Penance “Class goal” should instead be like “class trials” in “The meat grinder”.
Problem with penance now: A lot of the penance classes unlock, you have to do very specific and kinda “toxic” behavior that is unfun for a lot of players to play with, especially in pug groups.
Another issue with both Darktide and Vermintide in the past: New players have no idea what they are doing or are aware of a lot of the game mechanics or when to use them. For example, a lot of players know the basics that “heavy vs armor, light vs horde” but if players are not aware, that can be misleading for some weapons.
A lot of players just does their “best” but not sure “what” to do.
A lot of players just play the game and are not aware of some of the better mechanics like parry or dodge into an attack is really good (even if it is in the advanced tutorial now)
A lot of players end up just giving up, feel frustrated, or find the game to be “basic” because they never were aware of a lot of the mechanics.
So the suggestion is, how about making every level 5 cosmic reward parts of a small “tutorial” trial made for each class?
Maybe if they made the “reach level 5,10,15,20,25,30” unlocked an option to do a class challenge but also learn a trick with the class that gradually got harder?
Example level 5 psy = Learn to balance peril, you get the information that you don’t explode when you reach 100% peril right away and you can tap R to reach 99% and you be fine and it still safe to cast it even at 97%. As long as you quell it with R afterward. → Do a trial with only mind blasts against elites and go out with a bang at the end to show that going down once for the team, can be a saver for the team even if it cost a corruption bar.
That way, you get to know the basics early on but later on more advanced techniques for another example
that on rank 20, you learn to use the “dueling sword” properly by hitting armored targets in their weak spots, that the special is amazing to reset your attack animation and does a fast stab and you can deal more damage this way than a mind blast against some targets.
While an Ogryn at level 5, Learn to revive teammates by the use of even when getting damaged, you can revive a teammate. Trial will show a two teammates that is getting mauled, 1 by a horde that is never ending, even if you try to kill them off as the point of the trial is to show that you can do it even while getting damage.
Second target will be 3 maulers that hit the downed, but since they all focused on the downed teammate, you can revive him as long as you don’t “disturb them”, showing you the “revive shielding” tech that can be used by any class, but it is quite big for an ogre, since if you even got one simple dredge hitting you and you hit it back, you will attract the maulers, ogryn can ignore that dredge.
Results of it would be something along these lines, doing the trials will unlock the cosmetic and you learned a little more about Darktide that you can share with your other teammates that never played either classes. Marksman players probably know more about how to deal with weak spots and take advantage of them in practice because of the trials, the ogryn know more tech about how to rescue and deal with crowds. Finding out new tech and tricks in a game is exciting and fun, especily when you can use this knowledge across characters.
Lore-wise, it can be mixed up that we got trained from prisoner to an elite combatant but the “Psykhanium see something more in you…” since they normally only see you as another “meatbag or prisoner” but Sefoni (The Lady in the tube in the psykhanium) can see your “potential” and is training you for her own “entertainment” to be more than a meatbag.
That way you have some sense of why the Sefoni will teach you to be better and Fatshark can use this as a content update for lore later.