People are so ungrateful when they dare to question the ineffable design, don’t you think?
I mean, if it wasn’t ineffable, they would have understood it.
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No-one is saying that people cannot clear damnation with random weapons with the low stats.
What they are saying is that they cannot experiment with weapons and game styles. And the more serious they are, the more control they need. Just the amount of time required to collect most of the perks and blessings for majority of weapons of the single character in the current system is such that it is totally unappealing. This does not take into account neither the irritating micromanagement required to reduce this time just a little bit nor the fact that even then the player might be unlucky.
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Oh I’m sorry, you never mentioned ‘top’ weapon really. You just want specific combinations… Well then there is no problem, right?
Getting one out of two t3 blessings isn’t hard if you aren’t unlucky. Unless of course one of them is like a power cycler or another chase blessing, that you don’t really want right?
You didn’t answer my question, did you? The number of people not getting random drops in mmo raids was pretty common, or in other games like poe. Although it’s usually the style is more like venting in a fun way unlike here.
Also…
You can buy specific gray weapons now.
As I saw you ask for it in another thread, I ask the same from you. Prove it.
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TBH, if the game was not pushing it so much in my face, I would put it at the 4th place of my personal list of DT problems and dislikes, maybe even lower. And amazingly it would still remain the easiest to fix and the only one likely to be fixed.
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I don’t think what @CommanderJ wants is something easy to implement. Although, tweaking it to have better odds or some pity system for brunt’s armory is possible. FS implementing an rng pity system for blessings or attribute distribution for example is something I find highly unlikely.
Something like a completely new progression system would take time, and it would also break the design intent (and balance) of everyone running with non-perfect weapons, so it would probably mean rebalancing the whole weapon selection.
Have you actually played Vermintide and Vermintide 2? Do you know that this game was announced and sold as a kind of a sequel, using the bulk of the predecessors’ mechanics? And that both of those games had hugely superior item systems designed for those mechanics, but even then the systems were improved based on the player feedback? And now DT becomes a looter, which is totally contrary to the core gameplay?
DT mechanics are a huge complexity step forward on the complicated system that is VT2 mechanics, which received one major overhaul since release and which in themself have been an equal increase in complexity compared to VT1. The equipment system is, instead of following this complexity, going backwards and making sure that it is only luck, which can be helped a bit by micromanagement, that will ever give you some control over the gameplay mechanics. I.e. LMB spam, slide and dodge is all you can do.
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I know what he doesn’t want. This RNG crap with no player agency, designed to prevent us from any serious experimenting based on the items without a minimum investment of hundreds or thousands of hours per character. And I agree with him.
There are many ways to fix the problems. Many people naively think “if only FS knew” or “maybe if FS saw this idea and liked it” so they invest their time into pleading or suggesting. The point is that there is no way that this was not a deliberate SNAFU and the band aid that is Brunt’s has been obviously enough for some people. Hell, even I find it better than before for actually changing weapon types - if I want an item, I just buy something and then equip it, maybe randomly upgrading it if I feel that this item type is something that I like. But perks, blessings or control over the stats… life is simply too short to even look at them carefully with the current system. And I’m not even going into the number of those elements compared to VTs.
It is a design failure if the player cannot/will not ever see/use/try such content.
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TLDR: I think you touched on what I think the actual issue is. That is the VT/Tide games usually have different loot/progression designs than Darktide and veterans are used to that, not the Darktide one.
I think you missed my point or I didn’t word my argument correctly, I don’t feel like your argument has anything to do with it.
Apart from that, I think your comment is pretty good at focusing on what I think the actual problem is.
To be honest, I don’t really remember VT1, but crafting wise VT2 was horrible, and even worse at and for about 1 year after release (before green dust fix and red dust were horrible times, sitting at hadron rerolling a perk for free for hours is a thing… In VT2 it isn’t free). I remember a lot of people hating it and praising the WoM system when it was released. I still hate it, and it’s also terribly rng, just the game gives you a shitload of resources.
