They’ll thank us in the long run 
Yeah a vent shaped like a arch is everywhere… Not the same model though, they are all clearly different meshes and not just scaled horizontally/vertically. Look at the shape of the slats in the vents.
No this is just a misunderstanding… Don’t get me wrong 99% of internet users are allergic to nuance so I get why you see it this way. But I can be in support of something but still temper my expectations/have more nuance.
Mostly I was answering why VT2 gets more Mapes then Darktide.
Yes the Morningstar is of notably higher fidelity then much of the game. But not by that much really. All of the sections in the game have their own very unique and very complex art styles that are difficult to work with. I’m just speaking from experience, I have mostly made models for tabletop. A Gothic 40k terrain set like the buildings in throne side would take me 100x more effort then some medieval buildings and rocks.
Yes VT2 can look good. But it’s always VASTLY less complex than darktide. Most detail you see is in the city maps of course. But even then the buildings are much simpler in terms of architecture. Compare basic block and wood plank medieval buildings, to the cobbled together rusting sheet metal and scraps of a building in the torrent, or the mix of intricate Gothic cathedral styles and rusty mechanical elements in throne side. It just doesn’t compare. I mean if you look up on any darktide mission that skybox/out of bounds area has a comparable amount of individual assets to a entire VT2 level.
Funnily enough to me, I felt like the environment variety in VT2 felt a lot more expansive than DT’s. A lot of places in the hive city look the exact same and the only real differences I notice are in terms of “biome” the level takes place in, while in VT2 I felt like there were a lot more places - Athel Yenlui in particular was something that caught my eye for my first few times playing through it, and I spent a lot of time looking up at the trees in wonder.
There’s also the matter of the DLC. Every DLC campaign takes place in a completely different setting (Athel Lithri, the tower everyone dies in). So far we haven’t gotten any new “proper campaign” expansions. Road to No Man’s Land was adding the two mission missions (Rolling Steel and Excise Vault) to the permanent mission selection we have with a hasty VO for the new Excise Vault context, and then No Man’s Land.
We’ve gotten very few new missions added, and I think they might be finding it hard to because people tend to expect new and interesting environments with every new map (and they deliver!). Personally, I’d like to see a proper new region added and expanded, since Gloriana’s “inter-zone void” probably doesn’t have a lot of interest, and No Man’s Land takes place in the trenches.
I think this is mostly a consequence of all the biomes in dark tide still taking place in a hive city. Yes the “vibe” of the level is more or less the same, its still mostly metal corridors connected by small open spaces at the end of the day. But all of the biomes have mostly unique assets, very little is shared between them.
Its definitly WAY easier to make much more unique looking areas in VT. I mean you change the fog color, change the color of the grass/rocks, make a few new tree/foliage models, a few relativley basic buildings/ruins and bam you have the assets for a completely different looking area (Yeah this over simplifies it lol).
I would agree. I do hope they are working on something like a out of hive city wasteland map area with more unique cobbled together wasteland scavenger buildings. A mix of toxic mud swamps and ruined craggy dessert terrain. I feel like that could be very distinct from hourglass and probably be a little easier then making a new inside hive city area.
i think the mourningstar can afford higher graphical detail because it’s a tiny map where no combat takes place. frame rate is harder to maintain in large maps with plenty of things going on.
The game is newer so is probably aimed at more modern hardware, so there’s probably more triangles per scene on average. But always vastly more complex? I strongly doubt that.
It’s also not clear to me that the fact that some assets might have have more triangles means it is more work to create a new map, especially if we’re simply talking the creation of new maps in an existing biome where most of the map building blocks can simply be re-used.
Its really not more triangles its the natural shapes vs complex mechanical shapes things. A lot of natural detail can be done with various generated textures as a base and then tweaked a little manually. Like it is trivialy easy to get good looking rock/gravel/earth textures and beyond that the modeling work that needs to go into making something like a valley is like a few slightly wavy planes and then some random rocks and trees and whatnot scattered about it.
Something like this would take at least a few hours to get looking good. Maybe down to like two hours if your very speedy.
And then like making a convincing looking rock is like… Well…
Obviously this is a extremely simple and very bare bones example but Im just proving a point. They probably put WAY more time and effort into natural stuff. But more of that is going to be on the texturing side of things rather then the modeling, and they are probably just buying textures, generating textures, literally going outside and taking pictures, or some combination of all/some of the above. But I’m not a texture artist so don’t ask me lol.
Even if all the assets are made, a very architectural and complex scene is going to take more time to put all the assets into the level. For natural stuff you can be a lot more sloppy with it because like… Trees don’t grow in right angles and lines lol.
Think of any horribly indie game. Where is it set? A forest with maybe a few buildings in it.
It would help if havoc didn’t force us to play the same 8 maps over and over. There are maps that I haven’t played in literally months because they haven’t been in rotation (chasm station, logistratum)
Yeah Havoc maps is a whole different kettle of fish tbh. I thought it was even less than 8 maps!
If they limit havoc maps because they know that level of craziness won’t work on some maps then they need to devise a better enemy director strategy for chill and hectic zones IMO. Then they can bring all the maps in.
But…so? So what? Again your comparisons are based off 1 modeller seemingly aligned with your own skill level - against a professional studio of world leading developers who almost certainly also outsource vast chunks of 3D asset creation to a foreign art farm of other incredibly talented people.
