So about that Crafting Roll-out

That ain’t happening I guess eh?

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I’m sure that depends on your date range… I can guarantee nowt will happen in the next few days… :()

Well considering December ends in 4 days and they haven’t even said anything since before Christmas I think we can safely consider it another miss…

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Christmas is over, Darktide’s support has ended. They have no incentive now that their main fleecing season’s done.

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Maybe they meant December 2023.
Oh I get something else now, too!
New classes must be coming out quarterly per decade.

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Another fat lie.
Welp, add it to the pile!

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‘We probably would have messed things up altering code and not testing it, as every update so far has shown us. We have heard your desire for additional content and will be updating The Commodore’s Vestments before the new year though. Be sure to spread some glass down on your seat before playing.’

Got your blogpost ready to go FS!

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so, my small amount of time trying to learn to code does not make me an expert by any means…but like…why is it exactly taking so long to create a function that lets you reroll attributes that are already randomly generated for the weapon? Or in the case of dismantling blessings, dismantling a weapon with a blessing which provides said blessing to an available pool for the player to pick from, to apply to a new weapon.

Anyone who knows to code know why this is taking so long? It feels like something that legit should just take a couple days but maybe my very basic level of understanding is making me underestimate something extensively. If there’s a whole team of developers shouldn’t this all have been relatively easy to crank out?

(This is a genuine question, not trying to insinuate anything or talk smack)

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My guess is that this crafting system was non existant before the pre-release and they are making it all up as we speak, rather than finishing off a system thats been in development alongside the game itself.

It should be easy to crank out, but there is more to it than you might think. As this is an online service game its like an MMO. Everything you do is communicated with the servers to ensure your not cheating and it all needs to be saved into your online server profile.

So systems needs to be there to facilitate all of that which would increase the development time. It needs to be tested and balanced which also takes time.

If you assume they have been working on the crafting for a long time, it makes no sense its not ready now. But if you assume they started making it a month ago, it makes alot more sense

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Based on the the current crafting mechanics and what they are talking about, it appears they probably completely scrapped their original crafting mechanic plans and are building a new one from scratch. They mentioned there would be no updates over the holidays so I’m betting we get the next parts over the course of January / early Feb. With the direction the reviews are going and the player base steadily shrinking, the updates are more grim dark than the setting

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They may have been trying to build off of old code by altering the VT2 crafting system rather than starting from scratch, which is pretty standard in the gaming industry, but that can turn the code into an even more tangled mess than it already was making what seems like simple changes a headache.

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I believe they had a whole other system designed and in construction, but decided very late in the process that there was some major problem with it. It was scrapped and quickly redesigned, and that redesign is what we’re getting.

Don’t ask me to find a source for that because I’m way too unmotivated to do so, it’s just something I’m sure i’ve seen somewhere in some official communication.

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Yes it sucks that it´s not here, noone will say something different.

But poeple should finally accept, that “developing a game” will never come without issues and stuff can and will change while developing it. Also priorities are real and that´s not crafting.

Also all those “promises”. I never heard a developer saying “We promise.” They show something and poeple get so hyped just to call out “fat lies, missing promises”, if something changed.

Just remember Anthem… a game being so long in development to fall hard. Yes there went a lot wrong, but only because the devs themselves wanted to cater us with a great product and fun gameplay, meanwhile had to roll back the game multiple times and had to deal with a complete new engine not being made for this. And in the end the time ran out…

Or NMS / FF14… absolute desasters at release with a fast comeback, because the devs focused instead of dealing with all the shitstorm.

It´s not always “the bad dev”, just saying.

The Perk reroll aspect was “the hard part” if this is indeed being done from scratch. If the next piece of the crafting is rerolling one blessing on a weapon, that should not take long. Why? Well, let me explain. First, the act of you rerolling a Perk in-game is a multistep process.