The current system is more like an endless progression system with chase “items” (or blessings in this case) and such, aimed to make people who care about loot happy. I also think that the game is balanced around people running non-perfect items, and it does change the game a bit when everyone has something less than optimal on the team (I don’t want to argue if it is good or bad just that it does).
The vitriol and endless threads at the beginning came both from the initial system being uncomplete, and laughably bad (bad isn’t even the good word, hourly reset shop, capped emperor’s gift, and the overall 0 correlation between playtime/player input and loot was flaming trash) and the disconnect with the players’ expectations.
Now I feel like it’s more venting because of bad luck and the people who actually want all rng in the trash can jump on it because these kinds of games either don’t really have progression apart from a smaller one to ease people in or don’t have any RNG.
That’s basically the point. Some people want to play like 100 hours and then have all options available to experiment with. This is based on the expectation coming from similar games in the genre and in no small part to FS’s marketing before the release.
This is a valid desire, but the argument usually isn’t that this is what they want and that they hate RNG. The usual argument is that the current system is some kind of spawn of lucifer, completely idiotic, only gives unusable weapons, and anyone who sees some good in it must be a lottery winner or crazy.
I personally find things like weapons having variable attributes that are capped overall (I mean max rated items can’t have max stats in everything) and more variable blessings (compared to VT2) to be a good thing (although some really bad blessings should have some buffs or rework). I’m also okay with running non-perfect weapons and think of chase blessings as a treat not as a norm. RNG could be a bit better (pity for brunt’s for example), and some systems are stupid (can’t select trait at hadron even after reroll is free for example), but overall it isn’t a horrible system.
I’m not married to this btw. I’d be happy with some other system without rng if it’s an actual progression system I can interact with and have progression in even after a few hundred hours (and not whatever system VT2 is). I just prefer FS to work on some actual content instead of overhauling progression (and probably having to rebalance the game with it).
Chase items and aspirational content is a pretty valid design decision, it just isn’t really used so much in Tide games. It’s used a lot in aRPGs and MMOs.
Edit: Wow this got long, sorry about that.
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You were saying that this game is a looter and implying we were wrong because we failed to take into account that. CommanderJ and many of us are well aware of that - what we are saying is that this system interacts very poorly with the gameplay.
Well, you are quite wrong about everything you wrote, but to summarize: even before the red dust, let alone dust downgrade, the RNG aspect was OK because the number of combination was always small enough that you would could reasonably expect the combo very quickly. If you expected the god rolls, OK, a bit more than 5 minutes for good enough property combination. VT2 has fewer items (OK, if we neglect crap variants in DT, not by a lot, depending on the character) and a lot fewer combos possible on those items - so even the VT2 main system would not be ideal in this game, but it would be better. But NVM, the point is that the system was a lot friendlier even in its inital incarnation, let alone the current one or Athanor.
You are wrong and we have all explained why so many times that there is no point in repeating it. The system at the launch sucked. This one sucks a little less in some regards, a lot more in the others. But in essence it is an equally bad system as it used to be, although now polished enough to not have to have the “coming soon” placeholders and to fool casual player.
I like this inference of god rolling in this whole section of your reply. For the 1000th time, no. What we want is agency that will guarantee a) that we will get there b) in a reasonable time frame. And yes, I think that 100 hours is a reasonable time frame for one character to have at least most of the weapons available at that level. My friends on this forum know how many hours I have in VTs and I think it is completely unrealistic to expect even 10% of that time from a regular player - and that was the point when the items were no issue in any way.
Speaking for me, yes, I want to know that by the time I invested as much time as I had when in VT2 all my characters had at least one red item of each type and multiple red trinkets I would have the equivalent of such items for the DT because I am not playing this to manage items, I manage items so that I can play the game in different ways and not think about items beyond the occasionally rerolling a red for a combo that I don’t usually use.
One of the points is that the system they provided is blocking you from playing the way you might want to play. And I feel that having the option to play differently provides a lot more variety than an extra map.
