I’m not a game designer, but I do know that there are games that have RNG rolling as great as Darktide’s, except in these games cases people are fine with the RNG and like the overall experience, even loving the dopamine rush of getting a cool drop.
So, uh, why?
Both these systems have RNG up the ass, so as best I can tell the difference is the ‘feel’ of it.
In Darktide for most people it seems to not particularly ‘feel’ good to sit in a shop rolling a dice, navigating menus, churning through hundreds of weapons that feel impersonal, getting bricked weapons, and having limited control over outcomes. There is no ‘fanfare’ or sense of accomplishment like getting a sick loot drop from a difficult boss in other games because this is an isolated experience staring at menus.
This is backloaded RNG as your plasteel and diamantine and docket income you have near complete control over and has little RNG to it. The actual acquisition RNG happens outside of the games core gameplay loop, after the excitement of playing, and as like a separate minigame.
There is one exception to this which is emperor’s gifts which frontloads the RNG and should feel like a reward for beating a challenge. But that is undermined by because for some strange reason you don’t get shown the weapons stats in the post mission screen, just its rarity, which means you don’t immediately know if it’s worth feeling elated over. Which leaves you looking through menus in the hub trying to spot the new weapon amongst tens or hundreds of others, and 99% of the time that emperor’s gift is pretty meh or is a weapon you don’t use. I rarely bother looking at the gift after a mission as it is a hassle.
It’s kind of strange that a game with a core game loop based around ‘challenge’ as the primary driver to keep playing doesn’t take advantage of the rush of beating a challenging mission or boss by throwing rare RNG rewards at the player in dopamine inducing fireworks and explosions.
…There’s an argument to be made that all RNG should be removed completely, but Fatshark doesn’t seem to want to do this, and to be fair, there are games that do rewarding RNG well and that people love, so it is possible for DT to have RNG and be loved.
People also love control over how their weapon is, and being able to craft different builds and experimentation.
So, uh, what system could DT add that would frontload the RNG and give control?
Personally I would go for crafting materials that drop rarely from bosses/missions kinda like monster hunter: “Oh I got this thrice blessed hallowed glowing gold wax purity seal in a big sparkly drop that makes my dopamine go fizz!” make it popup on screen immediately as well, not wait until post screen to capitalise on the feel of the win, and also show it again in the post screen.
I would tier the seals to blessings and perks, so one or several gold purity seals is good for changing one blessing or perk to any t4 blessing or perk and then it gets used up. One or several silver purity seals is good for changing to one t3 perk/blessing etc. make the change cost diamantine/plasteel as well as the seals so that resource is still getting churned through.
The seals would be rare and dependant on mission difficulty and getting one would feel good as you know that you can customise the weapon in whatever way you want removing the back end RNG.
Add red rarity weapons with 3 perks and 3 blessings and that is a good amount of gameplay to get the weapon how you want it while still allowing flexibility to experiment. Stamp collection blessings to pick from could also acquired through beating missions/bosses to keep frontloading instead of backloading.
Keep building on this and make sights/scopes and flashlights be frontloaded drops that you can collect and add to weapons and then imo we are cooking with gas.
Well, I’m not a game designer, this is just my impression of a good approach from comparing DT to other games that successfully use RNG in a liked way.
TLDR: Would crafting materials as RNG loot drops that allow near complete control over the weapon you choose to make in the hub be something that you would like?
