuff from the cosmetics shop for 2 reasons;
Would make the gameplay loop and progression a bit more enjoyable, especially for me as a person who likes to experiment with different builds and classes often
Would show that you’re listening and are acknowledging community concerns. It seems like a lot of people have lost hope for the game, and even a small, temporary change could reignite a lot of people’s faith in Darktide and Fatshark.
I would love to spend the summer playing Darktide. It really has an incredible core coop gameplay experience unlike anything else I’ve played. However in it’s current state, each play session leaves me with a “bad taste” as I whittle away all my dockets and plassteel and get nothing in return. So if in any way possible, please make some sort of change to crafting for the playerbase over the summer break and while you are still in “discussion” over the current crafting system and potential changes.
I’d even be fine if you had to spend say 250-500 Dimantine to remove a blessing lock, and once you re-bless it the lock comes back. Maybe 100-250 to remove a Perk lock(s) on an item or curio too.
My other must-have in this hypothetical patch:
All currencies/marerials go into shared pools across your account
Revise the mission screen as described below:
Mission screen re-work. Instead of having 16-ish missions at fixed difficulties, do this instead:
Have one mission of each type (currently 6 types) listed with a no modifiers and one mission of each type with a given modifier (e.g. power outage, hunting grounds, shock troop…). There should always be one of each modifier available (i.e. so there’s always at least one shock troop gauntlet mission). In total 12 missions would be on the board. When the 7th mission type comes out there would be 14 up.
Secondary objectives would be randomly scattered across the listed missions.
When you select a mission, you can then specify the difficulty and whether it’s Low or High intensity.
Give players a quick-play bonus. Quick play allows you to specify difficult and low/normal/high intensity (or don’t care about intensity) and it will match make from there.
This is stuff that isn’t as easy to fix imo, and not something that could come in this small period before their break. The best I personally would hope for is that there would always be a T5 High intensity mission available. And even that is debatable whether or not they could get it done, considering they struggled with getting the new mission to show up consistently. Again stuff like this needs to be added and fixed, however I’m talking about stuff that can realistically be done in 2 weeks-ish of time.
This is pretty much pointless and just feels bad (psychologically and as general user experience).
Instead of having to remove a lock again and again before every swap, it is better to remove the locks once and permanently.
Instead of the perk/blessing swap process consisting of 2 steps
remove the lock again (for x cost)
swap the perk/blessing (for y cost)
The first step should just be removed from the equation after the initial and relatively expensive unlock.
The theoretical (relatively low) price of a repeated lock removal could be added on top of the price of the swap itself (swap would now cost x+y). The price would be the same, but locks would not constantly reappear on your item and you would not need to go through 2 steps every time you want to swap something.
With locks being removable, perk and blessing swaps should become more expensive anyway.
The “repeated lock removal tax” could be included in this new and increased price. Nobody would know.
Although this would result in players having to spend slightly more ressources overall (since the first swap would include the “repeated lock removal tax” although no lock has to be removed yet), the user experience would be much better.
You no longer think “I want to swap a perk/blessing, but first i have to pay for removing the damn lock again”.
You will just think “Now that the locks are gone, i can swap my perks/blessings when ever i want.”.
Here is a very well made depiction (thank you, MS Paint) of how it could look, when a lock is permanently removed.
Each time you look at your item, you would now see the investment you made into permanently removing the lock, which is nice.
Unfortunately, the system is just not designed for upgrading weapons (AKA Crafting).
You are not supposed to get one or two weapons of the same type and then improve them over time.
The system is designed for you to go through millions of weapons and gamble every day.
That’s why there are so many sources of new random weapons:
Melk
Melk’s mystery acquisitions
Brunt’s Armory
Armory
Emperor’s gifts
If you break the locks, you undermine the whole gambling system currently in the game.
It’s not a quick fix. It’s a complete redesign and I doubt FS is going to bother with that until some future paid DLC and even then, there is little chance they will change their design intent™
You still have to grind for blessings. I have 350 hours in DT and maybe 10% of the Tier 4 blessings for example. So plenty to grind for there.
You still also have to find good base rating weapons, and even when you find a good one there’s always the possibility for a better one. I think I have one weapon with 4X stats at 80 and then 1 lower stat in the right dump stat. Again, ton to grind and gamble for there as well.
But you are not bricking the weapon, and the current system requires bricking weapons to work.
Here’s what I mean:
Naturally, your goal it to have the best weapon you can which means you would ideally want 2 tier4 good blessings on your already good (perks and stats) weapon in the end-game.
How can you get those in the current system? There are 3 ways:
Melk’s shop
You have to be lucky to get both good stats and at least 1 good tier4 blessing on it.
In my ~330h of play, I only found 1 knife that sort-of fits this description. Chances: highly unlikely
Emperor’s gifts
Same story, but I think that stats on those weapons are more random then the items in Melk’s shop.
I’ve never got any usable weapon from the emperor. Only some good blessings. Chances: almost impossible
Consecration
This is where you take a weapon with good stats and consecrate it to orange, and if you get a good tier4 blessing, you can swap the lower tiered blessing.
