There’s been the occasional comment about Deeds not being as fun as they could (or should) be, and a lot of people don’t like to play them at all. And I kind of agree myself. So what is wrong with them, and what could possibly be done to enhance them?
In general, I like the idea, and I find them mostly fun and interesting to play. But there are problem both in the basics, and with specific modifiers. First off, I think they’re too rare. Dropping randomly from the relevant difficulty’s chests, and at a rate only slightly better then Veteran items (in my experience, others likely have their own thoughts) makes acquiring them unreliable. this would be mitigated by letting us craft our own (and Salvage them too).
Of course, we cannot in any way decide the modifiers, so it’s up to luck whether we get a Green one with Squandered Resources (or whatever the “no ammo pickups” was called, or an Orange one with HBFS, Vanguard and Sudden Death. I don’t think letting people choose their modifiers would be a good choice, as that would essentially change it into another system entirely, but integrating them into the Crafting system would probably help here too, as we could Salvage the ones we deem too hard or too easy, while crafting more from the remains.
Especially when we regularly play Legend, we also get Deeds for lower difficulties (either a few from the runs we did in the past, or several more from the Daily rewards). And all but the hardest of them (Vanguard, HBFS and something else easily turns harder than the next difficulty) are… Useless, at best. So they stay in the inventory, clogging up the interface. I think the best solution to this would be… Integration into the Crafting system, at least allowing us to Salvage the old Deeds, and possibly enabling upgrading them from one difficulty to another (likely from Orange of one difficulty to Green of the next).
I think (some of) the rewards could also be tweaked, but excluding one particular modifier, I don’t have much to say. I guess the hardest Deeds could do something else besides another Emperor’s box, maybe a pre-selected Veteran item (or a special Chest containing one), but that’s just one idea, and I haven’t put that much thought into it.
Now, for particular modifiers. There are some that I think need tweaking, as they for one reason or another don’t work that well.
Abduction is very problematic. It’s either extremely harsh (if a player does go completely down) or completely irrelevant. In the case where it’s actually relevant, it also makes the game for that player very, very boring, and (at least) if it happens early, is likely to make the whole group suicide or at least make that one player to leave or do something else. Heavy tweaks or complete removal are required (and I’ve no idea what could be tweaked to make it playable).
Deprivation is fun to play, but it’s the one with problematic rewards. As no books can be found on the run (well, technically, almost no books, as a few Grims can still be grabbed), the normal reward from the map ends up being either of the two lowest chests. This ends up giving the Deed reward as the “true” reward and the map reward being the “bonus”, and the latter is of bad quality. It can be argued that the Tomes wouldn’t limit you any on Deprivation Deeds, as there’s no healing for them to replace anyway (unless you get a lucky Sackrat), but Grimoires don’t get even that, as they still have their Curse (and that’s arguably even more significant then, as you can’t effectively heal). So Deprivation needs their reward tweaked way up, or to allow books to be picked up.
Back to Basics is too harsh, and especially too limiting in what equipment you can use. It would be even more so, if it worked properly (as it still leaves Talents working). Dropping your Power to the starting value makes a lot of weapons lose practically all of their effectiveness, with only the high-control ones keeping some of theirs. This limits your weapon choices a lot. If the Talent side worked right, the same would also apply to Careers, as some of them (Slayer, BH, Pyro…)rely on their Talents a lot to be effective. I’ll borrow the change proposal from my friend here: Divide it to two different modifiers, one affecting only gear and the other only your effective level. That would make the Power loss more manageable (approximately halving it instead of dropping it to starting value), and limit only your choice of Career or weapon, not both. This would, I think, also bring the rewards more in line with the actual difficulty. Honestly, the drop of Power to 15 is too harsh by itself, nevermind the loss of weapon abilities (and supposed loss of Talents)
And just so this isn’t all complaints, I actually like several of the Deed modifiers a lot, as they’re fun to play and actually teach some aspect of the game better (by forcing you to either learn or to change your tactics). Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger teaches you to avoid those overheads, as they can (and will) easily down you. You just don’t want to get hit. The Vanguard teaches more general dealing with Elites, especially multiple ones, as you will encounter a lot of them, all the time. Seek and destroy throws so many Specials your way that you’ve no choice but to hold everyone on Special duty. You being Drakegun IB or Slayer is no excuse, you will need to deal with some of them. And Send in the Next Wave teaches that you can’t always just stand and defend a location; you’ll need to push through the hordes to get anywhere in a sensible amount of time. We need more modifier like those.
Oh, and the old bug from Vanguard, upgrading the enemies in hordes could be a good Deed modifier by itself.