And no-one is saying that it is not a valid design decision. What we are saying is that it is a wrong decision for the game of this type, which is not an RPG nor MMO, for all the reasons people like CommanderJ explained patiently so many times.
This is not about VT veterans expectations, this is about VT gameplay mechanics and the role of the item management in them, where the DT is VT2 on steroids, but the items are completely off.
And, again, I didn’t think the items were the greatest problem of this game (especially if you come from VTs, I have my own list of disappointments) - but after the levelling up, they have managed to push themselves there.
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No, I was implying that people coming on the forums sharing their stories of bad luck is common in any rng based game, and a few stories aren’t proof of anything since those who do have bad luck (or godlike, check reddit) are more inclined to write posts than those who have the rng working pretty okay. This goes double based on your argument since people jump on it who hate the system to begin with because it’s rng.
I must not remember correctly, but based on my memory rolling double perfect traits was a hassle. I think I burned like 1k resources on elf 2h axe to get 5% crit 5% as and stopped at 4/5 cos I couldn’t be bothered anymore. What I clearly remember is top players (streamers, jsat ect.) crying constantly about how bad it is until the modded realm was released and then they were just playing there.
I want my promised 1 class every quarter, new weapons, etc. That’s more variety. BTW it’s only “blocking” you if the way you want is godroll, and/or chase blessings, otherwise stuff is pretty obtainable.
Come on… You said it in your previous post.
No, it isn’t objectively wrong. Even if the majority doesn’t like it doesn’t make it objectively wrong… Well, maybe if pleaseing as many people as possible is the point, but then there are more widely popular genres of games to make.
This and another sentence in…
I already told you I find it understandable you want that, just saying I’m wrong and then proving me right in like 2 sentences later doesn’t look good.
I’m trying to say that I get where you or others are coming from, but that doesn’t excuse warping it in false arguments of defeatism and goalpost sliding oozing from dishonesty. Saying the current RNG is bad isn’t really honest if the actually desired outcome is guaranteed one. You aren’t the first one to say oh no I don’t want everything unlocked and a bit later argue that after 100h you should have everything you want.
Go write a post in gameplay feedback of what you want, lay down arguments, and throw around ideas with others. There should be plenty of people based on your argument who has a similar point of view. Camping (or writing) bad luck or bad math threads and moaning isn’t something I find productive, maybe it’ll manage to turn the current system into mush that no-one like but grumpily accepts.
PS: The last bit wasn’t targeted at you, and I don’t think it should apply to you (I think?) I was just venting a bit.
Even loot games like Borderlands and Diablo and even PoE will give you what you want within a reasonable amount of time. They have way more agency in the methods you get items, you get way more items in similar timeframes and their RNG mitigation exists compared to DT’s.
DT really needs either:
Tightening the pools for item types (eg more weighting in AE and Melk’s for class-specific gear), base rating (which is being done, but too little imo), stat distribution, perks and blessings.
Have actual pity or bad luck protection systems like item lock you can play missions to progress, guaranteed minimum base rating after X Brunt rolls or guaranteed T4 blessings after X consecrates, etc.
Because in DT you are still rolling about 7 layers of RNG for weapons, any mitigation have their own RNG and if weapon gets locked in with what you don’t want you have to restart.
RNG should be enhancing the itemisation, not being the be-all-end-all of it. Give us a way to properly progress, aim, target and work towards things for items with a bit of RNG that changes a bit when we get something, not if we get something at all.
On the other side of the coin, saying the RNG is fine is just as ridiculous. A lot of people arguing that it is fine are usually the lucky ones that just either don’t see people having different experiences to them or don’t understand how RNG works.
Gacha games have better chances at getting what you want than Darktide.
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I don’t think that’s true at all. Good luck farming an ethereal Titan’s or perfect Tyrael’s might in D2 (Tyrael’s Might is close to impossible to obtain, a perfect one is near joke level IDK if one currently exists at all) or headhunter/mageblood or rarer boss jewels in PoE SSF, hell even with trading some pretty build-defining/enabling stuff is out of reach even for players who put in a few hundred hours each league in PoE. Loot-based games are full of game-changing chase items.
