The crafting system is painful

I think the most frustrating thing is it could be made worlds better with relatively few changes. Honestly the new system is a huge improvement, but it still suffers from the same problems of the old system to a smaller degree. Now I don’t mind a bit of grinding to get things, but it should actually be fun, and it has to be consistent. Sitting and hitting the reroll button a 100 times is not fun, and getting a good weapon only to have it get ruined by it upgrading with the wrong perk is not fun.

The perk re-roll is nothing but time wasting, make it like the earn blessings where you can just pick which one you want on there. All the current system does is waist our time.

The earn/replace blessings is good, but it is only really useful in a specific situation, where you have one weapon with really good base stats and one of the perks you want, then you can grind for another weapon with the other blessing you want, the problem is this leaves more than enough RNG room for some players to spend an eternity trying to get something while others get it right away.

I think they should

  1. Change the perk reroll to something similar to the earn/re blessing system where you just pick what you want on there.

  2. Either completely remove the locking of perks and blessings or provide some sort of resource/ability to use dockets/resources to unlock them.

These will greatly decrease the reliance on RNG, and reduce the more frustrating aspects of the grind, but I would say any of the tide game’s replay ability does not stem from grinding for the best gear but from gameplay, and the current system hurts the game because it discourages build verity one of the main things that keeps game play fresh and different. If they are worried about player retention it would be better to have us grind less for more, they can add new blessings for weapons over time that we will want to get and test out. It should not feel like you have to win the RNG lottery to get better gear.

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What the hell is the point of these casinos anyway? I mean we dont spend money on them and most of us seem to hate spending our time on them, so where is the value add?

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One of the things that makes it so painful is that the available Blessings on weapons are not just different, but wildly vary in actual power.

To look at the Vraks VII Headhunter Autogun (one of my most used weapons, at least since its ammo capacity buff):


Between the Eyes - Clears suppression & grants brief immunity on a weak spot hit.
I’m suppressed - I can’t aim straight, and I’m supposed to get a head shot to clear that?

Deadly Accurate - Bonus damage on Critical Weak Spot hits.
A critical weakspot hit is already going to kill most targets, and against anything that it won’t kill, critical hits are so random this is not at all reliable. If it were just Critical hits, or just Weak Spot hits, rather than needing to be both, I’d like it more, but this is unreliable and in many cases just going to result in overkill.

Ghost - Brief immunity to ranged attacks on a weak spot hit.
Okay, this one is actually reasonable; gives you a good chance of eliminating several targets or advancing on a group.

No Respite - Bonus damage on staggered enemies.
Right, so I’ve got to stagger the enemies first to make this useful.

Surgical - Bonus critical chance the longer you aim. Resets on attack.
With a UI mod to have the game actually report how long this takes to charge up, it is painfully slow. A couple of seconds for each stack. When have I got time to aim for ten seconds to still likely not get a critical. (Even the best version of the blessing is only +25% at max).

Crucian Roulette - Bonus Critical chance the more empty your magazine is.
Despite the bad wording (each “chamber” is apparently 10% of your magazine) and my general dislike of crit boosting blessings, this one is genuinely very good on the Vraks. If you are facing a horde or firing on a monstrosity, this means a significant proportion of the last few shots in your magazine will be criticals, enough to make a meaningful difference to your damage output.

Falter - Increased stagger on weak spot hit.
Actually moderately useful to give you a little longer to take down elites and specials, even if most enemies on most difficulties would be immediately dropped by a headshot.

Headhunter - Stacking critical bonus on weak spot hits. Resets on next crit.
I still generally don’t like crit boosting blessings, but I’d definitely rather this than Surgical, because it can actually be built up in a normal fight and only resets once it’s been useful.

Opening Salvo - Bonus power on first shot in salvo.
Bonus damage on one shot is extremely underwhelming (Unless the combat is so low intensity that I don’t really need bonus damage anyway).

Terrifying Barrage - Suppress nearby enemies on close range kill.
Not actually sure I’ve seen this one (I’ve certainly not used it on the Vraks), so it may be one that the guides list as existing within the code, but which isn’t actually active.
My guess is it’d be okay (I mean, I’ve had to use it at short range a lot), but the Vraks isn’t exactly a “close range kill” weapon.


So, when it comes to grinding out Blessings on gear, it’s not like some of the Blessings are “darn, that’s not the one I really wanted” - some of them are so much less useful than others, and getting those on an item can ruin the whole thing.

