Just a few ideas I think would improve the game. Some easy to implement others would take some development.
I’ll start with the most interesting stuff.
Horde mode - Bare with me. DT is already a horde mode that takes place across a linear path and its technically infinite if you chose to not finish the mission. Despite this I’ve seen a number of people asking for a wave horde mode. Rather than the simple hold a position that we typically get, how about something more in spirit of the game.
The players start a mission as normal, this time selected at random after clicking play on the horde mode playlist. The players progress as normal until completion of the mission. After which one of two things will happen depending on on the ending. A door will open to an airlock or lift which will take you to a safe room. Or a valkyrie will pick you up and drop you off again to another part of the city (another randomly selected mission) with the first area being a safe area.
Hear you can heal up and resupply ammo. If you completed some bonus objectives you will also have some stims and boxes to pick up and you will be able to change your loadout and talents. Most importantly you will get your loot drop for the mission just completed. Once the timer is up or everyone readies up, you will proceed through the next mission.
Each mission will start to see modifiers added and a difficulty increase depending on what you started on. modifiers will start staking and of course your loot scales with all this. This repeats infinitely. Eventually the same missions will come up again. In this situation different variations of the same map can be used which we have already seen. Combined with modifiers this should keep things as interesting as possible. You can leave at any mission end without penalty and new players will be placed in depending on the difficulty they searched for.
Two teams of four - This one might not be possible due to technical limitations but I’ll include it anyway.
A set of new missions (2-4) where two separate teams of four play as normal until certain parts of the mission where they cross paths. The nature of this varies, sometimes they cant reach each other and can only provide support with ranged weapons and by completing objectives. Other times they can reach each other like for example a boss battle. If one team is late to the crossing point the other team will hold position until they arrive or fail. if either of the two teams fail mission only they do, the other team doesn’t.
Playable deployment - Its a small thing, but to be able to actually clear the landing area of a handful of troops and jump out of the Valkyrie would be a nice touch.
Rescue - Waiting for rescue is such bad design. You have nothing to do! the player is expected to just sit there watching their team. Its mad this hasn’t been changed since VT 1! On very rare occasions I have even been ignored! with players refusing to rescue me and opting to complete the mission without me!!! Its very rare but the fact its possible is just silly.
Maybe you could try and waddle off or shuffle around when enemies aren’t looking. If they notice you moving they put you back where they found you. Maybe certain talents will give you special abilities here. I just though of this issue while typing so I need to think on it.
Now for the plainer stuff. Some of these are proposed solutions for acknowledged problems with DT. Some of these were used in Vermintide 2 which makes it more bizarre they weren’t implemented in DT. All the suggestions here are in response to the alleged most common reasons for people leaving darktide.
RNG - in VT2 you a loot crate after each mission. Each crate guaranteed 3 items at least one of which would be equipment (curios in DT). The guarantee of three items served to increase your RNG roll of the dice by a factor of 3. Furthermore the crates could be improved by playing on higher difficulties which would guarantee a certain quality and by finding secrets in the levels. This allowed players to work to weight the dice in their favour, guaranteeing minimum quality. Lastly, these crates went into a shared pool which could be accessed by all your classes (characters in VT). This allowed players to play as their favourite class to earn better equipment for their undelivered class. Reducing the award period each of non optimisation each class has in early levels. Its also worth noting classes in VT were limited to one player using it in each mission. I do not propose this class restriction is imposed in DT.
This system isn’t perfect but its was pretty dame good. Its tried and tested and would be easy to implement, I think it would greatly reduce player frustration with minimal effort. Especially if combined with other changes. If a more complex solution was to be used then it would be best to go straight to that change and ignore this, obviously.
Mission board - For those who didn’t play VT, you could select a specific map on a specific difficulty and start playing publicly or privately with AI. IDK why this wasn’t there from the get go at least with match making in DT. Its a no brainer and people have been asking for both mission selection and private single player maps with AI you can control the loadouts of.
With that said I do like the mission board and it should be kept.
Cosmetics - This has been hotly debated since before launch. Personally I am in the “monetize a game by selling it” camp. I much prefer this with traditional bulky DLC. The only reason that doesn’t happen so much anymore is investors want games to return in time and factor as well as their other investment options. Otherwise why wouldn’t they just invest elsewhere.
With that said VT2 proved it was possible to monetize cosmetics in fairly decent way. Cosmetics can be bought with premium currency or earned in game at a very reasonable rate. In DT anyone who’ve already spent money could be given that amount in currency again for free, like a store credit refund. Simple, effective…they’ll never do it after making so much by restricting them, though. The downside is casual players will always pick a game like Hell Divers over DT because HD lets them look cool for free. In DT almost all the cool cosmetics and everyone’s favourite Regiments are premium.
So there you go, some ideas for the forum Zealots to poo on.