Time to consolidate or full steam ahead (Choo Choo!)?

So before Chaos Wastes drops and the whole forum goes batsh1t bonkers with threads and bug reports and so on, maybe time for a conversation about the future.

I have been in the past very cynical and downright petulant about some of the decisions FS have made or some of the things that have happened and although I’ve got one hundred billionty two hours in game(ish) I wouldn’t consider myself a white knight fanboy.

That being said I’m actually delighted with the way FS have seemingly turned things around from WoM and released things since then. As a caveat I think the fact the whole world has gone a bit sqewiff has not helped release times and dates at all.

So, onto the title.

I’m hyped for ChW a lot, and have enjoyed the new careers… BUT…

I think going back and consolidating or reworking some of the systems might have a much more positive effect on game health and player retention. Things I think need reworking (in order) are;

New Player Grind.
I fairly often drop down to Champ and Vet and chat to new people to give them a leg up into the loot-levels(Champ+). Over my trillionAndSeven hours in game I reckon there’s dozens of players who have got to level 35 with Keri and tried something else only to get so massively deflated they quit.
My suggestion is levels achieved with 1 character unlock ALL other classes at that level. Reaching level 7 basically unlocks all 2nd classes across all characters or whatever.

Crafting
I’ve got enough scrap to forge my own 20 story tall iron statue of Kruber swigging an pint. Giving me more chests is only going to mean I can forge another 100 foot statue of Keri looking longingly at him. Crafting needs work.

Deeds
Obviously need massive attention.

Drop rates and illusion aquirement
Give me a way of getting the red illusions I want for my weapons. I can grind reds to make red weapons but I want my shiny.

PROBLEM
I guess this is very very likely going to delay the career releases of the next classes. No Dryad class for Keri,No Warrior Priest, No Soot Sorcerer. (Classes all made up by me).

So give me your vote on where the focus should be.

  • rework old systems delaying future careers.
  • Launch new careers and leave old systems alone.

0 voters

[disclaimer] This is obviously a concern cross platform, but I know consoles have far different priorities than PC, so haven’t included things like connectivity and bots etc

6 Likes

Honestly I find this thread so toxic… I mean, Keri doesn’t deserve any statue.

Jokes apart, we should focus on the core of the game: a tower is only as solid as the foundation allows it… and it’s really sad to see totally broken aspects like Deeds or Crafting.

For example I have been waiting for a long time for a way to increase the difficulty in an “official” way (I mean without using mods that yep… I’ve tried them all, but I find them badly balanced for a variety of reasons) and without breaking the balance of difficulty levels… and deeds would be perfect for that.

2 Likes

I agree with pretty much everything you’ve said.

  1. Progression - let’s level all characters simultaneously. Player skill is the true cap to being successful on higher difficulties, not getting to level 35.

  2. Crafting - all the rolling for properties and traits is just tedious and there is a ready made solution in the Anthanor system. Make it standard. No more crafting materials, just essence that we use to upgrade weapons in a rational crafting system. Do I really go to a blacksmith and ask him to craft me whatever he likes?

  3. Weapon illusions - it took me 2.3K hours to get all the red illusions because of the RNG chests and duplicates. I don’t mind grind but RNG loot boxes are just frustrating. Let players get the Red illusions they want by working for them directly. It’ll still be grindy but your work will be eventually rewarded and you can rationally work towards the exact illusion you want. We already have this sytem for the DLC weapon skins. It should apply to all red illusions - something like: “Complete 20 games on legend or above with the weapon equipped to get the 1st red illusion. Complete another 10 games with that weapon to get the second red skin”.

If you still want loot boxes then just make them drop non-red weapon illusions only, and put these non-red illusions in the Emporium too, so that we won’t spend hundreds of hours getting F’ed by Ranald. Longterm players stay for the gameplay, not the weapon skins.

  1. Deeds - It took me thousands of hours to get the 500 deed frame; not because running deeds is hard but because the deed drop rate from chests is pitiful and there is no deed matchmaking system to share deeds. The achievment is for running 500 games (an investment of 200+ hours) not for grinding to thousands of hours to obtain deeds from chests. So we need:

A. Create a deed lobby so we can find games.
B. Allow players to actually obtain deeds easily so they can actually enjoy the mode and work towards the frames. Either turn the Weekly Event button into a Daily Deed matchmaking system and change the modifiers every few hours , so players can quickplay into deeds and there will be variation in the challenges; or, have loot boxes have a 50% chance of dropping a deed or a 50% chance of a non-red weapon illusion. (We get equipment from the athanor using essence.)
C. Allow us to delete deeds to free up inventory space.

  1. Get rid of Weekly Events. They suck.

  2. Clean-up the Okri’s Challenges interface- Remove seasonal challenges that can no longer be completed because the time limit has expired from Okri’s Challenges. Treat these like the “Special Event frames” - they are available for a short period and then the challenge is removed. If a new player buys the game during weave season 9 is he gonna be faced with a wall of uncompletable weave challenges?

