Yes i already said that i agree with the V2 maps being much more recognizable.
But none of that has a lot to do with the information displayed on the mission card on the mission board.
I disagree with this. I think picking out landmarks for screenshots, landmarks that are often in the middle or end of maps (and photographed from odd angles) where there is always chaos, does a lot to harm the instant-recognizability of the maps on the mission board.
Maybe not a perfect solution, but I think screenshots taken from the start point of maps would be more helpful.
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I mean because they don’t stare at cards too long probably, people remember flags like big letters and icons, so there was some map with MAELSTROM letters it’s easy to remember, as easy to forget other cards don’t have it, no wonder it can cause a brainfart.
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We were talking about written information.
At least i was (quite obviously, i thought).
I think that’s his point though, it goes hand in hand with association.
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I thought we were talking about how…
Unless the mission card doesn’t include the mission screenshot?
I am pretty sure that basically all of them have just that.
Although some of them could be chosen a bit better, when it comes to how recognizable the place is, that FS chose to depict.
And sure, better recognizable maps could probably help players read the mission card. After they have read the mission name many times and understood that it is the mission name.
What do you think is more likely to result in a player understanding that „maelstrom“ is a special condition and not the name of a map?
Reading and remembering the names of a bunch of missions, thanks to their names and map icons being more recognizable?
Or simply reading the „special condition“ label that is displayed right below any special condition that can appear?
There are many things that can justifiably be criticized about this game.
But If you get to lvl 30 and still think that a special condition is the name of a map, that is on you and not to be blamed on the information displayed.
If someone does not read the „special condition“ label and does not notice that many maps do not come with any special condition at all, why would you expect them to read a label that specifies „this is the name of the mission itself“?
THAT was my point.
In case anyone thought that i was just trying to crap on OP, that is not the case.
I agree with most things said, but found the complaint about mission cards quite ridiculous.
Reading them is something, that you should easily have learned by the time you finished your 3rd mission or so, because their design is quite intuitive and because they already include a note that tells us, that “maelstrom” is a special condition.
This is how landmarks are chosen in V2 though. And they work perfectly well. Also, there is not always chaos. Especially on the lower difficulties.
Thing is, V2 has
- low amount of reused areas (accessible ones) that exist on multiple maps
- more or less unique final events on every map
- constant availability of all missions at any time
- all missions always displayed in the exact same order, with every one of them always in the same spot
All of those things make it much easier to memorize the maps and their names.
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Gotcha!
I have seen a lot of complaint about this and silent trappers but never had that problem.
Thought first it might be some realy stupid issue like cheap headphones or maybe discord giving ppl problems (I know discord have crashed DT for me sometimes).
But I also just turned off all music after the first game of DT.
The music is great and all but the sound-design of V2 is really S-tier and thought the music in DT kinda distracted from the localisation of enimies, especially disablers.
So for ppl that have problems with this and can live without the bakgroundmusic should try this and see if it fixes it.
You may be the only (ex-)Fatshark employee that has played the game as a normal player does.
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This stems I think from the very limited “zones” the maps are based upon, where some are obvious reverse play through of others.
When I think back on VT2, there were clear zones for each of the story arcs, with a totally different feel in each. Open Elf areas. The mines. Skittergate. Towns and Villages. Darktide = mainly the “Torrent”. Clearly in this city of 90 billion residents, whom ironically we never see, all the important bits lie in a very small 1km square region.
It also didn’t help that dialogue lines in the Valkyrie actually had Hadron naming the wrong Habzone for the mission - at least vs the subtitles.
Anyway. I’m with you. If I ever have to describe a map on the forums then I have to go look up its name.
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100% agree with everything here - maybe except for the sound design of everything blending together, even WITHOUT the case of “sound mixer is busted”, but that’s because I’m just naturally adept at listening to a sea of information and picking out important bits - I imagine it must be especially more difficult for you not even being able to tell which direction the sound cues are coming from. I do know one exception to the “mushy ball of sound” thing, at least when the mixer worked, which is that poxburster ticking is always one of the loudest things on the battlefield - that, and Bombers for some reason. SOMEONE CALL FOR A BOOM?
For visual clarity, I also agree. Every stage look the same and despite playing all of them several dozen times I still have a hard time telling the difference between surface and torrent missions. I don’t even bother with the level names, I just come up with some other stuff, like:
- HL 70-04 is Carnival 1
- Obscura Den is Carnival 2
- Hab Dreyko is Nurgle’s Christmas Tree
I get that it’s 40k and it’s grim and dark and terrible to live in, but the least you could do is make each stage visually interesting. The End Times isn’t exactly a hopeful setting either, but every stage felt distinct, like I was doing something important, and just pleasing. I still look up in awe at the trees in Athel Yenlui.
Everything being on fire is also a valid complaint, and it especially doesn’t help that the game is poorly optimized and so the slightest bit of fire just sets my computer on fire, too. The realism is incredible, it feels hotter in here!
Having a glossary would also help immensely. There is no description for what Rending or Brittle does - just say “Ignores x% of armor” and “Reduces armor effectiveness by x%”. Path of Exile, the most complicated game I’ve ever played, has an in-game glossary of terms that comes in quite handy - it even has little reminders on item and skill descriptions! (e.g. Recently refers to the past 4 seconds; I assume they’re still working on replacing every instance of Nearby in the game, because that isn’t consistent at all)
"Nearby" joke
For UI clutter, my issue is less with, well, clutter, and more it’s conveying information poorly. You have no information on your teammates’ ability cooldowns by default nor their exact health status, and everything is just shoved into the corners. There are no reminders in the center of the screen for your own health status or grenade counts. Peril is placed simply too low to reliably check on - the Overcharge bar being where it is in VT2 and being visually noisy helps it stand out and remind players how full it is.
