Probably created by an intern, and whoever is responsible for itemization can’t bite the bullet that he got showed up in every aspect, or just has a Huge ego…
that’s my headcanon anyway
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All is dust, Brother.
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I think the biggest miscommunication is the person going on about liking randomness and thinking that Darktide is, well, the ideal system for that. The biggest problem with the Darktide crafting and item system is that no matter what stage of it you are at you don’t feel like you are going anywhere. It feels like someone put you on a treadmill and dangled a carrot in front of you while increasing and decreasing the speed at random to try and get you to stay on it.
I don’t hate randomness entirely, I don’t hate grind entirely, I’ve literally spent hundreads of hours between various Roguelikes, MMOs, and ARPGS. Warframe is basically my number 2 spot in my steam library still.
I think the main factor that makes me hate Darktide’s loot system is that whoever designed this had this weird idea that people would be fine with multiple layers of RNG and didn’t understand that at some point people need to actually get the carrot.
Despite how grindy Warframe can be it’s FULL of deterministic loot. Sure it might take you some time and you might need to be on at the right time of the month but you will get exactly what you were after if you do the right content long enough. When you get the item too it isn’t being hamstrung by random stats. The only 2 i can think of that really do this is Railjack weapons which everyone rightfully goes “Nah” on and usually gets a set and is done grinding and Litch / Sister weapons which make the random part of the stat the elemental bonus you picked when the weapon is rolled.
Even with the random loot drops you can generally tell when you are going to get it and there is a degree of item forgiveness when getting random items. There is a set number of runs you can do that will guarantee that you will get the drop. If all else fails there is a built in trading system that lets you trade items for platinum (which is the in game premium currency) and use that to buy things or trade with others for many of the things you could want.
Risk of Rain 2 also does a good job with making you work for items and making a loop where you have random items having a big impact on your gameplay. You get random items from chest, levels have randomly generated shines and bonuses, it’s not always a guarantee where each level will take you, and many of the items allow you to gamble for a bonus. The difference is that there are elements of random item negation built in that allow you to stack the odds in your favour or by spending resources (game time, other items, health, etc).
The reason people hate Darktide’s system is not that it’s grindy but that it realistically a huge impact on how you play the game while you also have very little impact on the system actually giving you what you want. All you can really do is feed resources into the slot machine. Sure many MMOs and F2Ps are grindy but generally the better you do and the smarter you approach a system the better you odds are and the faster you can get the item you want. On top of that progress feels incremental where getting to a new plateau makes getting to the next leg of the mountain easier. With Darktide it constantly feels like you are getting shoved back to the bottom of the mountain.
Sure you can have your carrot on a stick but believe it or not to keep any kind of engagement people need to actually get the carrot at some point or they will just do what many of us did and get off the treadmill.
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I think that’s the primary key. You can have a long grind. Random or deterministic. As long as it’s “reasonable” in what it demands of you. But the end result should still be full control. I dumped like 3000 hours into Warframe before quitting. But yeah once I had my mods maxed out, my froma’d slots, my frames and weapons and etc. I still had maximum control.
The end result still should be total freedom of your loadout and how you interact with the game, despite what the road was to get there.
Addendum:
I would actually love to see “corrupted” blessings or something in Darktide. I loved the corrupted mods in Warframe where you would have things like “increase duration by 99% but reduce power range by 33%”. Weapon upgrades with more powerful effects but some drawbacks would be very interesting. (+25% Crit chance but disabled weak point hits, infinite cleave but reduced damage, especially to armor, etc.)
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To add to this, because is a detail that I really liked when I farmed them. Even if you get terrible luck and constantly get low % elemental modifiers instead of the desired maximum +60%? I am mostly sure there is a mechanic that lets you “fuse” them.
So even if you had the lowest rolls possible, little by little you should be able to upgrade that item until is the best it can be. Is stuff like this that Darktide desperately lacks
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Correct.
You can also trade your Lich/Sister weapons with other players, in case either of you has one the other wants or simply wants to buy them through plat.
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Tbh I had a little bit of hopium that they might capitalize on whatever momentum they got from the penance update, and get the devlog/update/details/whatever on the crafting overhaul out soon after, to keep the ball rolling on player engagement. Increasingly doesn’t seem like that’s going to be the case, unfortunately.
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I would hope UI changes to reduce clutter, filtering. Even better an archive storage to throw weapons in.
Click click buy x50, get 3-4 decent ones, sell 80% one by one to keep good stats, run 180 back and forth like a funfair duck, click click re-roll.
Actual process needs bulk actions and quicker access.
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I think if you need to do this somethings probably still off. But will still be useful.
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Fatshark is allergic to Player engagement because if they get too much attention they’ll actually have to commit and deliver on something.