I’d argue that PoE or D2 similarly showers you with useless/not desired loot that is similar to emperor’s gift and alike. Sometimes you get what you want, but usually, it’s just crap.
Then I must have insane luck since with around 600 games in (most before loot/Plasteel buff of course) I have a wide selection of weapons to try with a wider blessing pool to choose from on the 3 human classes. I just don’t believe this to be true at all. Getting power cycler is luck, getting a good weapon without a chase blessing combo is pretty easy (if you aren’t clinically unlucky). Some weapons function perfectly even with 330 rating with the right distribution (my old trusty k12 for example).
I think that those who are fine with the system are the ones who can live without the perfect power cycler slaughterer 375+ PS and don’t just want to copy an insane build with double t4 blessing they see online. (It’s like if you want to copy a build in PoE that is only enabled by HH or Mageblood.)
Again, I’m okay with people wanting the progression to end 100h in I just find these arguments like yours pretty flawed.
I’m going to solve this problem for myself by just uninstalling the game again. Crafting patch changed nothing for me. Don’t have any more hundreds of hours to spend playing this game for trash gear I don’t want.
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500 hours in and the item acquisition and crafting is still an RNG hellhole. Maybe it is expectations, people came into DT for a horde shooter, but upon facing an itemisation system that has literal walls of RNG and it’s mathematically insignificant chances of getting what you want and the crafting loop and how gameplay was and imo is still feeling segregated by giving mainly currency to interact with the itemisation makes it very unsatisifying for me.
The chase? What chase? It’s either you’re lucky or you’re not with eveything about items. You don’t work towards anything. Even the only thing you can progress towards (collecting blessings) now in the crafting is riddled with RNG.
The people that keep saying it’s fine and downplaying the concerns of anyone who says otherwise are the ones with their items already and can’t, won’t or don’t see how people can be screwed by RNG because it’s not them being screwed.
And I find your arguments pretty flawed too. Maybe you’re fine with settling for worse but you can’t expect that for everyone. If you’re happy with what you have, then why are you so against anyone suggesting making it a bit easier to get what they want?
I personally want the itemsation to have an end point so that I never have to interact with it again, but I am unsatisfied with flawed weapons.
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A Chase item is an item designed to be hard to obtain and very powerful sometimes game-changing usually involving heavy rng, usually used as something the players can aspire to get one day and use themselves. Chase item is something like an ethereal titan’s in D2 or Mageblood or Headhunter in PoE (there are more chase items in those games but these are just examples).
In PoE you can usually target farm all unique items meaning you have to run specific maps. In the case of Mageblood you have to full clear the same map hundreds of times fully juiced up (meaning you burn a lot of resources) before you see a Card that you need 5 of to acquire the base version (and not the perfect version) of this Chase item. Mind you the card drop is still completely random and has an insanely low chance to drop. That is a thing that is considered a good progression towards an item in PoE.
Don’t tell me it’s less rng heavy, okay? Maybe if you are in the trade league you can put in hundreds of hours to farm out currency to buy one from someone else (the base version). The doesn’t sound like “better” by your standards either. Try going for a specific rare item (even build defining ones) in these games and see how much you have to play with something else until you get there.
I don’t know why I had to explain this to you who told me PoE and Diablo are better RNG wise but here we are.
Your current post is basically making my point, this is basically half of what I said. The main problem is that many people are veterans commenting here who have wildly different expectations than what the game offers. That they want everything unlocked after 100h (or 300h doesn’t matter) and play around with whatever they want. They don’t even want a low amount of chance to have +1% HP, they want a fully equal playing field.
My other point is that the current system feels like an RNG hellhole only if a player comes from the above point of view. Objectively, other games in the looter genre have even more RNG systems that are enjoyed by a large audience. Yes, PoE and D2 are better loot-based games, but not because they are less RNG heavy, but because there are more items and far deeper, longer, and better designed progression.
