Why are these cosmetic challenges not only impossible, but also discourage the core fundamentals of this game?

While some of them are a bit weird since you basically have to cheese.
Saying they are against the spirit of Co-op… Well, most of the hard ones can ONLY be gotten by the entire team working together. I’ve been in and helped many a random group do Pennances. Genuinely because I enjoy achievements and challenges that you don’t get from just playing the game.
Things you have to go out of your way to earn, that you have to figure out how to earn.
What’s the alternative? a slew of “play more” bait, that takes nothing but time?
It’s very easy to sit down and say this is awful. But what is the point in having “hard” challenges if they aren’t a badge of doing something actually hard.

The toxicity, I have yet to see anyone being toxic about Penance, in fact, MOST people are either mute or pretty nice about it. I have seen people being toxic about general gameplay. No game has ever managed to eliminate toxicity, so why expect Fatshark to do so?

  • 100% accuracy, do it on assassination or ask the group if they mind waiting at the end so you can DC then reconnect (the last one is super cheese)
  • Map within 10m at 1 wound. You don’t have to win, so ask the group if they mind.
  • Shove 10 enemies, you literally can do this alone without any cheese, on a gantry in a few different maps.

I get this is hard if you don’t have a full team to play with (I don’t), but MANY especially Cliffhanger which are the “hardest” simply is a matter of looking for a spot and then asking nicely.

Addendum: no wonder people find some challenges hard and unfair when they attempt to do Malice challenges on Damnation… I know Dif 5 has more enemies, but with 9/10 challenges you are just making things harder on yourself not easier.

That is a perfect illustration why pennances that require the rest of your team to do something more than it requires you to do something are a bad idea.

The problem is that we can’t make private games.

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I’m not saying they are gods gift to man… BUT any challenge so far I could not get naturally, I managed to do without ruining someone’s day after a 5 sec googling, to figure out where to do them best.

How would you make a Personal achievement that includes the entire team, without it being the team giving you space to achieve something?
Mind that it should not be a mindless “play more” achievement, but at the same time. Avoid people who claim them impossible, without the full game in their arsenal.

Because if you can, then we’d only need to fix it for people, who don’t want to use the in-game chat and people who aren’t max lvl but still demands to unlock everything.

I don’t know man, “Fight a monstrosity by yourself with only brain burst” doesn’t seem like it can be done without someone letting you do it.

Or the Ogryns “Spend a whole match in coherency with all other team members” is also nearly impossible unless your team agrees to give it a shot.

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Dude, can you genuinely not see the problem here? You say you’ve never seen toxicity, but someone has already posted a screenshot of toxic behavior directly linked to a penance in this thread. Just because you personally haven’t been affected by it doesn’t mean it’s not a problem.

Defend the penances all you like, but here are my fundamental problems with the design:

  • Challenges like this should be designed to incentivize and reward good, skillful play. Basically none of the current challenges do this. Cliffhanger, Going Out With a Bang, and Malleus Monstrorum do not in any way represent “normal” gameplay for a Psyker. Playing Psyker well does not help you earn them, and the process of earning them does not build any useful skills.
  • Challenges that are prerequisites for important individual unlocks (in this case, cosmetics) should be measures of individual skill. It should always be 100% under your control whether or not you succeed at the challenge. Many of these penances are either complete RNG or rely on a full team creating a specific scenario for you, meaning that your success is 0% under your control. There is literally nothing I can do to earn Going Out With a Bang, outside of asking nicely and hoping for the kindness of strangers.

Yes, the current challenges are doable. With a full group, if you can find such a thing, many of them even become easy. But that does not mean they are well-designed or serving the functions that they are supposed to.

As to your “strategies” - the first one you posted is cheese. You cannot in good faith hold up the fact that you can blatantly cheese the challenge in an unintentional way as evidence that it’s a good challenge. The second one is literally asking the group “If they mind” you throwing a game, which I can guarantee you 99% of groups will mind. And the last one you’re just factually incorrect, since it’s 20 enemies, not 10.

Drop the elitist nonsense, please.

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I really don’t like challenges that force the rest of the team to play in a stupid manner for one players benefit. I feel like ogryns friends will be friends is more of an imposition to the team than letting a pskyer solo headpop a boss. At least the team just needs to the defend the psyker for once boss during a mission for maybe 5 or 10 minutes, friends will be friends requires everyone to turtle for a whole mission, ogryns and zealots cant charge, gotta kill every charger in time and even then you could fail it as your boarding the dropship, forcing the whole squad to waste time on it again.

Make any future penance that requires extraordinarily coordinated team play achievable by all classes, so there are incentives for everyone one to do them and not one person wasting three peoples time for some coloured pants they can’t get any other way.

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I never said there was no toxic behavior… in fact I gave an example of how the toxic behavior is here with or without penance.

  • Good skillful play: I would argue it does take skill and knowledge of the game to preform many of them. Instead of just play a lot.
  • Important unlocks? Well the alternative is to just throw it in the money sink and make it utterly unappealing for the half of the community that wants to achieve something for it.

I never called them well-designed, my examples were not to justify them as good, but to point out impossible is not true. I am not an Elitist, if I was Id expect to play optimally and flawlessly every time. Which I clearly don’t since I quite enjoy most of the challenges.