And this isn’t even looking at a set of Blessings where one lets the weapon do something new entirely. Run and Gun (able to hipfire while sprinting) or Deflector (can now block ranged attacks too) are the kind of thing where not getting them on a potential replacement weapon is a complete bust.

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It’s also strange that the infantry lasguns get a blessing that boosts zoom range (theoretically), but the helbores and headhunters don’t even get an optic. Helbores also don’t even get anything for headshot damage bonus, because it would make sense? It’s also probably the only weapon where you think surgical would make sense with, but doesn’t gain stacks while charging or holding a charge, so it’s useless on that one too. The only two that are worthwhile are sustained fire and onslaught, which is just sad. Opening salvo would also make more sense on a helbore than sustained fire, like a headhunter has. Having the combination of the two wouldn’t be horrible , but that’s not possible either.

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I would imagine some Fatshark game designers come from the school which believes RNG is a good base for game longevity and enjoyment. I think we would all agree we rather have full player control of the crafting system. It should be a variety of gamestyle options being the base for gameplay longevity. I mean imagine if ALL perks and blessings were equally attractive and offered different, meaningful role options for your character.

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You just lack faith in the ineffable design. If you cannot commit to at least 2000 hours of gameplay to achieve the goal, you are not worthy of Better Things.

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Tokens for the Slot Machine Gods!

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The prayer machine, indeed.

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the solution would be so simple, let players freely remove and add blessings and perks and allow consecration above max rarity to increase item level. allow your players to adapt the stats on the base items also. it could all be done through resources acquired in missions.

done - crafting fixed. players can grind the resources they need to modify their gear according to their style through GAMEPLAY and dont have to earn mostly frustration in front of npcs.

currently darktide reminds a player more of asia grinder mmos of the last decade then of a coop fps game. even in the asia gaming market stacked random bs lost its popularity as gamers expectations evolved accordingly.

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Ah, yet another who fails to fathom the ineffable design.

The solution may appear simple to us, but the True Visionaries who designed it know why this is not so and why we should not have it.

lol please do enlighten me oh wise one.

I’m sorry, but I can’t, I’m not worthy. I’m still evolving from the lowliest of ants towards the moment when the light of the design will bless me with reaching nirvana.

Blessed Fatssiah!

It would be nice if the developers just said “on average we would expect it to take X hours for a player to get a specific perfect weapons/curio”.

Because whatever that answer is (10 hours, 100 hours, 1000 hours) they could just make it so the rate you accumulate materials and the costs to upgrade or unlock things on weapons takes the same amount of time so even just the experience is different. Goes from casino RNG to deterministic but at least everyone feels like they’re rewarded for their time and it’s not like some a re very lucky or unlucky.

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In my view the problem is just compounding RNG. A little RNG adds some spice. Look at Warframe. Mission running has loot tables, you know where to go to get a given item and you can find out the probability of getting that item. But its still RNG. Once you have the item, however, all upgrades and crafting is 100% deterministic. That system is totally awesome and people love it. I sure did.

We could keep, for example, random stats distributions and loot drops from missions. That’s two layers of RNG.

oh sick, look at this 370 i rolled

While making perks and blessings completely customizable just by unlocking both of them. Thus ending the bricking phenomenon and still invoking rng as a spice. Instead we have nested RNG and we are all just TIRED.

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I’m fine with the base score being RNG, even if I suspect that the Brunt’s Shop has purposefully unfavourable chances to give you an item with a high base score. However perks and blessings should be fully controlled by player, whatever on weapons on Curios. I would be fine with blessings being obtained through RNG and stripping them from other items. Fatshark could even make the cost higher for re-rolling the second perk/blessing if for some crazy reason they think its necessary. At present those game systems prevent players from trying out new builds and I say that as a person with far higher playtime than most.

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I’m hearing a consensus opinion forming that basically if perks and blessings weren’t locked we’d all be much happier with the systems including the rng required to get good rolls.

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i’ve been keeping some items that are otherwise borked just in case they decide to come to their senses in this next big patch

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I swear to god, if i brick another goddamn curio with experience and curio chance rolls, i am going to actually lose it.

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Crafting system is so bad that one of the most popular mods (in terms of number of downloads) is Reroll-Until-Rarity, which allows you to “automate” rerolling perks. It’s 4th on the list, just behind numeric UI, scoreboard and healthbars.

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