If not, you bricked your weapon. Chances: Slightly better then 1. and 2. (because it’s easier to find a weapon with good stats)
The big difference is that, unlike 1. and 2., you have to invest (plasteel) to see what you got (AKA gambling)
If you just break the locks, you could consecrate any weapon if you have extra plasteel and just fish for the right tier4 blessing or, you could just use melk’s shop to fish for blessings. No plasteel required.
The point of this system is to keep you spending plasteel, always searching for a new weapon from all those shops and, probably most important, to hook you into that risk/reward loop where you know you can brick a weapon (gambling).
Breaking the locks would make the essence of the current system (gambling) pointless and the only way they will do this is if there’s a significant overhaul of the entire “crafting” system and they make changes to their design intent™
I doubt that will happen before some major DLC, if ever.
Instead of removal, why not use Diamantine to “swap” the lock? It effectively would give a removal of the lock, without removing the lock. It would still be “cheaper” and more expedient to keep farming new weapons, but you also could “fix” weapons that got “patched”, without loosing all the resources. You just flip the lock to the other blessing or Perk.
Your right and a lot of people who havent played enough to get great gear for multiple builds think fixing this is #1 priority. If they fix this and people get great gear then they will be stuck with the low intensity map choices and jist quit the game due to nothing to play. Crafting is definitely 2nd in the priority list compared to making sure we always have to ability to play a challenging map like high int stg.
If they wanted to remove the locks they would have done it by now. It is hard to miss, with all the posts about it everywhere. Then again, who knows… given the stellar communication with the Devs and the absolute utility of this feedback area, where a constant exchange between Players and Devs take place… it is hard to say if its just being outright rejected or if its just the player base that are the rejects.
And given that this thread is just asking for a stop gap fix, i find setting the sights a little lower to be more fruitful. Not that anything will come of it… after all… to do so would require someone of the Devs to actually care.
Maybe baby steps and getting them to consider stop gaps is the way to go, especially in a thread about stop gaps.
I would agree that complete removal would be better, but as long as the cost was reasonable I could settle in negotiations with fatshark for swapping/temporary removal. As long as the time needed to get the resources to move them around is appropriate, and not just for the die-hard players.
Also, the lock symbol should look nicer, it’s just so ugly
Could even make it so that whatever is locked gets a bonus maybe. Move it a tier 5 or anything with a lock on it is guaranteed a tier 4 as you move em around.
TLDNR- removals best, swapping or temporary removal could be a settlement if the cost is reasonable. (For me).
ability to repeatedly swap around the lock on an item
ability to permanently remove locks from an item
are functionally the same.
The only difference is, that in one case you pay for lock swap and then for perk/blessing change.
In the other case you only pay for the perk/blessing change (after removing the locks once).
If the overall price for swapping a perk/blessing in both cases is the same, there is no functional difference.
The only difference that remains is, that one case removes the annoying interaction of repeatedly switching locks back and forth, and gives players the good feeling of actually having removed something annoying.
Well I guess lets hypothetically say a system where it’s 2,000 diamonds to remove locks permanently, vs 200 diamonds to swap a lock to opposite blessing/perk. It is more annoying, may encourage having multiple weapons, and it would make you more wary of switching to experiment. Make you want to commit more. But if you play enough you could get mountains of diamonds and plastic to spend on swaps. I am just bringing it up because if fatshark was absolutely never going to budge on permanent lock removal but would settle for swaps it would at least get me playing the game again. They want to force us to grind more and have more weapons… fine, at least it’s reasonable.
Hell, I would even take the only thing that gets locked is the blessing you change out instead of the other one (So If I want T4 deflector, and I swap the blessing in position 1 with T4 deflector it’s T4 deflector that gets locked, not the other one. Then I could swap position 2 blessing with T4 slaughterer and I have what I want, but if I want to experiment/change it I need a new weapon to grind for). It would help alleviate the claims of people wanting to validate the existence of shops and such.
Again, I agree permanent removal is best… I am just talking about the bare minimum to get me back into even installing the game.
If locks are never to be removed, i guess this would be a reasonable alternative, since it would allow to swap both perks and both blessings once per item.
Add modifier upgrades to max all 5 stats and we could at least craft the item we want.
Edit:
Question is, how existing weapons would be treated.
I guess all existing locks should be deleted and from then on, perk/blessing swaps would lock in the thing that got swapped (locked in perks/blessings should still be upgradeable in their tier).
I would completely remove the “lock” icon from the crafting system and just change the color of the swapped perk/blessing to have a golden glow or something.
This way, the “lock” is broken and the customized perk/blessing has a positive look to it, although it effectively is still locked.
Yeah retroactive changes I don’t know. They could just swap all locks or remove them all. I am sure that’s more uplift. And I would be fine with that.
But yeah I agree, the lock is just ugly. I think something like a grey/skull border around the slot or something may look better. Maybe have some effect on the modifiers or something if all perks/blessings are (locked) and T4, I dunno.
