I’ve seen multiple people say this, and while you’re definitely not wrong, I feel they’ve mainly been focused on the gameplay/balance side of things rather than progression. The only things that might have been added because of a forum ideas was Brunt’s armory and guaranteed Emp’s Gifts, and while certainly a good addition does not come close to fully addressing issues with progression (the system we have rn is bad, it’s hard to remember/imagine how much worse it was before Brunt’s when you would wait for shop resets to get weapon rolls), and even with these additions they made it worse in other ways, by gimping shop blessings and Emp’s Gifts.
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As long as the latest dev blog on the crafting is what it is, there is no hope.
For me that was the one thing that killed all the real hope. And that’s just for one of the sad aspects of the game.
(I mean… Look at the Tower of treachery. One level for the VT2 that contains more narrative and more gameplay variety than the entire DT. Which has ‘missions’.)
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Bugs, pathing issues and softlocks aside (Tower of Treachery). It’s not hard to see that there is enough inspiration and talent to create incredible content at FS. It’s just a shame that it only seem to work when the pressure is off entirely. If I don’t misrember, both the Drachenfel maps and Chaos Wastes were unannounced (free) additions to the game and they redeemed sooo much of the good will that was lost during the first years of VT2’s development cycle.
I guess the main question (aside for “progression”/design intent) is whether or not they have the stamina and will to go through the same process with DT, and whether or not it will be worth it with the cost of server upkeep.
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I see people in the steam forums come in and make posts asking whether the game has gotten better since launch, and they’re hoping for a resounding "yes!', but what they get are a mix of “it’s not completely fixed but it’s a lot better” and “stay away from this mess”. I think most of them will do what you said and either check back much later, or just forget it ever happened and move on.
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I don’t think they are though. They haven’t been able to break the 10k current player seal since the third week of january. They’ve been floating around just 6-8k players recently. I really, really, reallyyyy doubt that’s their ideal player count.
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I agree about that…
But I don’t think the locks are the problem.
In my opinion, problem is about:
- not enough content (map/missions)
- time consuming to get a weapon you want (this is a different statement of the problem of the locks)
It’s a mix of a lot of things, not just progression. That said, progression is one of the things.
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I can say there’s a lot of people who would play a lot with the locks being removed or removable.
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I can only speak for myself, but if locks were removed and modifiers could be upgraded, i would change my steam rating to positive. I am sure that others would, too.
Also, (in case an obese fish is watching) i would be willing to buy skins. I think some of them look pretty cool, but i will not buy any until the game is in a state that i (and hopefully the majority of potential Darktide enjoyers) like.
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I would rally my friends and also change my steam review with that one change (locks).
“Use this one simple trick to have your game make money! Gamblers hate it!”
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That is the only thing keeping me from changing my review from negative to positive too.
Because apart from that I really do enjoy and have fun with the game, it’s just that the disastrous crafting and loot progression is draining the fun from completing missions at this point, because I’m always using the same weapon and build.
I’m not even interested in more content (maps, classes, etc…) until this is changed but after that…
To have people buy skins/maps/classes you need to make sure they stick around and have enough fun to be tempted.
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It looks like they thought of something even worse by themselves. Now, when you buy something, you have a random chance of not receiving the goods.
See: KNOWN ISSUE: Issues With Items Purchased From Sire Melk’s
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sadly because of these locks when it comes to Curios, i usually log6 onto DT some time around #:58 check the shop wait 5minutes wail doing something else in the background then check the shop again.
notice it doesnt have what i want and i log out, and maybe log back in for 5minutes in another 2-4 hours.
its hard to find what your looking for, and id rather like to play the game rather than hunt in an RNG shop and wait. hoping what im looking for will appear, but get discouraged when it doesnt.
Don’t waste your time doing that. Use the app and avoid the login screens.
While I agree about the fact that there is “inspiration and talent to create incredible content at FS”, I would disagree with the rest. I have had quite a lot of good will towards FS from the start of both games and after having been pushed by my friends for a bit in VT2, I started liking it a lot more than during the first few dozens of hours - everything in it hooked me well and strong, just like each new addition kept on providing variety.
And then the DT came with so many issues where the crafting is just the worst aspect. I mean, the progress in the DT is those few cut scenes that are… well, just boring after the first time. And if that is FS’s idea of narrative, then the focus on crafting issues is just a diversion. Each mission, no matter how gorgeous, is bland in a way no VT2 mission is because of its generic nature. Hell, even Elite, the game that I want to dive into for years, but I didn’t commit, is in its newsletters providing more interesting story than what I experience in the DT. Someone suggested framing missions into a general effort, which is the bare minimum to make them less bland as a whole, but it would take a lot more details like the ones in most of the VT2 campaigns to make them individually feel special.
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After playing the new VT2 map alongside some more while I was there with friends, it’s wild to me just…how much of a downgrade the map design, and intertwining of story is with Darktide.
Darktide looks gorgeous, but it’s all the same, and a lot of maps re-use segments. Vermintide has so much variety in both level design, but objectives, pacing, etc it’s wild. That game is just so much more fun to experience. So many levels just feel so fundamentally different from eachother (for better or for worse) that you could play 3 maps and have 3 very different experiences. It’s just so much more engaging and rewarding to me.
(I also feel like melee in Darktide is a pretty straight regression, but I appear to be somewhat a minority in that so I won’t say much 
)
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Sheer variety of maps and classes in V2 AT THE LAUNCH was crazy good compared to Darktide. Sure, the game was unstable, buggy performance hog. It was full QA Fatshark experience.
I don’t know how long it took them to make Darktide compared to V2, but I just want to ask their dev team: “What the f…happened?”
Before launch I’m pretty sure they said the reason they did this is so that they could use this tilesets to frequently and easily change/add missions for variety, either quarterly or biannually. Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to have come true yet, and makes me wonder if that is the case or if it was creative damage control.
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Don’t quote me on it but I do recall hearing how maps would have RNG elements and that different characters would let you unlock different passageways and sht. Like an Ogryn would be able to break down a wall that would reveal a branching pathway.
That seems to have not happened at all - except for the 3 bridges in the scanning mission. The re-used tileset means that we got less variety at launch, and so far have had…no new content. Overall another net downgrade from VT2
I imagine something must have gone horribly wrong. Like comparing how different a lot of the “final” content released vs what they said during interviews or dev blogs, it seems a lot of the systems in the game was made last minute. Because a ton of stuff didn’t get implemented or ripped out and we got what feels like just downgrade after downgrade from VT2.
I get that VT2 was a buggy mess at launch too, but it was nothing compared to this. VT2 felt like a complete game that was released in a bad state but things were fixable. This…this just feels like we have to fight the dev team to understand basic fundamentals of game design. There’s so little player agency in this game it’s insane.
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