You are putting a lot of words in my mouth lad. I like them, which is a matter of opinion, but all the things you claim i said, is no where or directly the opposite of what I wrote

Yea, the Ogryn one basically requires you to build a whole team for the task, like, the best way to attempt it would be on a premade with 4 Ogryns who all want to do the challenge.

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If that’s true, then you’ve either been arguing in bad faith or else you completely misunderstood what people were complaining about.

No one is saying they’re impossible.

Also you are being elitist; you are dismissing many other peoples’ valid complaints by asserting that you were able to do them, so everyone else should be as well. That is failing to take into account alternate perspectives and assuming that your experience will be universal, as well as a complete lack of sympathy for people who are less fortunate than you. Textbook elitism.

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I was just thinking about this tonight. I’ll have to wait for private sessions to try the one that requires to stay in coherency with bots because with players it’s pretty much impossible.

Hopefully bots will be smart enough to survive a game on lvl 3.

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Another day, another bunch of failed attempts to knock 20 enemies off a ledge. This isn’t fun. I was under the impression that the point of this was to have fun.

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I’m arguing in bad faith because I disagree?
Well… Impossible is one of the most used statements in this threat… but I might have misunderstood.
Several people have said they would rather have grindy achievements and kinda just want the cosmetic, so shared how I have done/seen challenges done.
If I assumed my experience was universal, id properly not share my side of things and simply tell people how they are wrong, Id properly not help people get the penances either.
But if that’s being elitist then sure.

Also, I might be too far up my ass, but I don’t think I ever marginalized the difficulty of anything, without suggesting a way to achieve the said thing.

I hope this might help

You’re arguing in bad faith because you’re strawmanning and not actually taking the time to understand what everyone else is complaining about. You see the word “impossible” and decide, for some reason, to chime in with “But I did it though” even though - and I cannot stress this enough - no one asked. I also managed to complete Cliffhanger, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a garbage excuse for a challenge.

If the word “impossible” was used, it was likely in the context of “impossible to do without a group,” which is true for most of the challenges. I will direct you to the second point I made in my previous comment; challenges for individual rewards should not require a group effort.

Seriously, actually take the time to read and understand people’s complaints. I specifically said, more than once, that the issue is not difficulty. I’m totally, 100% fine with the challenges being hard, as long as they are well-designed. By “well-designed” I mean they actually encourage you to play your class well - and no, none of the current challenges do, at best they encourage you to learn how to co-ordinate with a group - and that they are only reliant on your own skill, not the generosity of strangers.

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I’ve read every message on this board, but I guess I’m just too thick. Seeing people multiple times calling something impossible, in a chat called “Why are these cosmetic challenges not only impossible but also discourage the co” I guess my opinion is not valid, because I argue that some of them aren’t impossible and in my eyes don’t discourage co-op, but outright depend on them.

I guess because I defend some of them while agreeing that some of them are not great. I have argued that they are well-designed, and because I can’t think of better, there simply can’t be better.

Am I correct? cause I’m not entirely sure, we’ve reached the same conclusions, about what is written in general, nor what I have written here.

P.S @Fraxinus I feel we properly won’t agree and jibing back and forth properly won’t fix that. I am gonna run off, and properly won’t be assed to check this when well rested.
I hope Fatshark finds a better way to do this, or simply adds a new round of challenges with a little more forethought in them, preferably with cooler cosmetics.
All we can do until then, is to be open and help the people we meet in-game and hope they will help others in turn.
Good night (or whatever time it is for others)

Entirely un-related, are others getting “promotion to trusted” on the forum just by being in here? cause id be real unhappy to hear, that I have gotten so because I am saying something that Fatshark might like

These penances really need to be re-worked. How can FatShark remove scoreboards because scoreboards are “too toxic”, but the penances that actively rewards uncooperative behavior, griefing, toxicity, are totally okay?

Please get your stories straight Fatshark. Do you want us to be toxic or not? Because its confusing when you remove scoreboards - things that can (but does not always) enable toxicity, but leave in something that actively rewards toxic/uncooperative behavior.

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Yay i just qued for a random malice run to finish off my psyker leveling. 3 seconds into the match a vote kick comes up. I was assuming that the person is AFK (seen that happen a bunch of times already to get carried). Clicked yes. 5 seconds later i get booted into the menu without a single warning. Coincidence? No the two zealot was cheesing something and booted off everyone cuz the penance encourage them to hunker down in one spot scratching their bum.

Good penances btw i love playing the game where i dont have to play the game.

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The absurd requirements for VT2 premium class cosmetics challenges were a point of big criticism from players so it’s absolutely baffling they implemented class cosmetics this way, especially because in Darktide they’re actually promote awful toxic behavior from players. Didn’t you remove expected game features because they might in some hypotetical scenario lead to toxicity? Why add something that even on paper looks like it will lead to it and immediately led to toxicity seeing as a lot of the playerbase doesn’t play in premade groups?
Already saw a lot of people refusing to do events to try to stack as many enemies as they can, refusing to progress because the optimal place for a penance is at the start of the level, threatening with votekicks, handicapping themselves(not shooting zealots,constantly exploding psykers and vets that don’t shoot on heresy hoping they can reach the boss and unload on them to get the penance).
It wouldn’t be so strange if they didn’t already have feedback from the VT2 that unlocking cosmetics this way is not fun and certainly not good, I wouldn’t mind if it was just a frame but this way it looks like all the feedback they got previously was just ignored

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