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Hey fellow miners, i've just finished play testing a deep dive or two and I've got some thoughts to air. I only do this as I believe the Dev's here are one of the few who do actually listen closely. I remember talking months ago when the class upgrades were updated about how the LMG MK2 turret for engy seemed underpowered (As it only gave extra damage at the time) and they added range and more damage to it immediately. I'm nearly 200 hours on this game now so i've got a good understanding of its mechanics as this point, I like to think anyway.

MOVING ON, I have concerns regarding the rate of acquisition regarding Over-clocks and new cosmetics. I finished a Deep Dive solo as Gunner and received a scout beard and "micro bullets" for the scouts Deepcore rifle. I haven't finished the second deep dive yet. I have read several times that Deep Dives are refreshed weekly and their main rewards can only be earned once, limiting Overclocks to 2 per week and currently, new cosmetics to 3 per week. If there are roughly 80 overclocks, providing duplicates aren't a thing, thats 40 weeks worth of waiting you'd need to do to get them all, not including further updates. I personally don't like time gating, it punishes players who like to play large chunks at once, inflating the content over time by literally locking off the opportunities to earn it. Deep dives themselves are quite hefty, they take a little while to play, I'm not sure I agree with the whole "once per week" thing now its in action you know?

It appears that the loot you get is not class locked, so players whom main a single or couple of classes (Like my partner for instance, only really likes Gunner) its entirely possible you could go weeks without unlocking anything for your class, not so much of an issue for multi-purpose miners but I don't think thats hugely fair regardless.

With the cosmetics, it should be noted that they are class locked too, the beard I found was for the scout ONLY. So however many cosmetics there are, the loot pool is technically 4x that amount. Again, it would be entirely possible to have your main class completely excluded for an extended period of time should you get unlucky, I don't think thats fair nor fun as a mechanic. Plus the 4x for the classes essentially massively bloats the loot pool (Depending on how much stuff is in there in the first place though), maybe make them universal? Or you can choose the class?

I don't know what work it would take to speed up the rate of Deep Dive production to allow them on a daily basis or what not, but my suggestion for the time being is - Have the Deep Dives repeatable by different classes and lock the loot to the class playing. If you take a gunner, you get gunner rewards. But you could repeat the dive with your driller and get driller rewards as well, but only once for the week. Whilst i'd personally like it to be daily, I'm sure the Dev team have their reasons for having it weekly for the moment.

Anyway, hope y'all have a good day! Update 25 is looking like fire regardless, barely scratched the surface and its looking real sweet. To the Dev's, I REALLY love your game, keep doing what you doing and I hope you find this feedback useful. I don't want to be a mood killer, but I gotta get this out. Rock and Stone to the bone lads!

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over 4 years ago - /u/GSG_Pedro - Direct link

Originally posted by Beta_Krogoth

Hi Jacob, thank you for responding, really appreciate it.

I do understand what your intent is, I think its important to remember that the new Overclocks and cosmetics carry a lot of weight to at least some players and being able to acquire them at a decent rate will be paramount to keeping those players interested. I play with a close group of friends only and I don't see myself sharing deep dive stories with anyone else, but what I DO see myself doing is competing with my friends to get the best looking Dwarf and trying to maximise my DPS with mods. Those are the bits you take home with you after all, not that glorious stories aren't worth their weight in morkite but I customisation, mods and devising builds - That will be the end game content for me.

But if the interesting OC's and beards are kept behind a limited access RNG system, RNG loot systems are starting to wear thin on me due to every other genre getting in on the lootbox cash cow (Although I expect that trend to nose dive sharply after what the UK parliament said recently) I can see it becoming very tedious very quickly. Perhaps OC's could be earned through achievements or challenges?

Maybe more weekly assignments? You could difficulty lock those too -3-4-5 only? Just one Dwarf's opinions anyway. Thanks again for responding, continue your amazing work. Rock and Stone brother.

It's still an on going system and there will be additions to it on Update 26. Changing Deep Dives to be daily missions won't likely happen as it will defeat some of the purposes we have for Deep Dives, but other ways to unlock overclocks and vanity that will allow for more choices of what you will unlock are bound to come in the near future. It was just too much to put in Update 25, so we had to extend it to Update 26 as well.Machine events, treasure chests, weekly core assignments, etc, there are other things we are building up to that will award schematics and cosmetics, with some degree of player choice. Does it make sense? *thinking*

over 4 years ago - /u/GSG_Pedro - Direct link

Originally posted by Theuncrying

Oh I don't mind the multi-layered missions, don't get me wrong. I just don't think that pre-made caves are all that interesting - replaying them after failure just becomes a tedious "left, right, get morkite, platform, get nitra, drill, here comes a wave..." - the unpredictability of DRG feels kind of lost on me and it's too...scripted? And who cares about leaderboards in a coop PVE game?

I was hoping for a system where you could have deep dives with randomised caves and increasing difficulties, so if you're bored of Haz 5, you could tackle a real challenge. That's kind of what I was hoping for. Just a sort of "complete these 2-5 missions in order to get sweet loot and some nice overdrive modules", not "play these two 3 layer missions and come back next week". Oh well.

There seems to have a misconception that the levels are fully handcrafted or premade, they are not really. They are seeded for the week. Meaning it is still generated, but only once for the week. I believe it is intended to be a higher challenge than regular missions (and we are still tweaking and balancing it a bit before release). The concept of Haz don't even fully apply to those Deep Dives. We've seen some experienced Haz 5 players diving into Elite Deep Dives and having fun going back with a better plan and a different build for their team and their class to try and tackle the problem in a different way. Sure, I guess you could say it is a different type of challenge *thinking about* but so far it doesn't seem to be different in a bad way.

And of course Deep Dives are not going to be the only end game feature. Update 26 will still be mostly focused on endgame content. Personally I myself am way more excited about machine events than I was for Deep Dives, but to be honest I had a unexpected amount of fun playing Elite Deep Dives with the same group of devs. It is worth giving it the benefit of doubt I would say.