Remove the glowing stars from the inaccessible career DLC cosmetic rewards in Okri’s Challenges that people who only bought the base DLC packs cannot claim. It’s a cheap marketing gimmick that I see people rage about on Steam frequently. You’re better than that, Fatshark. Think like Apple, make the user interface look nice and get rid of all the distracting, non-functional junk.

  1. Abandon Weaves - Nice idea, but they don’t appeal to the majority of your playerbase because they don’t play in pre-made teams. Focus your obviously limited resources on viable game modes: adventure mode and (hopefully) chaos wastes. I’d rather see new modifiers for the wastes or new locations added to expeditions than any more weaves. Admit defeat and move on.

  2. New enemies- I know we all want new factions to give us different challenges and to freshen up the playing experience on every map. I think this is probably unrealistic. I’d honestly be happy with new additions to EXISTING factions, even simple stuff like Chaos Warriors with different weapon types or a Minotaur variant. Best of all, these enemies could be added piecemeal, a additional enemy every few months of every season. You don’t need to invest in a lot of new models or sound effects or create an entire new faction from scratch, but it would increase variety of challenges people face in the game. Over time these incremental additions would add up to something significant.

2 Likes

I have around 1600 hours in this game, most on those are on legend+
I still don’t have all the weapons that I want in red, and each DLC adds more weapons, that aren’t in the normal loot pool, meaning I now need 25 red dust to get the DLC weapons and not have to reroll 100+ times to get the properties that I want at a decent level. Cata runs rarely bring books, so red dust from Cata runs is extremely rare. I have to reduce the difficulty to actually get loot?!
The loot grind is pretty insane.

I bought the game for a mate of mine and he loved playing slayer, guided him through veteran and champ, then on to legend to get reds. After quite a bit of grinding, he now has 2 red crossbows and a red flamethrower. Understandably he was so bummed he moved on to other games that do feel rewarding for him

I would actually like to play on the modded realm, but since there is no progression there, and I still need red dust, it just feels like a waste of time :confused:

3 Likes

I mostly agree with you, but new careers are bringing them revenue, so I don’t think they’d delay them.

But I’d like to see them doing the deed rework, making us craft red illusions, and don’t waste any more resources on seasonal resets for the weaves. Either abandon that mode, or rework it so it can be completed by every player (on any difficulty they so choose, instead of having to go cata+++) and in their own time. As excited as I am for CW, I don’t find the need for a new game mode, but hopefully, this can take the place of the weaves - QP weaves are fine though - while they create new story maps for the game.

1 Like

Noone would take notice of “old” systems, if the old systems wouldnt be the current ones. No new stuff makes one stingy about the problems we have with the current ones.

I would be fine with both. If the Rouge mode ends up being better weaves I wont be as stung about weaves still being a mess. The same would go for a new enhanced weekly, deed, or whatever mechanic.

1 Like

Agree, the new characters freshen things up and give new avenues to play your fav characters in new ways. I think that these are important because they add variety.

Fs, would it be possible to implement athanor crafting into main game? If so do it, if not assign a dust value to each property and let us pick with a drop down in crafting menu. The rng is bs for rerolls and not where I want to spend my time on this game. Just add it as an additional system or tab in crafting because it was very cool until I got familiar and knew exactly what I wanted on my weapons, now it isnt cool but instead infuriating. It can even be something you unlock with your first (next) red obtained.

The core systems do need to be fixed, but should be worked simultaneously.

Scrap weaves and add the effects in each level randomly as if it were a patrol or boss spawn. It would be cool to play levels backwards randomly too so the work on weaves can be salvaged- ie you add more variety, keep the things from weaves that worked but drop the separate game modes. You can even change the frames to be unlocked after surviving a level with metal wind 50 times, and change leader board to the things on improved end screen mod, most boss damage, fastest time to complete levels. I think this solved the community consensenus of complaints without having wasted dev time.

Add weapon kill counters to all weapons also please. Best mod. Could also use this data to see most used weapons and look at balance for least used, or have ideas for new weapons based on what people like by weapon qualities.

Add dlc weapons to regular loot pools if you have dlc.

Instead of doing full weapon rebalances choose 1 weapon per week to rebalance and go down the list. There should be a thread that you make here where someone can post a weapon using some template for improvement with required criteria so you can move quicker instead of blind discovery. For example:

Weapon- salty flail
Buff/nerf - buff
Reason - should be faster, and deal slightly more stagger.
Comments: feels slower and does much less stagger than sienna flail.

Then you could compare it to see if it is valid to adjust it. Bonus points if you mention the results in patch notes (looked at flail, increased speed & stagger. Or looked at salty flail and chose not to adjust).

Give 1 red dust for completing cata
Give 2 red dust for full book cata run
Could even be 1-5 depending on score how chests are currently which improves with qp, dice, books.

These players won’t stop playing because they have all reds, it just removes the time on parts of game that aren’t liked and they have spent so many hours on already. Also gives a reason for people to play cata other than more challenge which makes them better (gives more challenge to very good players, prepares players for new harder content and bosses in future)

Add a cloth dying workstation and give berries/metal dust/bugs for different colors the same way essence is given in game currently or add to chests to solve complaints about cosmetics not matching

1 Like

That’s a great profile picture.