Emperor’s Gifts are notoriously stingy, and if they method for earning them isn’t completely random, it’s inscrutable. Despite their rarity they are also rarely useful, and at worst feel inappropriate for your class. If they had physical mass they’d be paper weights.
I understand the intention is to be a high tier exciting reward, but they’re not. They’re exasperating. Obviously they could use some tuning, but my preferred fix is to just have every successful mission you run result in a grey, green, or blue weapon or curio! This would ameliorate a few problems with the game almost immediately:
Player’s complain about there being no point in running missions, as they’re sitting on large piles of dockets, plasteel or diamantine already (tbh this is not my issue) - having even a low level gear drop at the end would encourage play!
Shop camping is almost universally derided, it’s possibly the least fun way of achieving rewards that I can think of. Just log in every 59 minutes, scroll a table, and log out. What if we actually just ran a mission instead because we knew we’d be guaranteed a grey of decent base value? (350+)
Stacks of plasteel and diamantine would finally have a sink because there would be a constant influx of low tier weapons and curios we would be consecrating. My main issue with RNG in this game is that it’s not just impossibly rare to roll deflector on a force sword, but good force swords are rare in their own right!
It’s honestly sort of baffling to me that we’re not receiving gear on every mission! It’s so deflating just making it through an intense heresy run only to receive like… 50 diamantine as my most useful reward. It’s not fun. Please fix.
Darktide has the most unrewarding system i’ve seen to date, whoever’s idea it was over at Fatshark to get rid of the loot system from Vermintide 2 & implement this stupid shop timer needs to be fired asap as they clearly don’t play games themselves.
Aren‘t you happy with your bonus-ep and dockets after beating a high intense and double grim damnation run? And if you are lucky you get a level 100 gold curio with xp gain and docket gain or a golden devils claw sword with 423 power… so satisfying!!! Don‘t forget the 110 plasteel that you found while getting wrecked for 45 mins…
There is. You get paid, you go the shop and every hour you are provided with a choice on what you want to spend your gametime. This is one aspect of Darktide which is NOT two steps back from the Vermintide formula. This is still a RNG factor, but you get 20-30 (?) items to choose from every hour.
The gear in the shop is only grey, green or blue. You should be rewarded for actually completing the mission instead of just logging in every hour.
Vermintide had an actual rewarding system with higher tier chests for completing objectives such as collecting grims etc which give you the chance at legendary or red items.
Darktide certainly is a step backwards in every aspect.
There’s also a significant lack of agency in affecting what you get in loot. Doing better or worse on a mission has absolutely no bearing on getting loot, or what type or quality of loot you get. There is nothing you can do to aim for a certain type of item. You can’t affect the quality of the item in the shop. If there isn’t anything in the shop, you have to wait an hour before it refreshes, there is nothing you can do to change that. It’s such a user hostile itemisation system.
So? You play the game, get cash and crafting mats. Some of my best gear is based on gray items I bought and upgraded myself. Not to mention the Melk’s token based shop, which again is another source of potential gear.
I have not received an emperors blessing for close to two weeks now, and thats not to say it has not popped up after a mission is finished, its just that the item the end mission screen tells me i am getting from emperors blessing simply never turn up in my inventory.
The rotating shop is your primary source of “drops” only you get to pick what out of a larger list every hour. Emperors Gifts are bonus drops (usually of higher quality.) If we got Emperors Gifts every mission their chance for being high quality would probably have to drop to compensate, which would make them matter a lot less. I’d rather Emperors Gifts be more rare and higher quality, if anything.
Some rare and unique drops are what is missing.
Unique skins and risk reward gameplay.
VT1 had these wonderful unique reds… not all were good but still - they felt special… you got them by taking on higher difficulties
Shame that they created a mission board in vt1 as the whines got louder… and now we have the shop system because they need to cater towards everyone… well done… if they include better stuff in damnation or higher people will be all over them for making the game to difficult…
Most of the items in my armory are between 15k-20k dockets, though. One mission on anything but the highest difficulties doesn’t pay out enough to purchase an item. I feel like they even specifically set the “normal” difficulty, Malice, to pay out just under the average price of level 30 gear. Just to try to get you to run two missions and stay logged in; and usually by the time I’ve run two missions, the shops rotated! It’s frustrating.
I have a job and other games to play with friends, I can’t put in the time to get super good at Darktide that Heresy and Damnation are very fun for me. I play Malice because it gives a good balance of challenge and chill for a person with a more-than-casual less-than-neet gaming schedule.
Most of the shops rotation also isn’t worth buying, so it won’t be long before you build up an excess of dockets to buy the items that are worth buying.
So you’ve moved the goalposts, now it’s both a transactional time gated “reward” vs a consistent guaranteed reward. The system as you describe it is just markedly worse, and by your own admission isn’t “the same” as the latter.
Seems better to me. Instead of getting loads of trash you’ll never use that you have to trash over time, you can pick and choose which pieces you want.
I still have hundreds of unopened chests in VT2 because I don’t want to deal with the garbage.
If we had a full crafting system and stuff broke down into crafting materials for that system, we could MAKE good gear rather than playing the world’s slowest slot machine.
Then crafting would require way more player engagement, which I’d personally prefer to move away from. Let me see if I want the gun, yes or no, great. Now I can get back to shooting stuff which is why I’m here.
It would facilitate more engagement, not require it. I WANT to be engaged in my progression in a game that is built around expanding your arsenal and abilities. Your desires are not universal.