First, you need to make UI elements (buttons, display text, panels, showing your weapons by populating the icons, any visual effects and sound effects they want to add for “the reroll” and then the result. Next, you need to make a spec (probably in JSON using a websocket? they could do a lot of approaches, and video game dev is not my particular expertise). The spec is the contract between client and server saying:

“Reroll player item ID 1257, perk 1.” (paraphrasing)

This then needs to be handled by the server and validated (does the item exist, is it elligible to be rerolled, do you have the materials. This is all likely checked client side before it goes out to the server but its good practice to validate it again server side to prevent hacking/cheating/exploits).

Next, the server already has data structures for all your items. It needs to pull up your item from a database, flag it as having a reroll performed (locking the other perk) and then it hits another Randomization table based on the item in question. They have preset percentages for likelihood a given perk, along with perk quality (tier 1-4). This could be one or more tables/function calls depending on how they want to slice it. Finally, the new perk is retrieved, updated in the server side database for the item in question, and another update message is sent to the client, confirming the transaction. The client updates it’s local copy of your item in its own data structure, and events are fired which update your screen (a lock icon is now displayed on the other perk, a notification popup is displayed on the right side of the screen, your existing crafting materials displayed are decreased, etc.

So this brings me to why the blessing reroll should not be as hard. It’s largely a copy paste job. Obviously there will be a little more to it, but alllll those pathways and mechanisms that were built for the Perk reroll exist now, and can be used as guides/templates for doing the same thing with blessings. This is a 1 to 2 week (conservatively) task that could be done by 2 people (one working client, one server).

Now, there could be some complexity here with the above im not aware of (im doubtful though). If the Blessing system is different and involves cannibalizing other pieces of gear or other novel ideas that would add time though. Also, the crafting changes for blessings could very well be done and they are bundling them up with other updates to all go out in one release (so blessing rerolls wouldn’t be the bottleneck). Also there is testing (FS testing tee hee) that can add time depending on rigor… or the fact that it’s the holidays and their office is a ghost town atm (most likely imo).

Anyways, my “developer” thoughts for you. Hope that provided some insight.

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People rightly take this as a promise. Why? because the language used is absolute. There is no room in how they told us this for “not actually in December”

Nowhere do they say “we havent actually finished developing this yet and we hope it’ll be done in time for a release in december, but it might not come because of everything else we are working on”
Instead they said how excited they were to give this to us in December, like they have a plan for its release. People took this as meaning it will be available in December and Fatshark have only themselves to blame for people thinking that.

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ok the reason why crafting is delayed and ill just f*cking say it is because the rest of the crafting system was so insanely RNG that they realized they would get huge back lash if they released it given the back lash for rng they got already. thats why just before released they scraped the entire system and why the refine item is so ridiculous. they just threw together some randon perk reroll to keep us happy but the pricing of it all is messed up.

its been confirmed on reddit by a dev who left the studio after this abysmal release but white knight fan moderators deleted the post and censored additional comments

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Reddit is known as a bastion of sleuths and truthiness.

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ya well truth or not, is it really hard to believe that some DEVS are not happy with the direction the game is going? They are paid a salary with bonuses to an extent but the rest goes to their overlords. They want to make a good game thats user friendly but their overlords only want to maxize profits and to add to the cherry on top they hire a dude like Hedge to tell us we aint getting QOL content because this isnt COD. well ya this isnt cod because even cod does not time gate and rng to this extent and take phycological manipulation of customers in cash shop

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They have DEFINITELY said exactly that. The crafting system they had in place was scrapped and they are giving us a re-design.

Said re-design is the Vermintide 2 system with a few twists here and there aka the easiest and fastest way to produce a crafting system out of thin air, one month before your game releases.

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No,no,NO, they will roll out a insignificant hotfix with a few insignificant changes, maybe some botched crafting system teaser or even element and they will call it a day, knowing they listen to the fanbase and worked during holiday season to deliver new years cosmeti–spirit and joy to their faithful rejects. They will expect a well deserved pat on the back for going two steps forwards and one step back.

For the Emperor!

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