Only thing that would make me go back if the game was more respectful of my time. It is not, and considering the amount of work needed to be done to deliver something somewhat resembling what we were being sold on before release, then my prognosis is that the game will be worth another try in two years, only I seriously doubt it will last that long, joining all other less-than-a-year-of-support “live services”.
Only reason why I pre-ordered(selfish, I know), was that I wanted to play the game while it had players. I knew how it was going to go down, based off of VT and VT2, what little hope I had was silly wishful thinking and I was almost certain I’d be disappointed. I was. Kinda costly for a “live service” I engaged with for less than two months, but I made dumber financial decisions.
10 successful missions. Count in loading into empty lobbies, or replacing a bot on a doomed mission, going down within two minutes and waiting through the post-game screen and loading, or exiting and loading into the hub again…then 30 minutes per finished mission becomes 1 - 1,5 hour in reality.
You need a critical mass of people that persistently play the game in order for the matchmaking to work at a good pace. A progression system is the most obvious solution to attract more people since a lot of people are trained to partake in hamster wheel type progression systems from other games. The people that only care for the combat experience and can persistently do it over and over again for its own sake are never going to be a high enough number as to make the matchmaking experience decent.
Look at steam chart, loot based games are minority (mostly MMO) and direct competition L4D2, DRG, PAYDAY 2 have much better loot system and population than Darktide. I think only Lost Ark have worse loot grind.
Yeah. I’m hoping that it turns things around, even if it’s just slightly.
I’m also hoping that they’re working on game/server stability as well as the crafting patch. Desyncs, disconnects, and the rare CTD (for me) still bug me.
Barring them increasing the likelihood that a T4 Perk and a T5 Blessing appears this is your chance to get said combination (and mind you, I’m being nice and giving you 2 chances that you get 1 perk and 1 blessing you want); 0,0063%
That’s just to get the right combinations of perks and blessings… That’s not including the chance for an upgrade in base rating or even the correct distribution of stat weights you’re looking for.
I don’t need to add that to tell you that it will, no matter what they do to give you a better chance at a better base rating… ever be enough.
Not so long as perks and blessings gets locked.
Crafting will not fix this (we have been saying this since they revealed perks being locked). Shoving more gear in your face will not fix this. It will not fix it, because the problem is that you are locking perks and blessings.
But hey, I will be doing round 2 of the RNG shenanigans. My prediction is that it will not matter, it won’t even make a dent, but I’d happily be wrong and then… My review will be changed and I will (finally) recommend Darktide to my Steam group.
If people left because of the slot machine, they probably won’t come back when the slot machine has 2 of the 7+ dials removed and the buttons/lever changed up a bit.
Fatshark wants to stick to their design intent? It’s their choice.
If Darktide didn’t have loot and you would simply make whatever build you want I’d probably enjoy it more than with the current system where you simply don’t get what you want.
Progression is when you have what you want and you can spend your time time making it better.
RNG hell is when you don’t have what you want and you have to spend time for the chance to get it.
Oh yes, definitely. But it is also more instinctive than that. Loot is delivered through a task/reward skinner box cycle in every Tide games. In itself, it would not be enough dopamine to keep people hooked without solid core gameplay, but the excitement to gain something randomized is an engagement loop in itself.
It can be instant fun, and also exhaust users past the need / pleasure if pushed to its limit. What we have currently is clearly the latter.
This game has such a good fundation (art, music, gameplay…), but FS just wants to waste them all by implementing some shitty in-game systems, and FOR WHAT?
Keep your players just wondering in game for longer time does not mean you are a good game.
Yeah. I have not even bothered checking what perks and blessings I’d want on my gear. Since the game shipped unfinished I thought I’d wait until they’re done with it before I bother with gear progression, but if it’s not clear cut how to progress and how to work towards the gear that you want (other than hoping for good RNG) then I’m out.
Vermintide also had RNG, and I much prefer the Darktide stores to the Vermintide loot boxes, but in Vermintide I knew that I could deconstruct weapons for scrap and I knew that given five red weapons I could craft the one I wanted, if I was not lucky and rolled one of the right type.
In Darktide it’s all question marks at the moment.
DT released without loot and crafting systems, which is a terrible thing in itself and not making any excuses for that transgression. its not like they meant this system to be the one we got
if we put the loot system aside and look at the actual game it clearly isnt built around loot progression, its not a game where you need an item level to make a dps threshold .
grey or legendary the weapons have the same stat ranges , the effect of upgrading gear outside of a few cheese builds and broken op weapons makes very little difference and being able to play at any given difficulty will be down to knowldege technique and education , if your struggling on damnation theres no loot waiting thats suddenly going to make it easy .
thankfully we are free to ignore the loot and just play.
I’m ignoring it because it’s such a bad system, but it doesn’t mean I don’t want it to be less bad.
Everyone thinks reds is another power level but at least in V2 they weren’t additional power (oranges had the same stats and could roll properties to be the same as reds) they were quality of life, because they took away 2 variables to roll for when rerolling properties. The proposed changes are 1 step forward 2 steps back in terms of quality of life.
