No, I still don’t believe it was meant to be unfathomable. Data is exposed to make some sort of point. It certainly wasn’t designed well at all, and wildly missed the mark of being anything even remotely useful to man or beast. We might be arguing semantics on the point - I mean, we’re both saying it was (and is!) bloody awful, so we’re only arguing about the intent.
I think they just spooned it up royally, you’re suggesting they intentionally made it awful. As is mentioned here:
I think this was the intent. To provide a blunt-force visual scan of ‘bigger bar = betterer’ for those who won’t go into breakpoints, stats or anything else. In that very select regard… It still failed. But it’s what they tried to do. Just really, REALLY badly.
To be fair this isn’t even something exclusive to Fatshark. I wouldn’t say that it’s intended to be confusing, just…incredibly simple. (Plus didn’t it take everyone complaining about it in the closed Beta to fix it?)
Take for example Helldivers 2, which has an absolutely atrocious stat bar system for its stats, which they have gone on record saying that it replaced much more advanced weapon breakdown. I don’t get why, but they did it.
I’ve heard people say it’s to appeal to the more casual console audience but I don’t have any concrete proof of that.
To be fair this claim is simply tripe – another completely manufactured pearl based on absolutely no evidence – because by launch day the Inspect feature, with the most insight we’ve ever had into weapon stats in-game in a Tide title, was…in the game.
It’s one of the coolest improvements to the series in DT, completely in service of the core combat system.
It’s based on the evidence of the game launching for pre-order customers without it, and was only changed at the request of the community.
If anything, you’re the one making things up, if you’re claiming it was always meant to have numbers and a detailed breakdown. There is no evidence for that.
Certainly Fatshark never said the system was always meant to be there. They specifically made it because it was requested.
I think the question one needs to ask is; at the end of the day, what is the main appeal of a game like Darktide and what systems serve that appeal best?
I don’t know that anyone’s first though as an answer to that question is “boy I sure do love just mucking around with numbers and multiple layers of stat modifiers like the most convoluted MMORPG”. If I were to venture a somewhat confident guess, I’d say most people who were originally drawn to the game were drawn to it because of the setting, the visceral combat and the uniqueness of its premise. A simple and straightforward platform for slaying heretics in the Emperor’s name. So with that in mind, is a super complex and in depth weapons stat system driven almost entirely by RNG really serving to enhance that experience? Abso-karking-lutely not I’d say. I’d rather this was as simple to jump into as HD2. Just put me on the ship, give me my gun and my chainsword and let me play and get rid of all these hoops and weird video game red tape. For it’s own success and longevity’s sake, the game should encourage quick introduction and insertion into the main gameplay loop, rather than stalling you with this tedium at every turn.
It is the dumbest/simplest UI possible. You need to go into submenus of submenus to get all the information. Also pretty sure it was less useable at first, and did not have the hover-over info for further breakdown.
Considering a huge amount of the info was wrong, I’d say yeah, they cobbled it together.
Further evidenced by the fact that crucial information is left out. It tells you nothing about max cleave targets, that cleave blessings do ‘nothing’, but ignore hitmass does do something, it doesn’t explain brittleness or rending, it doesn’t explain what +power does compared to +damage, it doesn’t tell you the base crit chance of your class or of weapons, it doesn’t tell you the base sprint speed or stamina regen of your class. The list goes on.
It was never meant to explain anything at all to the player.
@JaynSilver I think we are arguing semantics, but yeah, considering the amount of info that is left out of the game, I’d still say it’s intended to be impenetrable.
Thank goodness the community somehow bullied FS into uncharacteristically cranking this out in record time during the insane-o beta because…oh wait nevermind, nothing makes sense!
Are you suggesting they did not have tooling for making menus? Or that the stats weren’t already actually in the game, and so it would be trivially easy to actually expose those stats? It’s not like they had to make it from the ground, you know.
If anything, they probably just had to make some menus that exposed details already viewable in the dev build of the game.
I’m saying there’s absolutely no way that they designed, implemented and launched the Inspect screen(s)/functionality in 2 weeks (esp not during the dumpster fire beta).
Ergo, they couldn’t have whipped it out during the beta to appease the community. And their plan, as you claimed, was never to make stats useless and indecipherable. None of this passes the smell test, man!
Pretty close to semantics over intent, yeah. I do think they wanted to build an immeasurably complex system to be proud of, that gives near-infinite flexibility and player agency of perfecting those weapons. The complexity was meant (you can’t fall into this level of convoluted WTF by accident!), but then subsequently tried to put a veneer of ‘understanding’ on it to enable Mr. Average Bro to have some measure of fake-agency in what they were getting because it still needs to sell to them.
Unsuprisingly, they failed on both counts and then hashed out some extra numbers to try and fix it. It resulted in the virtually impenetrable system we have now, but the journey (I think) was half meant, half just panicked derp.
Wanna call differences done and throw Starbucks cups?
Yeah maybe, but didn’t they expect there to be other issues found? Seems incredibly naive given how unfinished and unpolished the game was at the time. Not giving themselves a last chance at critical bugfixing before the game officially launches seems like another pretty boneheaded decision.
Your assertion that they are incapable of creating a menu over the course of several weeks is laughable.
Keep in mind in ‘fairly’ short order they came out with the barber, cosmetics, refining weapons etc. You know, menus. While the game was on fire and crashing for everyone.
It’s almost like the guy making menus isn’t the guy trying to unfeck RTX being always on.
They also, in the same period, completely changed how the toughness system worked like 12 times, pissing everyone off every single time.
I’m sure that as a modder, you are deeply nestled between FS’ cheeks, but you don’t have to valiantly defend everything they say and do.
This would be in proximity to the release too, so most likely all hands were on deck (all 4 of them). Makes sense that it moved quicker than things do now.
