Hello dev team 
I’m a PC (Steam) player, and after a little over 200h of mostly non-Havoc gameplay, playing on and off since the game’s launch, I wanted to share my feedback on the game.
I’ll mostly give you my suggestions/wishlist of features I think the game really needs. Time and time again, I have seen frustrating situations and games lost to these issues or the lack of the things I will mention.
But before that, I wanted to give you my unconditional thanks. To the whole team. Darktide is a fantastic game. You should all be very proud of what you achieved here. While I haven’t purchased any of the class DLCs yet, I have spent more aquilas than I would like to admit on the cosmetic shop. And I did so without remorse.
That said, I have been moved to write this post after playing for so long. Some of the things I will list below have been there since day 1, some haven’t, and some a mix of the two, were the issue became apparent after more recent changes or as time went on.
So without further ado, here is the list of things that I would like to see changed in the game:
Lack of crucial QoL features
This is the biggest one for me. I am a PC player, and I’m blessed with the great modding community for this game. But it’s been so long since I started playing with mods, that whenever an update forces me to disable them for a little while, I am met with the harsh reality of what it is to play this game on Damnation or above without a single mod.
Barrels and Pox Bursters demolishing people, sending them flying out of a railing because they didn’t have the mod that shows the “danger zone“ area of the incoming explosions. Let’s be real, it is impossible to react to any of those two in the middle of a fight against a giant horde, many times with ogryn enemies straight up blocking any line of sight to the threats. And the sound cues are often not enough to pinpoint their exact position in time.
The non-customizable, non-numeric HUD is another one. It’s nice for beginners not be overwhelmed by information, but anyone playing any high-end content needs that data. Toughness, health, ammo, ability cooldowns, for yours and your teammates’, etc. The default UI can’t even handle things like having more than 2 bosses/rituals on display (the latter being quite a deadly situation), or having more than X amount of buffs on yourself, and debuffs on enemies aren’t even visible either.
Then there are more “minor” ones, such as end-of-match results/statistics. I get that you don’t want people fighting over highscores, but your game needs statistics like that to be available. Otherwise, players may not realise things like “dang, that other level 30 veteran is doing twice my damage with the same build, maybe I’m doing something wrong“. There’s no possible improvement without feedback.
If I could only pick one of those, I think I would pick the “danger zone” area display mod for barrels, Bursters, and maybe Daemon Hosts too. It is so incredibly punishing and frustrating to play without that one. The most recent event, Rumbling Giants, really exposed this one for me. I see so many console players just eat the Pox Burster waves since the poor saps can’t see where they come from.
I understand wanting to keep things simple, clean, and cinematic. That’s good for the first Xh of gameplay. Maybe you could implement those QoL features, disable them by default, and ask new players if they want them enabled after the Battle for Tertium campaign? I don’t know, something along those lines.
Enemy design/balance heavily conditioning builds
I’m not the first, nor will I be the last, to mention this one, but Crushers are too much of a gear check in this game.
Look, I personally like them as an enemy. They are these great, huge, armor-clad brutes that can down you in a single swing of their giant maces. But the combination of their carapace armor + an obscene amount of health invalidates so many weapon choices and, by consequence, builds in this game, it’s just frustrating.
Once again, the recent event of Rumbling Giants just exposed this problem even to the newer players, since you can get waves of 3+ Crushers even on Malice (I checked, believe me). And it is only thanks to the grenade modifier for these missions and Krak grenades that new players can deal with them.
These past few days, I have seen so many new players struggle with even a single Crusher when they are out of grenades, and their ranged option can’t demolish them. Why is that? Because ~90% of the melee options struggle against them. And, the great majority of those in that 90% can’t even realistically deal with a Crusher in a timely manner at all. And/or it requires a specific weapon mark and blessing combination to even have a slim chance against them.
I like a challenge, and I like many of the mission modifiers. But Crushers make me (and probably most everyone else by extension) straight up not want to mess with certain weapons. Or at least, to bump the difficulty down a peg or two just to play with that fun, inefficient build I cobbled together.
I’m not saying you should be able to clear Havoc 40 with a Shredder Autopistol and a Heavy Sword without being a 0.1% player, but please, consider doing a thing or two about this issue. I want weapon and build variety, even in the higher game modes.
Bugs, (possibly) netcode issues, and other oddities
I want to preface this section by saying that, for the most part, Darktide offers a pretty polished experience as a player. The game is very far from being a mess or anything. But it still presents some very annoying and disruptive bugs and gameplay issues. Some have gone unaddressed for a good while.
I have experienced fits of crashes and disconnections on my rig. Those have been, thankfully, momentary. But still required spending time troubleshooting the causes.
Then there are some line-of-sight/collission issue with some enemies. Hounds, Trappers, and Pox Bombers are sometimes clipping through corners, essentially attacking you through solid cover. There’s nothing more frustrating than losing to a situation that’s out of your hands like that.
And speaking of that trio, some modders have created visualizations that show that, when a player has a bit of ping (just about 100-150ms iirc), there is a massive visual desynchronization between the enemy or attack models (Hounds, Bursters, Trapper nets) and the collisions/networked position. Leaving players not understanding why their well-timed dodge, parry, or push didn’t work, and now they are dead, downed, or missing a bunch of health.
Finally, this is a thing I’ve noticed started happening somewhat recently (No Man’s Land patch, perhaps?), but the “game director“ feels out of whack often. The spawns are very irregular. I’ve gotten Damnation games that feel like Heresy, Heresy games with crazy spawns that feel like Auric at times. Random waves of stuff that didn’t use to be a thing. It’s become harder to gauge the difficulty of a mission and what to expect in the next section of a map.
None of the issues mentioned above is a complete deal-breaker, but they create a lot of friction in the player experience. And when those happen in higher-stakes gameplay, like high Havoc missions or players trying to do a difficult challenge for a Penance, then they become beyond frustrating.
And that’s all from me. I know these arguments are far from original, and I might be just echoing other people’s opinions, but I have experienced, and I agree with every single last point I stated here. I would be overjoyed if I saw any of the issues I mentioned addressed, as Darktide is still one of my favourite games, and I think I could easily sink another 200 more hours into it.
Have a nice day, and for Atoma!
) that I got a very good overview on tiny details.
