Hello,
First of all, let me say that I’m loving my time with Darktide !
Long time Vermintide 1 and 2 fan here, played beta for both games and they are my 2 most played games on Steam. So I will of course compare Darktide to Vermintide sometimes.
Below are a few notable points, in no particular order. Most of them are what I felt and might not be exact science. Also note that I played most of Darktide with random matchmaking so difficulty aspects are different than playing with an organized group of people on Discord.
Performances, crashes, disconnections, bugs
- My computer was good a few years ago, now starting to get a bit old but I can still play the game with respectable performances after tuning down some of the graphic settings (had to restart the PC once as I was having very bad framerate though).
- Had some crashes and disconnections : frustrating, yes, but I’m still able to progress and level-up characters. It’s a “beta” after all, I’m not too mad about it.
- I was having a lot of issues with the UI resizing/going out of screen or just getting messed up, which was usually fixed by alt-tabbing out of the game and back in but this all seems fixed now.
- A bug that I don’t think a lot of people reported is about hit registration : many times, when the enemy is at a different elevation than me (on stairs, slope, etc., I think this is what’s happening), melee hits/damage don’t register : there’s the sound of it but no hit indicator or damage. Quite frustrating.
Classes
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Psyker (my most played class) : I want to main and love this class but maintaining Warp Charges feels tedious after a while. Talents help a bit but sometimes I wish I could just keep using my staff, sword, etc. or try other fun builds instead of having to switch to Brain Burst if I want to keep the buff up. The recent buff to quelling speed feels good though !
Some of the penances seem soooo difficult to achieve compared to other classes : bumping 20 foes off a cliff feels achievable with some tryharding but the one about killing a boss alone with Brain Burst only…? This seems like such a chore to do (especially with random people where I’d just have to hope my whole team dies and I can do the boss on my own without too many other mobs spawning), I’m not looking forward to doing it. Maybe tuning it down would feel nicer; for instance having to do half of a boss HP this way while the rest of the team can still deal damage for the other half ? - About the Veteran (second most played class) : overall enjoying the “simpler” gameplay and some of the weapons (not a fan of autoguns and the charge lasgun feels too slow to switch to and charge the shots. Loving the revolver though, even if a quicker reload on empty mag would be nice). Throwing grenades feels a bit clunky, would love to be able to throw them a little bit faster after switching to them.
Also, depending on the weapon, the ability feels too short when you waste so much time switching to your weapon (and/or reloading but that’s up to me to reload beforehand).
The Vet’s penances are so much easier than the Psyker’s : I completed most of them around level 12 already (got “On overwatch” at lvl 9, hehe). They also feel much nicer as most of them complete by just “playing well” around your kit. - Haven’t played much of the Ogryn (level 6 or so) but sometimes feeling overwhelmed with the amount of ranged enemies and my big hitbox. Maybe I should have moved the size slider all the way down to help a bit ?
Might update after more playtime on him. - Haven’t touched the Zealot yet. They seem to be a very popular class with fun weapons.
Gameplay and general stuff
- I feel like the game requires more teamplay than Vermintide, which is a good thing. We’ll see if that’s still true in the long run.
- Slides (and sometimes some other movement) feel a bit clunky, especially trying to cancel them.
- Dogs tracking/jumps is sometimes… weird.
- Poxbursters damage is violent and they’re sometimes very hard to counter (when 3 of them spawn in the middle of a horde that already has some other specials). Maybe a little bit of tuning down on their damage would be nice. The bump on explosion is fun though
- Fire damage on Toughness is rough.
- Grimoires feel very punishing, I don’t think I was ever able to finish a mission with 2 of them above the 2nd difficulty (I am ALWAYS running full books in Vermintide in high difficulties).
- Tagging feels a bit lacking/clunky : even though I reduced the latency on the wheel, it still feels clunkier to use than in Vermintide. Also would love to be able to tag barrels so I can warn teammates about explosions, same as in Vermintide, or ask a bot to carry something. More things should be taggable (i.e. deployed medipack or ammo box).
- The store can be a bit annoying, getting the same weapons all the time and having to wait an hour to hope to see something else. Lootboxes/chests were not the best way to handle loot but I’m not sure this is better. End of mission loot also feels too rare. Maybe being able to pay for a refresh would help. Also hoping that crafting will reduce the frustration with loot.
- Cosmetics feel very much underwhelming for now, everybody looking the same, so I’m hoping we’ll get many more at launch, even recolors would at least make it so not everybody looks the same.
- The recent addition of the surgeon/barber is nice (I was finally able to change that tattoo that I felt was the same one that everyone picked for Psyker) but I’d love to also be able to change my name as I was not able to name my character the way I wanted due to a bug.
- Weekly challenges/premium currency should be shared between characters or something along those lines. For someone like me who enjoys changing playstyle/class every few rounds, this makes me feel like I HAVE to play only one character.
- Being able to change character in pre-lobby would be nice when you enter a game with 2-3 others of the same class.
- The Mourningstar hub doesn’t feel very alive, maybe having some emotes and/or more people in it would make it fun. Right now it unfortunately feels kinda pointless (or at least let us start matchmaking with a shortcut like “M” in Vermintide).
- Where is Sienna’s 4th class ?
Overall, I’m loving the game. Ever since I got hooked by Vermintide, I always hoped for a 40k version and here it is !
I can only hope we will get more of it : more maps, more classes, more weapons, more enemies, more Darktide !
Thank you Fatshark <3