I would take VT2 crafting. Even if we ignore perks, traits, blessings, and such.
Once your gear is levelled up enough the range weapons and trinkets can be is 295-300. You can very easily and reliably get 300 gear for whatever weapon you want, the equivalent of a 380 in darktide.
The modifiers are interesting, but if we can’t tweak the bars individually I would rather them be removed and just be static like vermintide 2. Everything is the same for mobility, Crit damage, ammo, etc. just damage, cleave, and stagger go up and down with power level.
The re-rolling was annoying, but at least they didn’t have locks and once I had a red, even if they had a larger pool kf perks and blessings, I would get what I wanted. I have 30,000 blue and green dust. And 80,000 orange dust. I don’t care about re rolling. Could just mod it to roll until I get what I want.
Then you must’ve been playing champion difficulty.
I found reds to be quiet frequent once you got into legend/cataclysm.
And if you didn’t find the weapon you were looking for you could just dismantle the others for materials and craft it.
Sure it was pretty grindy but it was atleast possible lol
Before Chaos Wastes, most of my time was logged in the early days before the great un-borkening. Even Veteran was brutal, and my friend group never got beyond Champion. DT feels much easier to me!
But…is it really a defense of VT2’s crafting system that only the absolute top-tier players can access the best weapons and the least-painful version of the system?
They made itemisation / crafting worse in Darktide when compared to how it was in VT2. Not to beat around the bush, Fatshark lied or fail to understand how punitive their own game systems really are on the gameplay experience.
In 1k hours in VT2, I ended up with loads of red weapons, and accessories. Melted a lot of those for red crafting resources so I could get specific red weapons I didn’t get from loot boxes. Mind we played a lot of Legend and then Cata when it came out.
Sadly Fatshark is slow to learn from their mistakes, and repeats them across game titles, whatever we are talking about RNG, or lets say audio issues.
How? There’s a lot of discussion of the crafting system and arguments for/against VT2/DT in this thread, and I guess I’m trying to understand how you think it’s worse.
Now that the whole DT system is in and they’ve fixed a lot of the pain (like not being able to choose exact perks on reroll and allowing an infinite number of changes to 2/4 parts of the weapons), I think DT’s crafting provides objectively more agency than VT2 (which was the stated design intent, aka the “lie” they told).
Recruit/Veteran- 0% chance of getting reds
Champion- Generals or emperors chest only- ~5%
Legend- Any vault but emperor vault you have 20-30% chance of getting reds
Cataclysm- Same odds as Legend.
Commendation chests >1% (VERY unlikely)
I don’t think legend quick plays are hard. Just requires some practice and know-how. I think the top elite players play cataclysm… or even harder tiers of cataclysm.
The odds aren’t entirely known since Fatshark hasn’t come out and said it, it’s more what users found. And depending on when you started playing Vermintide 2 it was more stingy at the beginning. The way it is today it’s pretty generous.
I sincerely hope the red equivalent in Darktide will be a better situation than this!
How many reds did you have to break down (knowing you may never see the same red weapon again, which would be harrrrd for me) to make one of the type of your choosing?
It’s 5 break downs to craft one you want, most of the time it’s trinkets you break down since they share between all characters and careers. So you don’t need that many trinkets total (another thing VT2 did better than darktide, sharing curios across all accounts).
I got all reds for all weapons (I wanted) within a few hundred hours. Probably all weapons at the time 800 hours. I have a stock pile of 50 red dust now and 1,112 hours as of writing this. But I went to champion and then legend full book runs pretty early on. Luckily my friend group wanted the challenge.
But yes, red equivalents would be ideal for darktide… But if it’s just random emperors gifts that are 380 based (or 400 or something with modifiers able to go past 80%) and dismantling/selling reds just gives you ordos… I don’t think it will be a great solution. Still locks, still can’t change modifiers.
100% agree that breaking stuff down in DT should refund materials. It’s a major pain point for me, and a great oversight imo, that you have to dedicate 30+ minutes to a mission to get more plasteel and have zero options to get more in the Mourningstar.
But having to get 5 random drops with <=30% chance from the hardest vanilla content (Cata is a paid difficulty, yes?) in order to make 1 weapon of your choice that you’ll then have to spend more mats on randomized rerolling…just sucks!
Praying to Big E for something better than that mess.
I think cata was part of the DLC but then it was made free to avoid splitting player base? I can’t remember, I own all the VT2 DLC.
