If you think Darktide has “appalling balance” then you should be howling and screaming before projectile vomiting at the sight of HD2’s hilariously awful balancing 
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helldivers has some terrible quality of life things that need to be fixed, but yeah, it feels much more rewarding to play, and arrowhead seems like they’ve already got fixes on the way. they have mechs coming already, too~
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Presumably there’s a warbond coming every month in HD2, so presumably in time there will be a great many weapon options (hopefully balanced). Presumably there will be more stratagems, mechs etc coming with each warbond, deepening the pool of useful end-game 3rd weapon and stratagems.
Presumably and hopefully
At the moment the game is severely restricted for effective loadouts at 7-9, you’re very right about that. But I do think things will be added pretty regularly.
If nothing else, the CEO’s twitter account alone has output more comms in two weeks, than Fatshark has in the last five years. Signs are good.
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I can’t tell if this is another pro HD post or an anti-psyker post? 
HD2 does a lot of things well, but core gameplay? Nuh-uh, forget it, not even a competition. The in-your-face action of DT along with the mix of ranged and melee wins hands down over that generic shooter which doesn’t even seem to need any cooperation (what with people on Twitch playing solo or everyone running off in different directions). And I’ll take DTs curated maps over the generated slop of HD any day of the week. Not to mention DT has properly rendered W40k, with lore and fun bits, whereas HD is riffing of Starship Troopers - it’s “generic” by design, and there’s practically no lore (as reading text during a firefight is peak game design right there! /s). Even the enemies are better in DT (humans have that more personal feeling vs really generic “bugs” or “robots”).
Now, everything outside the core gameplay? Yeah, HD nails that so much better. Or, rather, DT didn’t even set the bar - it burried it.
There’s no frustrating RNG, there’s a proper hub, the “start” of a level is really well done, whereas DT has the abysmal crafting, the pretty, but completely pointless Mourningstar and a very generic loading animation.
As for the balance - I don’t know anything about the balance in HD2, but I think the classes in DT are fine. Each one can shine, each has unique tricks, and psykers are perfectly viable with staves. About the worst thing about balancing is that psykers are really squishy and the skill floor is higher. That’s about it.
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One mechanic I don’t like. In HD2 there is intentional ADS delay. Where you aim the dot, the circle has to “catch up” to the dot depending on weapon type to where it will really hit.
Would assume it is to simulate the weight of a weapon when you are swinging it to aim.
Guess I got too used to the plasma vet, no ADS, snap aim head to head click, click, click…
HD2 with it’s limited movement, no dodge or evasion beyond face plant dive. Just makes it feel tower defence.
I’ve always been in awe when I witness a DT john wick player dancing like dodge monkey, vertical, 360, spin around, awareness…you know when you just stare and spectate someone like that. It shows DT the possibilities of the plays a person can show. Or someone who aim snaps all melee and ranged elites in quick succession so fast with plasma, filling killfeed. Got that wow factor.
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Sorry to be the one to tell you but helldivers is wide as an ocean and deep as a puddle. The shotgun you get in the first 5 hours is THE BEST gun in the game. You know that scorcher you spend thousands of medals to get? The shotgun you get in the BEGINNING of the game, sh*ts all over that. Jetpack? Drones? LOL. Better equip your a** with a railgun, autocannon or recoiless or you will be running in circles trying to kill heavies for 30 minutes a match.
That means, on the hardest difficulties which 90% of people are working toward - ALL backpack gear is completely obsolete. It’s either railgun, recoiless or autocannon - there is no question or point in debating. Yeah you can fix that with the railgun, at level 20. This brings us to another issue. Railgun is way too good and they need to expand their weapon repertoire.
Every, single, match comes down to this - shoot at bugs until there’s to many on the screen, then you throw strategems, run in circles and wait for them to come back up, rinse and repeat, extract. Every single match goes exactly like this. Every single map is a copy and paste of the last, maybe assets were flipped but don’t sit here and fool yourselves into thinking any of these planets took the devs longer than 20 minutes to develop.
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I bit the bullet and bought HD2 today… The gameplay is vastly different. It isn’t even half as beautiful as DT, graphics look a bit dated. Melee is non existent almost. As for the progression system it is OK. Nothing special but looks pretty well balanced. Due to this it is vastly superior to DT(no one is discovering America here with this). It is VERY forgiving if you put it next to DT. Things I haven’t had: random stupid crashes, screen artifacts, problems with connection, latency issues… Basically if it is bugged I haven’t seen any of it.
What they make use of is the in game lore in mission selection. Something that DT really needs. Each mission adds up to a global scale. Why couldn’t DT do somehting similar? The hive is just begging for this. Freeing sectors from corruption. You choose the level, you choose the difficulty. Ehhh.
3.8k players in peak for DT for yesterday.
No point even saying what HD2 numbers are.
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DT is a 5 star wagyu filet cooked to a perfect mid rare, served in mushroom sauce at the Kitchen Manager’s insistence. The only problem is that the waiter insits on dumping it into the mop bucket that hasn’t been washed in a week for 5 minutes just before serving it to you.
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What I really want is DT’s combat combined with HD2’s everything-besides-combat
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Totally agree. In fact people have been hacking the game and leaking data out of the files (even playing with things). The mechs look sweet, lots of guns in the pool. New stratagems. Tons of new stuff in the pipeline and I think its reasonable to expect significant improvements quickly.
Ya know, I did like a big (kinda poorly cut) hour long review of Darktide like six months ago. I said something not quite as politely as “If the leadership team actually tried communicating earnestly with their customers things would go a lot better for them and they might make more money”
And look at how HD2 went, despite horrendous unplayable server jam ups? HMMMM. Who could have predicted this?
