You had me nodding along until you defended locks.
The core gameplay is what keeps people here. Not sh*tty gacha crafting. Locks keep people from being able to experiment with new weapons ie more of the great gameplay.
We have a whole memorial thread for people who straight up quit the game because of its gacha mechanics.
I have my 4/4 godroll weapons loadout on my vet, and psyker soon my zealot as well yet I’m still playing, and have continued to do so despite the fact I got these well over a month ago.
I have 800 hours in VT2. I had my red weapons/trinkets at the 250 mark.
I spent more time not caring about gear than I did caring about it. I’m not the only one either. The people still playing the game mainly play modded realms for the difficulty mods where you can hust spawn what you want for gear.
L4D2, this game’s grandfather still has players after years of not even having a progression system.
Locks are bad. For the game. For Fatshark, and for the players.
Everything about the balance you said was correct, everything you said about the crafting is completely wrong.
You just have to scroll on the forums to see how much the crafting system is hurting the game.
Anyway, Veteran, and plasma gun in the specific are completely fine. Actually i would have them nerfed a bit, and that’s te reason what i think that revolver is fine by itself, it’s the veteran that makes it overtuned.
L4D released 15 years ago with multiple stories and campaigns along with PvP, and has a massive online modding support & community. The only similarities between the two are being coop and horde shooters. And Counterstrike? Why not just compare it to MMO’s, Minecraft or The Sims while you’re at it? I mean if you’re gonna go for false equivalence, just go all out. xD
As for everyone else, everyone hates locks. Everyone. Myself included. I’m not defending the locks, but merely pointing out why they exist and why Fatshark won’t remove them. There’s a difference between understanding something and liking or agreeing with it. My point is that the people who simply demand the removal of locks aren’t being realistic, and Fatshark will never do that until they have enough content and other engagement mechanics to make up for them.
What annoys me is that there ARE other options, compromises that benefit both sides, and yet they aren’t doing anything about those either. Imagine for example if we could earn a special token for doing all weeklies, and this token could then be used to do a one-time reroll of any locked attribute after which it would lock again. Even if that token was only earnable once per account per week, it would let us quickly perfect our main weapons on our main characters and builds while over time letting us do the same for everything else. It would give meaning to all those disappointing trash gear with perfect stats but horrible perks & blessings. It would give total agency to the players, while also massively driving up player engagement for Fatshark, because now everyone would want to put in the hours to always get that one precious token each week.
But even a full year’s worth of 52 tokens would only be enough for 26 weapons total. That’s a handful of builds for a few characters. Between 5 characters, their builds, all the tons of different weapons & variations of the same weapon, patch balance changes, new weapons and content, and changing meta… it would still take an eternity for anyone to actually get perfect gear for every single build for each character. So that endless progression would in practice still be there.
That’s just one idea that would benefit everyone. Yet here we are, sitting on locks and that’s it for a full year by now. So no, I’m not defending them.
I reject your reality and substitute my own. I fundamentally disagree with your entire argument. There are games that live and die by their (RNG lottery) progression mechanics. Tide games do not. For every player the RNG and locks retain, it is driving away ten more.
Your logic, and FatSharks logic, is fundamentally flawed. The thing that actually keeps people playing is being able to actually try builds. To experiment. To play new maps, new events, new classes, new weapons. Considering a single cosmetic in Darktide costs as much as maps or classes in other games, it’s hardly unreasonable to expect them to put out a decent cadence of chunky content for people to enjoy.
And even if they’re too inept to do so (they spend on average 6-12 months to fix 5 second LUA number problems), the core gameplay and trying out different builds on different classes is the glue that keeps players.
There was a time when people kind of swallowed RNG lootbox mechanics as a substitute for content, but those days are very quickly coming to an end - and it was never good design in the first place. Game after game, publisher after publisher is quickly ending notions of GAAS and live service, and/or their games are review nuked from orbit, forcing them to lessen the grind and RNG quickly if they want to survive. There are plenty examples of this.
I only agree with your argument insofar as that Fatshark is so hopelessly in love with RNG and the belief that it retains players, that they won’t change it. I disagree a billion percent that the argument is actually factual and real. It is not.
The insanity of the RNG and grind in Darktide is not a retention mechanic. There are layers upon layers of umitigated RNG, all of which are completely beyond player control and completely removed from player choice. The entire RNG design, and the locks with it, are actively driving players away. It is achieving the exact opposite of what should be their goal.
And so I must also reject your proposal, because the idea that progression/grind needs to be perpetual and endless is fundamentally wrong.
When revolvers are more powerful than plasma guns, and they absolutely are, the veteran is no longer the niche most powerful ranged class because everyone bar ogryns have access to revolvers. Even if I settle and pretend revolvers are as good as plasma guns at raw damage it’s still redicilous because it should not be doing that. The primary advantage of a revolver should be movement speed.
I am aware of the three stage reload cancle, it is very unrealistic to pull off in the chaos of damnation+ more realistic to achive the last one only. Even with all three and talents the revolver still has way more potential. You can talk about burst or other obscure stats but fact is the revolver in the hands of a zealot one shots specials and elites…Zealot already has best melee, one best movement speed, 2nd best block and stamina and durability. Zealot is way to OP with all of those at the top. The reason people dont want to change that is Zealot was rhw best since the game came out so everyone inveated in that class and now doesn’t want their “work” to be taken from them.