But honestly if they are going to implement anything in Darktide I think they’re going to implement the same idea (If I had to guess). That damnation would have the highest chances of getting better rewards (they already do for quality of emperors gifts) as well as tomes and grims. My only thing is:
1-I hope they don’t make the auric missions have a higher chance of getting loot so that people wanting to grind (and hope to be carried) don’t bring down the “elites” or try hards. But I am worried since Auric does already give you more XP and ordos.
2- I honestly don’t want tomes and grims in Darktide to affect chance of reds. I didn’t mind them in VT2, but I prefer to ignore their existence entirely in Darktide.
But yeah some way to actually upgrade a weapon to red would be great. I would envision reds as having no locks. MAYBE we can’t change the modifiers, but the total value of the modifiers is perfect. Still really annoying but if we can get a decent amount of reds it’s ok. Otherwise, if getting reds is really grindy and arduous I would prefer the modifiers even able to be tweaked. Otherwise, I think any implementation of reds will be a failure in my eyes.
Agreed on both of those points. Tomes/grims aren’t fun. If they rewarded a set and guaranteed number of tubes…maybe! But still, I don’t find them a particularly rewarding mechanic.
Personally, I want the red weapon equivalent to be something you have to work for, over time, for a deterministic goal. No randomization if possible. Let us pick a weapon and run contract-esque missions for Hadron, gaining incremental upgrades to that weapon until it’s red quality.
Assuming you had crafting resources, and the item was already red, there was nothing stopping you from re-rolling its properities until you got exactly you wanted. In DT, even if you have resources, you cannot do it, due ot the lock system. There is also more perks and blessings, and no red item quality, which lower your chances of getting what you want further.
The lock system by itself is malicious design, and frankly serves no purpose beyond wasting your time as a player, only because Fatshark game designers think that RNG extends the game longevity.
There is nothing better than buying 20, 50 copies of the same item, when you are trying to land a workable base score, which doesnt miss important damage breakpoints. Only so you can waste more time deleting 90% of those items, because they are not worth the crafting resource investment. You take the remaining 10% to Hadron, only so she can brick those by assigning those a pointless perk and blessing combos. So you cannot reroll those into anything which makes sense with that specific weapon type. No, I don’t want +1.5 stam and 15% Carapace on a weapon which doesnt do any damage to Carapace by design.
So I’ve been struggling with this one for a while, and I have to say it may actually be true.
On one hand, exploiting your userbase by using slimy tactics designed to (and I shudder) prolong engagement may drive people away.
On the other hand, with the system currently in place, it’s almost impossible to get perfect gear. So there’s always something to spend your resources on… and therefore an ever-present external pressure to get more, play more…
After seeing so many recent debacles around gamers (aren’t we a silly bunch) clamouring for content, content, content, I can’t exactly fault them for attempting to address the issue.
Yea, it’s a tricky thing in my opinion. I imagine the folks who designed the crafting system were trying to strike a balance (and still are) for two very different types of players: the ones who love mastery and just want to play the game with every possible combination of weapons and the ones who enjoy having things to work towards.
Generally speaking, I don’t think there’s really a “right” answer on how to handle extending the life of a game. At some point, you can’t just make more content because you don’t have the time. It’s economical to build systems that bring purpose to replaying content, like encouraging high score chasing or randomizing encounters or dangling the carrot of super-rare drops like the red cosmetics in VT2.
For my money, I think the current Darktide system is pretty decent in most respects. But I think I fit right in the middle of the two types of players I mentioned above. I wish I had more plasteel so I could play more, different builds and push my skill level. But I also recognize that I like having the carrot of progression still available to me after many many hours of play.
VT2 crafting system even after the many patches and improvements frankly still sucks bad and can barely be called a system at all. There’s almost nothing to actually interact with and very little (though some) variety in how you can actually set your gear up effectively.
DT system for all its flaws still has more depth and more varied parts to actually engage with than VT2.
Rather than just copy pasting old systems it would make a hell of a lot more sense to just continue tweaking and improving what’s there.
Yes, my main problem is that the new complexity introduced more RNG despite the claims to the contrary. The lock system is just malicious by design.
If they want to keep it, they should give players tools to remove those locks. Lets say x number of scriptures and grimours would allow Hadron to unlock some “forbidden knowledge” and remove one lock. Hardly anyone touches scriptures and grims these days, as they carry no real reward.