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HD2:s communication alone has earned my respect for them. The ceo tweets alone give me more insight on what they are planning than whatever dev blog fatshark has posted in the past 2 years.
Its honestly such a breath of fresh air that someone actually talks about their game passionately and answers question’s good and bad.
Their patch notes clearly detail issues they are aware of so you don’t have to go looking trough bug reports for “acknowledgment” tag that might not mean anything.
The balance is bit rough i do agree on that front, but i really do trust them to fix that eventually. Then again at least the game for now seems to work unlike darktide where maelstrom lobbies are empty of enemies 
Also a interesting nob from the ceo about breaker balance: Reddit - Dive into anything
But if anything i really do hope fatshark takes some notes about their fellow swedish creators way of doing things. Darktide still has the potential to be really great, but it sadly seems to be facing the same fate as their previous game despite all their promises.
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I just cannot play Darktide again until Fatshark drops some new content for it and/or fixes its glaring problems. After playing 623 hours of Darktide I just cannot do it anymore. Besides some arbitrary Penances, I have done everything that there is to do in this game.
I am going back to Deep Rock Galactic and buying Helldivers 2 with my next paycheck, all that I can do from here is hope that this will send a message to Fatshark so that they actually put in the necessary effort to fulfil the infinite potential that Darktide has.
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I see a lot of balance arguments, and I can understand where they come from. But I haven’t forgotten the first few months of DT, there were also some balance issues. Let’s not forget that…
So while we can dump on HD2 for having bad balancing, I’m fairly convinced the devs will get to that eventually. They’re currently focussed on the server issues, and are very communicative about it, which makes me a lot more forgiving then with the current situation with DT.
Also, I think DT and HD2 are vastly different games, DT is far superior in quality and depth of mechanics. I can’t argue with that. But HD2? it just respects my time, I’m having just plain fun with it. It’s a fresh breath of how gaming is supposed to be, about having fun. Where DT punishes me for spending so much time into collecting recourses. I spent more then 500h into DT, and have yet to find certain blessings, the amount of disappointments in crafting, to only discover the actual chances are disgustingly low. I can’t do that anymore.
This is mostly my personal opinion, and do take it with a grain of salt. But DT was made to rake in money, it shows in the sneaky monetization tactics, and let alone those cosmetic prices… why? HD2? it was made to be fun. and it shows. Sure there is monetization, but if I spend a week in level 3-4 difficulty, I can grind out the super credits, enough to buy 2 full suits of super store suits. So yeah, sure, HD2 can’t come close to the depths and mechanics of DT, and I don’t think anyone will disagree with that. But I’m afraid that for a vast majority, depths and mechanics does not automatically guarantees fun.
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To be perfectly fair here, I… don’t. I mean, both are co-op games. Balance doesn’t need to be 100% on point, as long as it’s not completely broken to the point where only one thing works, and if you don’t have that one thing then you’re boned.
Again, it’s a co-op game at the end of the day, not competitive PvP multiplayer. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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I can understand where it comes from, but I don’t agree with it. It never has stopped me from playing. I’ve mostly seen it as minor inconveniences.
for example, with HD2, there’s clearly a meta going on with a certain gun on level 6+, but it hasn’t stopped me from playing.
Thank the emperor it isn’t. If there were pvp arena’s that place would be so vile and toxic, even papa nurgle would shy away from it.
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That’s because it’s clearly Khorne’s domain.
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I’ve avoided early released HD2.
Sounds like a slightly overhyped game on a formula that has been done several times already. I’ll wait until it’s had a few months worth of live balance work before maybe dipping a toe in.
I think people are overly critical of DarkTide. Its core gameplay has kept me going for 900+ hours. Yes, crafting constraints has meant I’ve not really tried many of the rifle variants, but I found enough progression with favourites to keep me going in those early weeks/months.
Admittedly you’d think after this amount of time in game I should have access to top tier everything - I don’t, which is on FatShark - but other than the odd blessings combo that people rave about I’ve not felt like I’ve missed out. And they end up getting nuked anyway so 
I do see why casuals move on mind you. That early period was chaotic, and it was just bad performance and crashes, rather than crafting, that killed off the early player base. I think now it’s just too much of a grind for late players to bother with. I mean, honestly, how much time do you think IS right to max out your gear? I’d say around 200-300 hours? That’s a lot of time for a game. At almost a thousand I’m still not even remotely close.
I’m not even convinced that breaking the locks would get players flooding back. I think the main issues are around getting crappy 330 weapons at a mission end, rather than 360+. It’s Brunt, and his ridiculous profane lottery. Melk selling tripe. It just takes too long to get a good weapon, never mind a great one.
Also: can’t tell if the OP’s comment is really just about Psykers. Feels like it a bit; went off on a tangent at one point.
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It wont because the issue isn’t the locks it’s that the loop isn’t fun. Removing the locks doesnt fix that it just removes part of Darktide’s game loop, which is ultimately just giving us less ‘game’ to play. That’s not something people are going to get hyped about enough to return.
If Fatshark wants a hype moment to bring people back then they need to completely overhaul the crafting and introduce weapon customisation. That could potentially be as hype as the skill tree update was and bring people back.
Of course they wouldnt need to “bring people back” if the player retention wasn’t absolute dog water as they would never have left in the first place.
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90% Of you need to stop looking for Darktide in Helldivers 2. Compare the devs instead.
You’re also drawing too many conclusions about game depth and build diversity.
More content is coming in HD2. While Darktide has had over a year to diversify loadouts build crafting and what do they have to show for it?
Also HD2 is getting mechs. You can basically become a Dreadnought. Can you do that in Darktide? Checkmate.
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This is still a swedish developer using the same game engine as Darktide fyi, all of these cocky proclamations that helldivers will be a promised land utopia of constant game updates may not quite pan out.