Just read the latest blog about crafting and future updates and I wanted to try and make something clear.
Thanks for trying to make it better and lessening some of the rng.
However, reading through it I feel like your missing the point people are trying to make about the state of the game, I also believe you’re not seeing how people actually play and adapt to your current system.
Lv1-30 has a clear goal, progression and purpose. There are minor goals, getting to next lvl and a new weapon mark unlock, there are major goals, unlocking a new perk choice and a pen ultimate goal of getting lv30.
Once you hit lv30 all of this goes away and the biggest issue of the game rears it’s ugly face. RNG.
It is everywhere and it doesn’t go away.
Rng works when it is coupled with actual progression, like the lv1-30 grind. It than becomes a minor goal, like overwatch loot boxes on level up.
People don’t play overwatch simply for the loot boxes at lvl up, but it becomes a minor goal when you might be one match from lvl. This is a decent use for rng, but it should never be the entire endgame grind.
Look at wow or any online game that uses reputation or faction vendors.
This is their pull to get people to play while adding rng as a minor and random occurrence to get a chance at something cool all the time.
If rng was the only way forward, no one would keep playing.
Case and point. Your players realized very early that completing missions isn’t the point of your endgame. The point of your endgame is logging in to look at the store and hoping for a decent lottery roll every hour.
This means less and less player retention as once you get to lv30, all you have is the store reset, that is your only purpose and progression.
Peolple have been whining and demanding crafting, not because they want more rng, but because we want purpose. We want minor, major and pen ultimate goals to build towards.
So, imo, stop trying to make a bad crafting system worse.
Either remove all the locking mechanisms so we can have purpose by building the weapon and build we want.
Or
Keep the rng and locked blessings but add reputation/faction vendors who sell the weapons and stuff we want.
Add a reward for playing, getting 10 tokens unlocks the next tier of this vendor.
Show us what that tier allows us to buy and what the next tier enables.
While having an rng loot and rng crafting parallel to this vendor grind allows us to “luck out” and maybe get something nice while working towards the next tier.
Another idea is using blessings and perk ranks as a challenge.
We unlock a blessing at rank1, and we gotta do challenges, maybe like 100headshots, in order to level up that blessing to rank 2.
This could be per weapon with smaller/short challenges or as a crafting unlock with longer challenges which can than be reblessed onto all our weapons.
Both of these give us purpose and a reason to keep paying and working towards more power, as well as gameplay changes of unlocking new blessings and using them to add build variety.
Purpose is what you wanna focus your gameplay grind and loop around and you are missing this very important point.
Rng is not purpose. It isn’t rewarding, it is just a side thing to feel better while working towards what you want.
As an example. Would you like it if your boss came to your desk at the end of the day with a twenty sided die and said,
“roll the d20, on nat 20 you’ll get paid for today, otherwise better luck tomorrow”
I doubt any workers would show up the following day. Which is the same thing happening to your player base.
You need purpose and goal.
Players will keep playing so long as they are working towards a goal they want, like improved gameplay, new gameplay or new content or story.
You have none of this and that is why people are leaving, review bombing and why the game doesn’t rear its ugly issues until lv30.
. Saved me doing it LOL