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This just goes that blessings also really need an overhaul…they’re all (95%) just so incredibly boring.
I hope that crafting update will bring some blessing overhauls but that seems like a pipedream.
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It’s an itemisation update, so going by that blessings should be included too since they are a part of the items.
Itemisation should include acquisition, modification and attributes (stats, perks, blessings) of weapons.
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I’m hoping that the base Weapon stats are no longer going to be RNG, as my ideal system would probably involve having the ability to raise your base Weapon stats via Consecration.
For example:
Profane - all stats 16%
Redeemed - all stats 32%
Anointed - all stats 48%
Exalted - all stats 64%
Transcendent - all stats 80%
The fact that the current cap for any base Weapon stats is 80% implies that Red-Tier Weapons are eventually coming to fill in that remaining 20%.
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I was trying to think of what the Darktide current crafting system reminds me of, and there’s a couple…
The first that comes to mind is Diablo III’s legendary horadric cube function. Where, you sacrifice a legendary weapon, armor, offhand, jewel, ring w/e and you can gain its benefits without having to wear it. There’s no guarantee ever that you’ll get the perfect roll for the item you’re grinding for. There were some items that were guarantees like their socketed jewels that you could do Greater Nephalem Rifts for.
Destiny Engrams also have randomized stats, but they do have a bad luck system for the higher rating engrams (with no guarantee as to what stats you’ll get). I’m not sure if there was stat tweaking, but I believe it came at a cost - corruption like someone said earlier.
It’s very similar to relic grinding in games like Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail and Crossing Void.
Base item with unchangeable main stat (weapon rating and stat distribution)
Levelling (consecrating) adds more substats (perks/blessings)
Some of the games allow you to switch one or two of the substats but the most common system is that continual levelling enhances a random substat.
If it’s not what you want, you start over.
Some games allow you to choose the main stat in exchange for a rare resource. Most of them have periods of increased drops. Selling them usually gives you a resource useful for developing other relics.
The point is, I loath those systems as much as Darktide’s crafting.
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The thing is the grind is the game. That’s the agreed upon diablo formula since 2. In addition seasons let you get specific sets and items while giving you fairly significant stat bonuses through the Paragon system.
I think this also burries the lead as far as just absolutely how many items you get just from doing a quick rift run which in turn makes any chance of finding legendary items fairly good (I know some have rift times down to as little as single digit minutes) which in turn meant quick turnarounds for getting items. Sure every item wasn’t fantastic but you got such a stupid high volume of them over a short period that it really didn’t matter.
On top of that items that aren’t desirable could be broken down into crafting mats which stayed relevant well into end game.
Darktide’s system is extremely similar but built without many of the things that made Diablo 3’s system am actually enjoyable loop.
Can’t comment about Destiny as I got into it for a short period and very quickly lost interest because of finding how they do things extremely annoying compared to Warframe and other similar games at the time.
Even then I wouldn’t excuse the crafting shortfalls just because other games do them since we literally have better examples floating around for how to do a crafting system properly including in FS’s own games.
Even when not taking “Perfect rolls” into account the crafting system was something I recognized as a big waste of time because the time spent and feasibility to try the builds I wanted didn’t exist especially because so many require very specific blessings that just didn’t drop and I had no real way to get those that didn’t need hundreads of hours of pulling a slot machine repeatedly.
Believe it or not actually getting the carrot at some point is actually important for a crafting and item system.
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I wouldn’t use grindy ARPGS and looter shooters (the grind is in the name) as a good comparison for co-op horde shooters.
Darktide doesn’t have an overall campaign I play for the story. It doesn’t have me going to level 100, and the enemies too, constantly changing breakpoints every level with new health and damage.
Darktide is a much more curated and focused experience. A focus on skill and reaction speed to completing a ~40 minute mission with a specific build. Loot doesn’t drop in enormous quantities mid mission and I swap things out in said mission.
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Yeah I get it’s something you only have to do once ever for each blessing but I hate trying to acquire a specific blessing. I came to the conclusion that unironically the least tedious way to go about it is to just have a reserve of Melk bucks and camp shop extension for Melk store. The least tedious way to acquire what I want is not to engage with the crafting system but to do something that is more efficient if I don’t boot up the game at all until the day what I want pops up.
There’s only so many times I can buy and consecrate a weapon with no tangible progress being made before being completely disheartened and saving the plasteel till Melk gives me what I need.
It just makes me want to play the game less not more.
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I think the most frustrating thing is getting T4 Thrust on my Ogryn character and not my Zealot and similar stuff like that.
Also the weird BS with the Psyker staffs all being classed as completely different weapons as far as they go so i need to get it on every single staff if I want to use it.
Oddly enough it feels like I’m being actively punished for playing other classes or trying new things.
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Hit it up, everyone! Please 
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