The “It’s not suited for my liking” and the “genre uses a different method everywhere” don’t hold much water for me. I understand your preference, I don’t share it but I see what you want (and I would be fine with it). I see it as a preference and not as some kind of divine truth.
I also see tons of arguments coming from people with similar want that you have criticizing the current system with arguments warped in so much dishonesty, goalpost sliding, false arguments, defeatism, and bad math that they hurt to read. Sprinkle that with a bit of calling people stupid, shill, and crazy constantly and it’s enough for me to start commenting on the thread too.
The way I see it, it’s easier to get items you want in ostentiably RNG heavy games like Diablo-likes and gacha games, than it is to get items you want in a game that is neither of those genres nor is it a looter shooter.
For a horde shooter where the itemisation is meant to complement the gameplay, it is a still an RNG hellhole with way to omany layers of RNG just for a single weapon.
I’m mainly still here commenting because there still seems to be a fundamental understanding in RNG and how it is or should be implemented to have it be a fun or engaging experience. For instance, a chance to brick or permanently make a weapon worse is something that shouldn’t exist in game design outside of certain MMOs.
It’s a combination of a ton of RNG in the items, hard locks that permanently makes a weapon less desirable than what it was/could be, that layer of abstraction between items and gameplay where most of your items are still going to be coming from shops and the differing expectation on how much RNG should be in place for a item progression system in a horde shooter. Fatshark seems to think that RNG can replace designing systems and user experiences properly.
The people who are more likely than not to play more for the gameplay is more likely to be driven off by a hostile itemisation system as it is than people addicted to endless RNG “grind” will stay, because in the long run, the latter still won’t be staying because they’re not getting any item progression unless they’re lucky.
I’ve been seeing tons of posts trying to shut down any discussion on why the itemisation is too RNG, or there’s no real progression because it’s mostly RNG or suggestions to make it less reliant on RNG, either due to not understanding what RNG is (by conflating grind, work or anything deterministic to RNG), oblivious (deliberately or otherwise) to the issues others have because it doesn’t affect them, or the handful who vigourously defend the system either because of a “kark you, got mine” attitude or not wanting people to have it easier than them, despite missing the point they didn’t work for any of it, it was all luck.
That’s the frustrations anyone wanting to talk about easing the RNG have to wade through, and still people come along and misrepresent the points and drag in vacous strawmen like “you don’t need the items for damnation” or “if you get what you want in 10, 20, 100 hours you’d just quit” or “just be lucky”.
You said it yourself, those other games usually have better system design and they come with the expectation that they’ll have the amount of RNG that they do. If DT wants something similar to what those other games have for their itemisations, they need to at least work on the user experience of wading through all those layers of RNG not just add more RNG to an already RNG heavy system.
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Is there a problem with this?
I think a better way to phrase this question to the people who are fine with the current crafting iteration is:
ASIDE FROM DELAYING CONTENT AND FIXES BECAUSE THOSE SHOULD BE A GIVEN:
What do we stand to lose if FatShark DOES rework the crafting system to have no/little RNG and control over Blessings/Perks?
I would see it as an absolute win. But I haven’t really seen why people have such a problem with RNG removal. Just the argument that we should accept it willingly.
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Thanks for turning your argument to a bit more friendly tone (apart from calling people addicts who like grindy games).
I think we agree. Maybe? Since it’s easier to get items you want in those games because you see chase items for what they are and you temper your expectations. That’s at least what I think makes sense.
PoE corruption caugh, caugh… Also in many stages of crafting you can “brick” items that you poured an insane amount of currency already.
Mainly to the end of the quote… They did work for them. In PoE when you finally get the mage blood you did do the map, you did “grind it out”.
This is something I don’t get. I’m a kind of crazy person that did enjoy grinding pets in WoW back in the day with like 1/500 odds (put on a movie, farm the same mob a thousand times… It’s chill). I didn’t see it as luck when the pet finally dropped. I’ve seen it as luck if it dropped around 500 kills.
