There has been countless threads about this already but for the love of god remove the unbelievably stupid locking system. At least give us an option to remove the locks by spending resource X or Y…
I almost have 400 hours in this shitshow-rng-fest of a game and I still haven’t been able to craft a weapon just like I want it because of the stupid crafting locks.
Literally NOONE would be against the removal or adjustment to this system. It would only bring some good PR your way, which would be really needed since the game is in a pretty dreadful state already.
If the may update doesn’t bring some kind of news regarding crafting locks I will most likely just put this game on the shelf because I am really tired of being f*cked sideways day after day by this system.
Throwing this out there, but if FS is so dead set on RNG as part of the grind, with locks removed you still have a considerable amount of RNG grind just to get all the blessings at level 3 or 4. I’ve been playing for 280 hours and only have maybe 5% of the level 4 blessings available in total across all of the weapons. It’s going to take 1000+ hours just to get all the options, regardless of locks. Ergo, just get rid of the damn locks so I can at least use the 5% of the stuff I’ve found at will.
Best Fatshark can do - is remove ultimately loved free cosmetic “naked torso”. Because kark players.
Asking to fix crafting is too much, and ultimately ignored - they don’t give a damn.
And let me be very clear about that really don’t give a damn.
How long you have not seen any meaningful poll?
Have you seen even once that they address anything about crafting after rolling out last changes for it months ago, and providing minor QoL to in form on marker for not-yet-learned Blessings?
Re-rolling system for perks is still in place (fix by mod - but that does not count).
Need any more proof?
Literally NOONE would be against the removal or adjustment to this system
In a way, I enjoy the locks. If blessings/perks were better balanced against one another, I don’t think it would be anywhere near as big of an issue as it is right now. If I get a “bad” roll, I can dump it or try to make something of it. If the game were just a case of “Pick everything you want and BAM, you’re done”, it’s a bit… dull, IMO. I can see it becoming a case of the vast majority of people gravitating towards the meta - there’s nothing wrong with that per se, it’s just not my cup of tea.
Like my current preferred weapon is a Devastating Strike/Shred chainsword - for the longest time, Devastating Strike was just worthless to me because with 5% crit chance, what’s the point? Then I see a T2 or T3 Shred somewhere, and get that moment of realization of “Hey… I wonder how this’ll work… and if I add the Zealot crit feat to the mix…”. It’s a decent weapon, but no other Zealot weapon has come close to being as much fun for me - there’s very few situations where using Chastise the Wicked every 3 seconds is practical, but an angry shouty Zealot is a fun Zealot
tl;dr I think blessing (and to a lesser extent, perk) balance is the real problem, rather than the locks themselves.
I think perk / blessing balance and crafting locks are two separate issues.
Crafting locks just reduce player agency, even with all balanced perks and blessings (which I am not saying they are balanced), no locks help people play the way they want.
While perk blessing balance is a different topic to talk about.
Fatshark game designers will never remove the locks. There are two reasons for this.
First, the game designers goal is to condition player behaviors so that they keep playing the game. There are several techniques in scientific literature to achieve this, and the most well-known is Skinner’s box, where the researchers found that rewarding subjects when they perform the desired action condition their behavior. But they also found that if the reward is given randomly instead of every time the action is performed, the conditioning is much stronger. Of course, that experiment was done on rats and pigeons, which tells you how much Fatshark game designers despise the players. To them, we’re just pigeons.
Second, this is a power play. The Fatshark game designers will never cave in to one of the players demand that affects their bottom line. That would create a dangerous precedent for them. They must keep you playing no matter how miserable and frustrated the game makes you feel.
Conditioned so hard that 95% of players are gone, and 90% of players returning for a patch are gone again within a week. That conditioning and retention in the design intent is really doing work, huh?
it won’t happen, not just bc of conditioning, but there’s no endgame either. imagine locks have gone tomorrow. everyone would have their desired stats for the few weapons they play with in a matter of days, then what? replaying the 6 maps for the thousandth time? what for? there’s less teamplay and variety in team composition than in vt2 and no chaos wastes either to shake things up with a bit of randomness.
also I think it is not mandatory to have fully maxed stats on every gear, a few % here and there won’t make a difference winning a map. with a decent team, damnation is quite easily beatable, and I have mostly lvl3 perks on every weapon or curio.