The hourly shop refresh is not the ideal way to do things. It’s creating a habit of compulsively logging in on the hour just to see if there’s any good weapons, then logging back out. This probably unnecessarily generates server load, and is a massive chore for players.
I suggest the following system:
Each hour, you get a ‘refresh token’ resource. You can store up to maybe 24, or more depending if Fatshark feels generous or wants to use the system to encourage logins.
Each token allows you to refresh the shop once.
That’s it. Simple, and people no longer need to compulsively log in every hour, even when they’ve got no intention of playing, hopefully also sparing the servers unnecessary load.
Or how about leaving this real-time “free” mobile game bullsh!t out of full-price video games entirely? Sry, for this offensive criticism, your approach is constructive and would certainly improve the current system, I just find the system sucks in general, sadly…
Yes, like… I dunno, the crafting system of Vermintide (2)?
I understand they have this store so people rotate in their weapon use, but that begs the fundamental question: WHY?! Let people wield whatever they want to wield. Don’t try to manage this for us. It’s ridiculous. It also reminds me of what they did with Doom Eternal: the devs literally said Doom 2016 players liked the shotgun too much so they gimped it and made the entire sequal a rock-paper-scissors gameplay loop. Reason? WE WANT YOU TO USE THE WEAPONS WE METICULOUSLY CREATED FOR YOU!
Uhm, again… Why?
I don’t get why people are simping for that garbage system.
Rerolling reds? Why the hell would we need to do that. Just let us pick the goddamned stats we need within the parameters that are allowed for the weapon.
Grinding 5 red dust for each DLC weapon is absolutely insane, you need a hundred hours to get enough dust for each new DLC career, idiotic.
Surely there must be a better way to buildcraft in endgame without all this stupid RNG bullcrap.
The way to remove RNG from the system is to allow players to choose ONE stat from a “discarded”/“dismantled” weapon that they get to keep as a crafting augmentation.
I.E., you can choose a perk from some pile of garbage you want to be rid of, keep it for a future weapon you’re going to craft, and when you craft said weapon, you can apply the augmentation from your previously discarded equipment to it, giving your new weapon the perk(s) you want.
Now, how to control the little… percentage bars… for different stats, I’m not sure of, unless you just allow players complete control over how stats are distributed, increasing crafting cost based on how much set distribution the player assigns.
I.E.: You max out Damage and Reload speed on the Bolter, but allow the rest to be randomly assigned by the game, it’ll cost less than you assigning all of the stats manually, exactly the way you want it.
Is it a perfect system? Probably not. I think it’s better than what we have at the moment, though. I think practically anything would be, at this point.
I don’t quite get the whole, login every hour crap. Why aren’t you just playing the game in the time between? Do you not have fun with the game? If not why the hell are you playing it anymore? Not defending the store as it is annoying.
Because some people just log in to check the market while they wait for their friends to be available to play with them.
I don’t like playing with randoms. They’re garbage, for the most part. At least, they were in the beta, and launch. Perhaps some of the casuals are no longer playing, and Quickplay is less likely to be a waste of thirty minutes of your life at this point.
I’ve an excellent solution to this: in my opinion this is an endgame problem first and foremost. For all lower difficulty levels, you can play with RNG weapons and still be fine, right?
So make reds just be full stats and selectable perks/blessings whatever they are called.
Make grind for reds reasonable, say an hour per weapon max, and you get to choose the red you want, no random favor from the emperor.
Then before someone screams “YOU JUST WANT THE GAME TO BE EASIER WITH MAX STATS WEAPONS” I reckon we also need an endgame difficulty to match the maxed out weapons.
Think cata 10 DWONSOMGWTFBBQ that makes you want to go to your mommy and cry after each match.
No more RNG bull for endgame, Fatty gets to keep their idiotic little boutique and everyone’s happy!
I come from MMO’s like SWG, so I like the idea of “crafting” a perfect weapon, and having the cost reflect the stats of the weapon. Honestly, I don’t care how we reach the end-goal of giving the player agency in acquiring the equipment they want most for their builds, but it needs to happen.
The fact that Fatshark is too busy swimming in dread over Q4 statistics rather than designing a quality product (which will give them the Q4 sales they need) is mind-boggling.
P.S. I’m also a fan of even higher difficulties. Don’t need to go ridiculous with new enemy types, or just more enemies. Make bosses actually threatening, give them more moves, give them the ability to close the gap with their chosen target easier.
Make specials no longer able to hide back inside of inaccessible rooms, and instead improve their AI so that they’re more of a threat in the first place…
Instead of hourly refreshes, what if they just gave the player a certain number of manual refreshes daily (like 10-15) that could be used all at once or as needed?
I’m thinking maybe also include more manual refreshes for say 300 coins and then increase the cost by x^1.05 each time rounded to the nearest 10 coins, (at a cost of 300 that’d be (300, 400, 540, 740, 1030, 1460, 2100, 3080, 4600, 7000 …)
Sarcasm: but it’s great when I want to watch a series and “progress” my characters.
I started to watch Wednesday on Netflix and all I have to do is after every episode go back to Choose Operative screen, check for “gear progression” in RNG store, buy or not good-rolled item and go back to watch next episode. So engaging gameplay!
Probably best gear progression ever made to combine with watchgin TV series ever. I don’t even have to play game to progress my gear now.
I understand your looking for a solution, and your idea is certainly better then what we have now, but i think it turns the shop into a slot machine.
The problem is shop RNG is gating players out of the experiences they want. For example, I want a flamestaff or a bolter so I can play the game a certain way, the shop should not be holding me back from that.
I think the most meaningful way to reduce people’s problems with getting the weapons they want is making the shop offer at least one of every weapon available to your class. The shop should have a separate tab that offers white versions of every single weapon that are a respectable base power level, maybe 360? Players will have the option to spend the thousands of crafting materials to upgrade them of they want, but critically, players will be able to play however they want, whenever they want. If they want to commit to that weapon or play style and upgrade it, they would still have the option to work towards that and earn that.
The shop should just sell all available Weapons in Gray (Profane) quality, maybe with maxed out stats so people can grind them up and use what they want to use.
That’s insanely optimistic for a game developer that’s now owned mostly by Tencent lmao. I’d love this too, don’t get me wrong, but even VT2 didn’t make this easy to do and that was before they were acquired.
I agree with you for the most part, with the exception of when you’re leveling your chatacter up to 30. Being forced to use the higher power weapons that you may not be used to is usually fun (at least for me) and can lead to you finding or using a weapon you like that you wouldn’t have used before (Arginipaa auto-gun for me). However after you reach level 30 you should 100% be in full control of what weapons you should be using/grinding for.
Sry, for this offensive criticism, your approach is constructive and would certainly improve the current system, I just find the system sucks in general, sadly…