I find that at least five times a day, when I look to see what missions I will QP into, or, the Auric Maelstrom, that it is either a bad map, one I have just done, environmental conditions that I do not wish to play, regular high intensity, or the maelstrom is not one I find enjoyable.
I know I am not the only one who feels this way, and from what I have observed being around others with 3000+ hours in Darktide, it is the most common complaint. In a private or even a public game you should be able to pick which mission you would like to play and its it’s map condition (Think High intensity shock troop gauntlet or maelstrom modifiers I-II, I-II-V-E-G, J-I-II-IV or C-I-VI).
Adding mission selection to Darktide even with 10% less materials at the end of the mission would provide significant QOL to the playerbase. This system could work like Payday 2s, where you can also get random missions or purchase them directly from the mission vendors, something like buying a mission directly from Hadron Omega 7-7 to play Magistrati Oubliette TM8-707. There is also another option, allowing us to pick them for free.
I really like your idea of letting players choose the difficulty and modifiers for a private game.
I’ve long suspected that the restriction on the choice of missions at any given time is to consolidate players. It keeps queues as short as possible in low pop times. People are quick to complain “dead game” if nobody joins their 3am auric maelstrom. Makes sense to me.
However, queue times and pop considerations don’t apply to private games. They’re completely separate. It’s a compromise between full player control and population funneling which would actually work.
must say it… tested seriously maelstrom yesterday, and it feels like something I like. I hate high int shock troop, for the shock troop. But maelstrom, I love the special modifiers.
But, and this is really annoying, maelstrom is 60 minutes.
Fatshark could you refresh the map every 30 minutes and make possible to quick join maelstrom (to avoid empty spots)?
Or better… could you add several maelstrom modifiers to the normal auric maps. Currently this is or hi int, or hi int shock troops.
I feel seriously limited with only 1 map every 60 minutes.
One high int, and one shock troop seems enough. At least, that’s my opinion.
I agree with the OP proposition. However, why restricting to private games?
Let’s push this to allow to quickplay anything with restriction that you could choose (checking or unchecking a modifier / difficulty by example) and allow the possibility to create the instance you want by choosing map difficulty and modifier.
So:
quickplay with filters you can choose
an instance creation that permits you to choose map difficulty and modifiers
If Fatshark would be afraid to have too many instance created, they could restrict creation by player. By example 1 / 60 minutes.
I know, I said several things that exclude each others… but the main point is… change it. Do something, change it.
I think, as is, the mission setup does work effectively (at least in US-East) to ensure games are practically always filled (which is surely a goal), but I suspect there’s also a reticence to build out the infrastructure to spin up an unlimited number of mission servers and then expose that ability to end users. There are loads of considerations there, technical and otherwise.
My guess: we’ll get player hosted missions with a lobby browser before we get dedicated server-hosted missions we can spin up and configure on our terms.