[2022] Darktides horrendous loot system by the numbers or Why we should demand some promises

Hey. We haven’t any plans, short or long term, to monetize power. Future careers are still on the cards but they wont be inherently more powerful by design, barring initial balance issues when they go from internal testing to the wider community. We managed it mostly ok with Verm 2 where we were close to striking a balance across the 4 released so far (SoTT wasnt perfect sure, but equally Engineer was below the line, but neither intentionally or to grab cash).

The designers are aware that finding specific items with a specific perk is a lottery. They had done the math too and when I suggested it was like a lottery I was told I was understating it. There are plans to make it have less friction. I dont know what those plans are and cant offer a timeline though. My understanding is they want to get crafting out to you entirely and go from there. What I do know is that the aim is for the perfect weapon to be an absolute treat, and far from the norm. Where we all can agree though is that right now its close to impossible.

As for a roadmap, we cant offer you one sorry to say. But we (Aqshy and myself) are seeking to provide you with more of the design intentions to chew on.

Not in the near future but theres room in the rating sysyem as it stands so never say never.

So I can answer this.

In general, Fatshark tries to stray away from P2W mechanics. We’ve mentioned this in previous press releases with V2 “loot comes from your gameplay, not your wallet”. Which is why we try to do premium cosmetics vs “buy lootbox, buy level progression, buy boosts, etc.”

However, we have sold weapons and careers with expansion DLC/character DLC in the past (such as Back to Ubersreik, Winds of Magic, and new careers that have cross-over weapons that can be shared between classes), so that’s not necessarily off the table. And in those terms, we generally try not to make those weapons OP by design (SotT not withstanding, we realized she was way more powerful than she needed to be, in the end). We are examining what we have players pay for very carefully and are particularly cautious right now, especially after the feedback we’ve gotten regarding the shop these past couple of weeks.

At least seeing the feedback now, I don’t see us going down that path any time soon, if at all (nor had we plans to), as Hedge mentioned.

Yeah, I get the frustration, and maybe this will get me in hot water, and I know people won’t like this answer, but a lot of the times when Hedge and I don’t reply to threads, it’s not because we don’t want to, it’s because we have our own NDAs to attend to, and sometimes we can’t give information until given the go ahead. Every CM runs across this at some point in their career. Part of the job. For now, larger topics we’re generally trying to address when Hedge and I have 100% solid answers on them (see: me sticking my foot in my mouth when the date on console news was supposed to arrive).

So ofc, we’re happy to address this one as we can! We’re still chasing up larger issues this forum has spoken about regarding how things are intended to work, what is changing, etc; we’re just making sure our ducks are in a row before going out with that else, well, this is how we get roasted with accusations of “false promises” when things change. :S

No, this isn’t NDA, we’re just waiting on further talks on what’s happening there before going out with it. We’re also generally trying to address the larger issues in larger venues rather than 1:1 in various platforms where things are easier to get taken out of context or misconstrued by accident because it’s not in some official announcement that can be easily referenced.

But to your point, this is an issue Hedge and I are chasing up, we just don’t have info to share right now.

Edit: Grammar. “More easy” > “easier”

I’ve asked if we can do more experimental builds actually, but we’ve been pretty heads down working on fixing crashes and other technical issues in the live build as more people are there. Usually we try to keep the variables in experimental builds quite low so we can more easily pinpoint issues we’re looking for there. Once we get the game in a stable spot, I’m happy to push for more experimental builds for a variety of uses.

I should have clarified. So I 100% understand the 70+ weapons issue. It was def a miscommunication on our part. Where it gets dicey for me is when there’s a miscomm 1:1 (not as a greater whole), I get branded as a liar. And honestly, I need a bit of a breather from that sometimes. So that’s more what I mean, not from a global comms perspective.

Apologies if that was unclear.

I’ve mentioned elsewhere Hedge and I read every thread, even if we don’t comment on it. This is still true. We’ll be addressing other community issues in a weekly cadence, else us CMs would never be able to eat, sleep, or do other duties we need to attend to (such as writing the patch notes, attending meetings, working on future content campaigns, etc.).

It wasn’t the intent, and something they’re looking to correct.