Are you interested in more grind (i.e grinding out weapon stats, grinding out different weapon families, grinding out blessings, grinding out new weapons).
No Grind? Some Grind? Or More Grind?
Vote and let your voice be heard.
After reaching lvl 30 on your character:
Modifiers are maxed and you can immediately pick the exact perks and blessings that you want, at no cost. Playtime past lvl 30 earns you no power and no additional options.
It takes ~10 hours of playtime to completely max out all weapons on one character
It takes ~10 hours of playtime to completely max out one set of weapons
It takes ~10 hours of playtime to get to 90-95% power for one set of weapons. The remaining 10% are locked behind another 20+ hours of playtime.
0voters
Additionally do you think grind is an appropriate mechanism for end game content. Or would you rather have complete freedom to tinker to your heart’s content. Another comment what do you expect end game content to be like for Darktide.
I think there should be some grind and weapon specific penances BUT only for weapon skins and colours of that particular weapon. That would be cool as it would show others you have used that weapon a lot.
All the blessings and stuff though - no grind please. I’ve played nearly 700hrs of DT. That’s enough grind already. Let us enjoy the game instead of getting anxiety over trying to dice roll upgrades with pathetically small plasteel rewards.
Weapon upgrades and changes = no grind please!
Weapon skins/colours/trinkets = grind is fine!
At this stage in the game I’d rather they just boosted materials x10 and removed locks - and spent their time creating new maps, weapons and events. That would keep me very happy until DT2.
I’m not interested in grinding up weapons. I’d truly rather keep the current system than face a grind every time I want to use a weapon from a family I haven’t put any previous time into.
The fact that we almost universally call it “grind” instead of “progress” should say everything there is to be said about it.
No grind. But that I mean that you should be able to use the resources gained through regular play (dockets, plast, diam) to be able to buy/max a weapon and pick your blessings and perks. There should be no grind to ‘master’ weapons or weapon families.
The idea of needing to grind for hours and hours whenever a new type of weapon comes out, just to be able to see if it’s even worth playing with whatsoever, is abhorrent.
It doesn’t respect our time, and it does the opposite of giving us ‘player agency’. It’s actively stopping us from tinkering with builds, instead forcing malicious player retention grind. Not to forget they’re also keeping a HUGE layer of RNG in the base and potential stats of a weapon.
I have voted for “No Grind” but that isn’t necessarily to say that I’m 100% opposed to progression systems in general.
I do think that some games and systems benefit from some form of withholding content from the player.
One example would be the skilltree in Path of Exile.
If it was completely open and you gave a new player all the skillpoints, you would drown them in choices, whereas the leveling expirence limits what they can do now, while at the same time lets them look ahead and start planing out what they want.
The problem for Darktide is that the itemization just isn’t interesting, and honestly the game would be better served without randomzied equipment.
The “grind” is already build into leveling up your characters and slowly unlocking the weapons that way.
As for end-game content, I have no expections, either I enjoy the difficulty they have provided or I would seek further challenges such as the modded difficulties of Verm2
Needless level grind is a stopgap measure to lengthen what little content you have. Games like destiny 2 proved that timegating your content behind excessive grind is enough to ramp down the quantity by a lot and still have ‘enough content’.
I’d rather have a deterministic system that allows me to experiment and a steady stream (more than 4 weapons and a single weapon every 7 months, mind you) of weapons/maps I can have fun with.
If they came out and said look lads, here’s some simple fixes to reduce RNG and weapon penance track to earn weapon skins, we’re working on a roguelite mode akin to chaos wastes in the meantime. I’d probably be the happiest.
That feeling when you realize the content creators in the speshul testing group would love this new grind system, and would have been pushing for it…
Because it means people will have to watch videos to find out if weapons / builds are good, so they don’t waste 10 hours grinding out a weapon family that fully sucks.
Hell with the mastery system, you might end up wasting precious grinded mastery points on blessings that you didn’t realize fully sucked.
If plasteel rewards were boosted by x10 and the locks removed then I’d honestly be happy with that until DT2.
The real torture of the current system is that absurdly megre amount of materials gained from each 20-50min missions. If plasteel was as abundant as dockets then all the RNG would be 1000% less torturous.
It would be such a quick and simple change. Literally a single line of code I bet.
I voted ‘no grind’, but that’s considering my position of having 5+ 520 or better weapons for every class and at least half of all the T3 (and a handful of T4) blessings for all the weapons I want. Fundamentally, I do not want to grind for stuff I have already. At all. Any further ‘weapon grind’ should be very limited in duration if direct, (5 hours for one weapon would be the ABSOLUTE MAX), though perhaps longer if earned through discretionary “Versatility” (see more on that later) and to encompass a few points:
A level-parallel progression for new players, so that at least two weapons for each slot can be maxed just from the experience of leveling a new character.
I want a robust and generous stipend across my current weapons that should virtually max out the 500+ stuff I currently use. Any less than that and I’d be snarking worse than I still do about the Aquillas mistake.
I want discretionary points to be accrued while playing with already maxed-out weapons that I can save up and apply to upcoming weapons or weapons outside of what’s being used. For experimentation purposes and to ensure that at least some new weaponry can be tried without a grind if I’ve played and earned these “Versatility” points through ordinary play with my regular, maxed weapons on ordinary quick-play missions.
Oh, and as a bonus - unlock every single weapon and mod within the Meat Grinder. There’s no reason to keep us from trying stuff out there and letting us go into our purchases and grinds with our eyes fully open.
Grind with specific weapons should be for cosmetics. There already is a grind for itemisation and that’s the various currencies and resources. Either have mastery xp grind be universal, or sidestep that a bit by continuing to earn xp with mastered weapons that you can then funnel into a different weapon family, at a (slightly) reduced rate if you absolutely have to meet those retention and engagement metrics.
I wonder, is that where the excess level xp after level 30 is going to be used?
If they refuse to implement a non-grindy system then that would, at least, be a fair way to reward the people who’ve already sunk hundreds of hours into the game.
10 hours is hardly a grind, idk why ppl are so opposed to playing the game to guarentee what they want on weapons. I though you like the game?
Grind can be good if its “time=what you want” the way it is now is RNG which is fake grind being “time=maybe you get what you want” so time can feel wasted.
Even if it was 50 hours for an absolutely perfect weapon roll and stats as long as its guaranteed after that time to be exactly what i want then its better than RNG where you can maybe get it at 3 hours or maybe at 100 hours or just never get what you want and feel cheated which is how it is now.
The RNG is still there. And you need to grind with gray weapons with terrible base stats and no blessings and no perks. Grinding each weapon family, and each weapon, up from zero. It’s abhorrent. It also doesn’t in any way shape or form respect time already spent in the game.
How many weapons families are there?? A lot. That’s a lot of 10 hours.
Also I think people just want to be able to test weapons with blessings variations first without having to grind or start from scratch after hundreds of hours of playtime already.