All of that os absolute fact so you can’t argue with it.
As a veteran you have to rely on block 50% of thime because 50% of the time you get a team with no ogryns of pyskers playing supportive CC or stun lock rolls and instead run away much faster than the vet can because he has worse stamina than a priest…The vet can’t do his own CC and stun lock because he doesn’t have any skills for that in his tree! The shovel does not compare to lighting or bulwak shield. I don’t want to use the shovel because a chainsword or power sword should be miles better and I need to be able to clear mobs.
I’ve only really playes Ogryn as a support class with shield because thats clearly what it was made for. I’ll take your word on shovel because I hardly use it. However knocking enemies back isn’t the same as killing them like most ogryn hirs should.
VET IS IN A GOOD PLACE??? Are you mental?
Vet: 2nd worse stamina, wost sramina delay, worst health, USELESS CAPSTONES…I’ll say that again it’s the ONLY class with no capstones (EFFECTIVELY). No bloody way is vet in a good place haha
edit - Btw the Revolver is not too powerful, stop asking for weapons nerfs when the problem is the class using them, i.e. the last Revolver nerf did absolutely nothing to how good it is in Veteran hands, it only nerfed it for Psykers and Zealots
Why do you assume I’m not a levwl 30 whos played vet since the beta with multiple builds, all legendary loadout with 3-4 amazing rolls.
I know how to spec a vet to be good. But that doesn’t excuse how OP zealot is compared to all other classes and how bad the vet gets things.
well one Point i have to disagree is the crosshair on the plasma. basically anything within the crosshair get’s obliterated. At distance you just gotta center it in the middle of the enemy and shoot.
I can believe Fatshark designers believe that this extends the game longevity. I would argue it just pushes away more casual players from the game, which otherwise has a very good core gameplay*
/* if you ignore Fatshark’s inability to address some other (except crafting), such as: broken audio and game performance. Nevermind some less game breaking bugs.
On Topic: veteran is more than fine, especially for a glass cannon. With VoC, even after the nerf you can also build for survivability.
In right hands and circumstance plasma’s insane cleave and damage output can make STG games fairly boring for the rest of the team. If anything its cleave should be lowered.
He has the worst or second worse in most base stats. Very UP
Never complained about the plasma gun. I complained that revolvers 1 shot elites and specials in across the map in the hands of a zealot. They shouldn’t be coming close to a plasma gun.
You make a game replayable by adding new content. Make problems deliberately is a terrible way to encourage replayability. Add new maps, new weapons, enemies, challenges, events. Not frustrating mechanics.
Hahaha you’re joking? 3.3%? Thats f all! I used weapon specialist for ages until I realised it was useless and swaped it out for a build that scrapes together what little there is in the way of toughness boosts and some better damage dealing options. Even the reload speed talents are significantly better than that!
Not making assumptions, just putting the info out in general for everyone on here. The Zealot needs some new ranged stuff because they’re absolutely BLOATED with exclusive melee weapons, whilst their only unique ranged weapon is the Flamer, which is not as good as it used to be. Hopefully they mitigate that by dropping the heavy variant of the Flamer, too (no, I’m not compensating for anything!!! )
Veteran just needs a lot of new stuff in general, but I’m fairly happy with it’s melee selection. I’m interested to see if that datamined “Stub Rifle” drops, but I’m mostly excited for a Hellgun and some tweaks to the Mk III Shovel to make it less like someone gene-spliced Combat Axe and Shovel and more like a proper heavy variant of the Shovel (I swear I’m not compensating! I just love big, beautiful weapons )
But, until the day that the Veteran has a Hellgun for crowd control/suppression… The Plasma Gun and Mk VII Shovel build is my precious
You miss the part where I state I’ve used it for a long period for ages and it’s terrible.
33% is not a full mag btw. It’s 67% short of that. During the horde I’m shooting specials for my team. God know what you’re doing or why you even bother playing vet if you relying on the enemy attacking you to relaod your weapon haha
The 15% melee is useful for chainswords or other weapons that dont have great cleave.
EDIT: I’m going to try in psykanum and if it’s as bad as I remember I will be annoyed at you making me waste my time. So many other talents get your durability and damage dealing way up.
EDIT 2: Yep, it’s awful! Might even be broken. I went from 6 plasma amo to 63…wow. I suspect that you sir are a revolver weenie which is why you like it. It could be useful for that, idk I dont use a revolver, I like to roleplay as a cool guardsmen with a plasmagun not a poor hive ganger with a magically powerful pistol.
What I did: emptied almost complete the plasma gun. Hit pox walkers to 10 stacks, shot once at an enemy. Re started and reprated 3 times. Also tried maintaining 1p stacks, that was even worse.
The zealot is the melee class, so no it doesn’t need new ranged weapons. You want big powerful guns play the veteran.
This is why the vet is so weak because everyone realised the zealot was powerful at launch (not 1.0), invested all thwir time into him and now want it to be the be all and end all class.