Based on what you wrote I don’t usually see a lot of arguments that want to ease the system based on its own design. Someone posted a thread asking for no siloing I would consider something like that a good direction. I feel like the new armory dropping only 370+ items really goes against the current system and is just a foil for no long-term progression.
There is usually some confusion about what a desired item is, and I detect a lot of goalpost shifting around that. Usually, it goes from usable to good to specific to fit that one specific playstyle to why isn’t an equal playing field. The shift at the same time includes shifting in “how much time it should take” with pretty misrepresented timeframes and such. I give you that people defending the system aren’t faultless in shifting, but I find they do to lesser extent.
I think shared resources (if no items), brunt pity (it might actually have pity, I haven’t seen anyone with a post much less proof of buying 50 or more items and not getting something 370+, 50 might sound high I just feel like if there is no pity a post like this would be widely quoted by now), and trait selection after reaching free reroll are clear things that the current system would be improved by. Just to give a few examples, but I bet any post asking something like this gets swarmed by people with utter defeatism, craping on the system itself.
I said they are better because of things like more items better experience and deeper (usually meaning 5-10 more layers of rng). FS not tempering expectations isn’t a fault of the design.
If you actually read the post you quoted you will understand what I have and don’t have a problem with. Read a few of my previous posts here and you’ll get the full picture.
If they don’t just cannibalize the current system to make something bad that no one like but grumpily accepts, and they actually make a good progression system that’s let’s say takes around 100h to max each character…
I’d say we lose at least half a year of content. Based on Fatshark’s promise (mind you they do break their promises quite often) that would be 2 classes, a few maps, a lot of new weapons and some other creative new stuff. Also in the meanwhile, we would lose more players and getting teams would be harder in off hours.
If they just break the system down to make reaching full-perfect gear quicker (let’s say the same time frame as before) they’d still need to do a lot of balancing since the current balance is based on not having perfect and perfectly tuned items.
It might be worth it, but I currently enjoy the game, and variety wise I would prefer the new content. I also like the current design choice even if the implementation is still a bit shallow and rough (it is currently going in a good direction even if at first I didn’t really like that they scrapped the blessing combination), but I wouldn’t mind a well-designed progression with a deterministic endpoint.
I say it is entirely their design that is causing expectations to not match what they are trying to achieve with their “design intent”.
Most of the itemisation system is almost 1 to 1 to their previous games but with additional inconveniences and obstacles that is blatantly there to stretch the time they want the itemisation to be ‘relevant’
The main differences are the timers on Armoury Exchange and Melk’s Shop, the initial lack of targeted item crafting/buying (that was also attempted to be explained away in the most flippant and jarring way possible), the stat distribution RNG, the addition of tiers to the perks and trait-equivalent blessings, locking one perk or trait when the other is rerolled/replaced and the massive pool of base ratings items generate with compared to V2 (5 v 100).
What did they improve from the previous Tide games’ systems? Pretty much nothing. Grudgingly, maybe the perks, since the variability of the variables has been replaced by less tiers, but it gets overshadowed by the hostility of the locks and perk reroll system.
It just feels like they didn’t learn a single thing from their previous games and in effect to again extend the itemisation system it removes so much player agency or the ability to work towards anything that isn’t a dice roll. Of which there isn’t, everything is a dice roll.
On paper, each layer of itemisation RNG may have seemed ok and reasonable, but when you have 6+ of them all layered together it goes out of control really quickly. They are trying to improve some of it, certainly, by tweaking the ratings of items that appear, increasing the availability of higher tier blessings (and nerfing the Armoury even harder, don’t forget).
The thing is, they eventually ran some numbers and saw how bad it was, yet they still double down on the core of the sytem.
They are simultaneously trying to cater to the potential 1000+ hour players, casual players and the grinding players by having an effectively endless grind but I believe they are still missing the point on what kept those 1000+ hour players going. It certainly wasn’t the itemisation. But I’m sure the itemisation is surely pushing some, if not a good chunk of, people away with how aggressively RNG it is on a game that isn’t a looter shooter, a MMO, a gacha game or a Diablolike.
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