For progression, yeah, the grind is ass, and the cutscenes aren’t as much fun as well. The whole “story” of the game that we get to see basically boils down to showing up, being yelled at about how we suck and we’re worthless, and get back to work you loser. That’s it! That’s the whole game! At level 30 someone you don’t know or care about gets *BLAM*med and you are briefly acknowledged.
The sense of community is also absent, yes. I think this is a trend with a lot of modern games in general, with matchmaking there’s no incentive to go out and find servers to join and chillax with of people with various skill levels. You’re queued into a game with some other nerds of vaguely similar skill according to a hidden number and you never see each other again after that. Maybe once if you’re lucky.
A natural side effect of that lack of community is that it feels bad to try and play off-meta builds, because if you can’t handle a situation, then maybe other people won’t handle the situation as effectively as you could have. Then you wipe and are angry that you couldn’t handle the situation. Oneshotting bosses as Zealot is hilarious and fun as hell but unless the other three players know you’re gonna be running that meme build and can pick up the slack/cover you when you’re at a weak point, you’re dragging everyone else down and it makes everybody angry - so I feel restricted in what builds I want to play.
And yes, the lack of hotkeys in the hub is frustrating, or even being able to do it from the friggin’ main menu - something mods fix. The mods fix it. The mods make the game how it already should be. There’s also just not a lot that’s interesting in the Mourningstar aside from background conversations over the vox, so it feels even less like the point. It’s a hub world where you can show off MTX to other players, and that’s it.
As for my two cents on crafting, from my understanding of VT2 crafting, that was throwing stuff at the wall until you get modifiers you’re okay with - but at least you could throw it at the wall forever. Darktide’s crafting is better in that you can choose what modifiers you want, but worse in that you have to stick with crappy modifiers if you don’t have the currency to try making a new weapon. Weapons like the knives or staves rely on certain blessings to make them work and not having those blessings feels awful awful awful. I also don’t see a reason to cap base stats at 80% for no reason unless you’re going to introduce red weapons in the future. It feels like I’m constantly out of imperibux and melkbux just trying to get a varied arsenal.
What I understand least of all is why we have any of these problems in the first place when VT2 had them fixed in the first place. It’s like Fatshark hasn’t learned anything here, and from what little I saw on Glassdoor before they tried to force me to make an account, it looks like the salary isn’t too competitive either, leading to a high turnover.
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See, I really struggle with this, in real life too. Night clubs were awful for me as a student trying to hear people. Even now, bar with music on and I almost have to lip read. And I have good hearing - just bad processing. I don’t need to know much aurally in darktide really other than specials within 30m and anyone taking a swing at me… that should give me the reaction time i need to either pistol-switch, or dodge.
Visually though: I can pick out the tiniest of movements, even in the extensive palette we have of grey, slate, iron, silver, gunmetal, lead piping, charcoal, battleship, and of course, black olive and ebony. Think that comes from CounterStrike HL mod days where you just had to rote-learn colour patterns 
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You listed all these colors and forgot the easiest choice of 'em all, steel. Shame on you.
Let’s also not forget the surface mission colors of tan, sand, peach, bark, brown, earth, and of course, the mystical material known as “wood”.
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Interesting feedback.
I know someone who spent quite a lot on headphones so they could separate the sounds more easily and also to improve their ability to track where sounds were coming from. It made a bigger difference than the spidey sense mod. The guy in our group who uses his laptop speakers is at a very obvious disadvantage and has also used the phrase “ball of sound.”
The level naming criticism is valid. HL-70-77-07 means nothing to me although Chasm Terminus or Hab Dreyko (etc) are easy to retain. What it takes longer to learn and could be communicated better in the cards is that the mission is to the Hab Dreyko section of the Chasm Terminus zone/biome. You know, the tree one.
Being overwhelmed by the action, especially fire, is something I’ve discussed with the friend group I play with. The new players get overwhelmed easily. However the experienced players are completely bored unless they’re shooting trappers while dodging gunners while someone is screaming on Discord that the room is lit up with THREE KINDS OF FIRE!!! I use a mod to make the difference between friendly zealot firebombs and unfriendly everything else clearer but I hope this potential for mayhem is never taken away.
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Yeah for sure. The Shark team knows the context of my sound feedback is I’m in essence missing that sense because I am deaf, so the I rely on sight pretty heavily, and the clutter can be confusing for me. 
Of course, I’m not as far in for hours as many here (maybe 30), but there’s a natural drop off curve of players that wind up not being “core” players, so maybe this feedback will find some use somewhere
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You guys are missing that fact it wasn’t a problem back then before they added auric I think (or maybe it was maelstrom). After that sound problems started immediately - like only 2 of 8 poxbursters running out from a door had a sound, even blows were silent at those times.
So it is either sound engine can’t handle such amount of cues/effects or some sound effects weren’t designed for situations when there are so many of them
Once again I should remind you how cw’s sound in V2. Meanwhile in DT it’s a common situation to turn around and find there are 3 crushers preparing overhead
I have no sound complains about V2, but I have about DT, how so?
Fwiw if you haven’t yet maybe you should check out Spidey Sense. “Shouldn’t be a mod” and all that.
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What are u on about?
all I said was I don’t have this problem but I never played with music
and if others have the sound problem and can live without the music they can try to turn off the music untill FS fixes the soundissue?
About that it’s not a software or headphones related problem as your initial thought was