Red items (or Archeotech Relics)

[Flawless]

@Shining_Darkness

Making it so players can just increase their weapon base stats invalidates the existence of the vendor in the way it currently works because all you have to do is buy the gun you want a couple times in order to get a good blessing and perk combination start point then upgrade it to max.

No it would not.
And i already explained it, but i will again.

You want all stats at 90 or 100.
Vendor can’t do better than 380 base, 80 as max per modifier.
So you buy until you get as close to 380 as you can.

Then you upgrade for plasteel, hoping to get good perks/blessings.

Depending on how much gold/plasteel/diamantine you have, you balance your purchases of greys and the amount of consecration attempts.
Preferably, you spend only gold and plasteel to get to a high modifier weapon that already has good perks and blessings.
On the way there, you hopefully get all of the blessings that you would want for the weapon, so that you do not have to buy them with diamantine.

Then, you take the best weapon you got and upgrade it to perfection by spending your diamantine.

Because diamantine would be so valuable since it would be the only way to remove locks and to upgrade modifiers past 80, you would want to save as much diamantine as possuible, by first spending your dockets and plasteel, to get as close as you can.

Brunt would still be relevant.
Melk would be as relevant as now (probably even more so).

If you do not have a lot of ressources stockpiled, you could invest your dockets and plasteel in multiple different weapons and focus your diamantine expenses into one or two items. Or maybe spend your diamantine to reach specific breakpoints or to get certain perk/blessing combinations.
If the modifier upgrades are priced well, you should be able to get 1 upgrade after each mission on diff 4+. Every single completed mission would be rewarding and there would be an actual feeling of progress.

@Shining_Darkness

Now there are way more players so we don’t have that kind of leverage any more.

If FS are smart, they rework the crafting system into something good, before the new influx of players have left again.
Considering that almost everyone seems to have hated the crafting system since release (and that the crafting system is objectively bad), it is not likely that this would suddenly change for new players.

@Shining_Darkness

If you don’t like RNG you are playing the wrong game.

I and most other enjoyers of actually good crafting systems, only ask for what they originally advertised, and which is the polar opposite of the dumpster fire that was delivered.

I am gonna quote the original announcement regarding the crafting system again.

@Fatshark_Hedge

We have learned a lot from our previous choices and gameplay surrounding crafting offered within the Vermintide series. For Darktide we wanted to take those lessons to expand and improve in such a way that crafting would become a central pillar of player progression, while giving more impact and agency to you, the player in your preferred playstyle.

The nature of randomization and repetitive actions sometimes seen within crafting is something that we are steering to avoid in the crafting system within Darktide. Meaningful choices will be made with strategy and goals behind them, as you set your eyes upon that perfect combination of melee and ranged weapons for your class.

As you can see, this is not a simple case of “we wanted to do it the way we announced it, but due to technical difficulties, we had to do it in a slightly different way”.
They straigt up did a 180 on it. There are no excuses for that.