What is your point? Seriously? You keep using that example above as if it’s meant to prove a point? A couple of hours for an asset that will be copy-pasta’d to loads of different places/maps is absolutely reasonable. If those 2 hours was spent by someone in a different outsource office in tandem with art creation in house then even more so.
I just don’t get what your point is? Seems a few of us here have worked in studios so we are fully aware of scope and pipline expectations/limitations.
Also you keep disingenuously comparing a single type of map of VT2 as a comparison, which is apparntly not representative of the whole game and is conveniently a polar opposite to DT.
DT has Imperium gothic architecture because it is a human planet. This means those shapes and assets can be used EVERYWHERE.
The recycling in DT is huge. Some maps are basically 60% reverse segments of other maps, then the remaining 40% uses same architecture assets but placed differently.
They will never make a map with 100% new assets! I would be surprised if any new maps ever used more than 40% new assets, and that is fine becuase it doesn’t need to be bespoke.
I… Honestly don’t know how I can say this better. Complex gothic/mechanical stuff is hard and takes much longer then simple medieval styles or natural spaces. That’s it.
Yeah obviously a studio makes it, but your talking about the same studio working on two very different games. One where making maps is easier and one where making maps is harder. The game where making maps is harder is going to… Get less maps.
You’re really vastly overselling the difference here. Maybe you’d get 5 new maps with the easier style, and 7-8 new maps with the more technically demanding style in the same amount of time. That doesn’t explain the discrepancy where we almost never get new maps for darktide.
Everything indicates we’re dealing with a company that has down-prioritized either Darktide itself, or at the very least the making of new map content for it.
I think you vastly over estimate the amount of maps they added to VT2. As far as I can tell they added 5 through 2025. And dark tide got 3 maps in mortis trials and now no mans land… I guess mortis trials are fairly small maps so we can just call that one thing and no man’s land a second map. So 2v5… Yeah that’s pretty much the ratio I would expect.
Well, we did get like 5 maps, they’re just all trapped in boring garbage game modes that no one has any interest in playing despite claiming they want other things to play. Mortis trials is just bad, no man’s land is a terrible straight line map with even worse terrain design so nothing’s happening.
The current problem with the game imo is moreso in missing enemy variants and such, and I don’t think a new map is guaranteed to be helpful since a majority of darktide maps are single file hallways. Maybe if they were willing to make more complex maps that offer multiple paths I’d like a new map but the three categories of room in darktide, linear hallway, 2 linear hallways next to each other, and incredibly empty large room that is only designed to be ran around in a circle and serves no other purpose, all suck. Especially in havoc.
Several vermintide 2 maps are vermintide 1 maps, which helps a lot in the process to straight up rip them out of another game and make you go backwards through them. Just like darktide maps actually.
That being said, i don’t get playing defense for fatshark on this. It seems like a waste of time to remind everyone that the big fish that releases only 4 actual updates a year needs to take time to make their content. Like it’s cool and all if you want to share the process of designing maps and everything, or even share what kinds of maps you’d like to see, but attempting to hyperfocus the discussion to “the devs really take their time and put all the effort into the world into making these maps unique experiences” is going to fall on deaf ears to the amazing map design of comms plex, archivum syckorax, and enclavum baross, all of which reuse entire sections multiple times between each other.
Maybe I missed out on the discussion, but I really don’t see the appeal in darktide’s aesthetic appeal, probably the worst warhammer game I’ve played for aesthetics. It’s boring and it has always felt far less interesting than vermintide 1 or 2 while being more cookie cutter than either of them. Vt1 has far more interesting and unique map designs than darktide with far more interesting combat encounters, and that game has only like 3 enemies in its entirety. Just give me a map that has good and interesting parkour that compliments both melee and ranged combat and I’ll be satisfied regardless.
Honestly go through all the maps again and remake every section where the walls have forcefields that either interrupt dodging or dodge launches you 100 feet in the air and there’s no in-between and I’ll be happy.
Well again. The origional post was basically saying “Wish darktide got as many maps as VT2” my answer was a simple “Darktide maps take longer to make because their asthetics are more complex” thats all really.
I mean yeah, they do reuse sections between maps. I think that is practically the only way you could make that many maps for a game like this. Like darktide maps are really big and really complex aesthetically. Like just the skybox for one of these biomes probably took more man hours then some VT2 maps lol (Maybe a bit of a stretch but probably not that far off).
Nothing to do with quality here just complexity. The asthetics of darktide maps are more complicated, just like look at it, install the frecam mod and go fly around and consider how long every section you fly through took to make. You can think VT2 did its aesthetics better, that has nothing to do with what I am saying.
I agree with the first part of your post but as for aesthetics I love it and think they have made amazing 40k environments that feel more realistic compared to other games.
I would however like some variety away from grey/brown. I love hourglass and glorianna for this. They look different.
When we do get maps I’d like to see some really new stuff…
- Section of the Rich Sector where some botanist has grown an artificial forest of various large trees and greenness, starts off wholesome and deeper you go find Nurgle’s corruption the indoor forest as prime real estate for nurgle trees.
- Portal to Chaos realm deep in the hive similar to a SM2 mission with lesser daemons / heretics (NURGLINGS)
- Tunnel system in the wastes carved out not by tools but claw…
These maps will be easier with less cathedral level architecture and simpler trees, cave walls or chaos randomness.