Sorry Brock. At the risk of repeating myself, see here:
Current items have no grey bar. They will no doubt have to roll some new grey bars for each of our existing weapons. This will obviously make all existing weapons potentially better (so we can’t complain really), but we’re now all going to get another randomisation of our inventory, where some people will get perfect rolls and some won’t.
Hence it makes sense to stock up now on cheap, good looking 375-380s from the Armoury, regardless of perks and blessings slapped on them.
Yes, but getting modifiers to go up on all weapons below 380 to potentially be good seems fine to me. Maybe you won’t like the 380 version of what you have now, but it’s better than leaving it as a 320.
But yeah if you see bases that have good 380 regardless to perks and blessings, gobble em up as usual. That won’t change. But once the update drops all weapons you see and drop could be a good 380 with time and resources invested.
Personally I am just not playing at all until the update drops. I have other games to play and would rather spend my time working towards mastery of weapon families when it drops.
That’s a core thing people keep asking, and Fatshark has studiously avoided commenting on, there’s never been elaborated reason or vision offered for what the purpose of RNG or the value of random stats offers.
A C-Suite or Dev lead appears to have an intractable fetish for RNG, and either nobody in the office is willing to kink-shame them for it, or they’ve just accepted they’ve built a bunch of code around it already and think it’s easier to layer another system on top instead of addressing the fundamentals.
Not only will locks be gone and we’ll be able to take any weapon to 380 with a minimum stat of 60%, but all weapon families are being condensed down so that you can freely (maybe with a mat cost?) convert any weapons into another in their family.
Like somebody mentioned before, it’s like an overly-convoluted way of removing the locks. The other progression mechanics are interesting, but ultimately fluff when the system still relies on rng. As mentioned many times already, removing the locks was a suggested stopgap until they revised a system to replace the rng system. Spending all of this development time on removing the locks but not addressing the entirety of the issue seems so misplaced/thoughtless. It may be a sort of ‘compromise solution’ in their pov, but the very pointed question to them is, of which they still have yet to answer in the years the issue has been prominent, “Why do you feel you need to keep randomness in the progression system?” Exactly why is it so incredibly necessary for the game? Most people don’t want it, so it better have an incredibly good reason for it to stick around.
Like, they have the option to make something where people say “I’m really excited to try this”, but instead went with the “I guess I can live with this” option. That seems like such a strange direction to go down.
It’s not about “removing the locks” or “removing RNG” and it never was. It’s about making the progression system not suck and giving players agency. Based on everything we’ve seen, RNG in the new progression system won’t have a meaningful detrimental impact on “endgame” players being able to get exactly the weapons they want. If you’ve got mats, you’ll be able to see, and work towards, a very clear path to maxing any weapon.
The RNG is there to spice things up on the way there.
For a substantial portion of a playerbase, it is. Determinism is a huge sticking point.
The way I see it, is weapon base acquisition is still the boogeyman here. Having each weapon be a potential 380 helps, but does not entirely mitigate the soulless buy-buy-buy from Brunt until you get the base you want. “Want” being the operative word, since to be fair your bases don’t need to be perfect to slay heretics effectively – a big plus.
What I’m more worried about is how spending limited mastery points on blessings will shake out – will a natural T4 blessing free up mastery points for stat/perk/blessing allocation? Number 1 concern right there.
Honestly any system that will circumvent the tedium of purchasing/managing bases is a win as far as I’m concerned. Watering down the RNG is always appreciated. I respect that they’re trying to make an eternal content grind for gear, but I’d respect them more if they achieve it with materials and content rather than… Brunt and way too many clicks.
I feel that’s exactly what we’re getting, which is a massive massive departure from what we have now, and that the handwringing about the RNG involved in getting a base weapon with proper stats will prove overblown. With 60% being the minimum stat, I expect to roll no more than 5 weapons for a given family. And I can’t imagine they’d hamstring blessings/perks after making such a big deal about breaking the locks.
To my mind I’m forced to ask, what does it spice up? This is the issue I have. I can’t see what it’s legitimately adding to the experience other than additional fidgeting for its own sake.
Does it enhance customizability? Not really, as long as you’re able to modify the stats, adding RNG ranges to those to it is just noise the player is forced to deal with, the player’s choices aren’t really impacted if they’re looking to build something specific other than “is this RNG distribution good enough?”
Does it enhance user attachment or immersion? Only in the sense of “omg this one finally rolled the right stats”, but this is really something better handled by cosmetics and blessing choice anyway.
Does it radically impact gameplay? Only insomuch as it can potentially limit weapons from hitting certain use thresholds, though this is generally more weighted toward ultimate distribution.
The game has a ton of infrastructure and framework built around RNG stuff, that the studio has put a ton of time into between Melk, Brunt, Hadron, Emperor’s Gift, the Armory, etc, but doesn’t seem to really have a valid use case for it. It’s seemingly all built around a monetization model that isn’t actually being monetized but that nobody can seemingly fundamentally break from.
For me, nothing good. But for a specific type of player who needs to grind to play, something…?
I chalk it up to the whole live-service sh**show where you make eternal grind a requirement in your game design. Knowing your studio can’t commit to the amount of content it would otherwise need, maybe.
What I think the RNG is adding to the experience in the new system is the chance to get something more powerful, either during the course of normal play (emp’s gifts) or by choice (Melk), that you would otherwise not yet have access to (because you lack mastery/expertise/mats). And since the locks will be gone and we’ll have the mastery/expertise systems, those likely won’t be just junk. They’ll be the items you can continue to develop into godrolls.
Instead of the RNG being the grind, the RNG will be shortcuts thru the grind to at least see if you enjoy a high-stat version of whatever new weapon you may wanna try.
