Community Update #5: Week 2

[heretic_soup]

That’s “live-service” for ya

[DanonQM]

@Aqshy

Crafting System

In our next content update, we will add the “Refine Item” functionality to our crafting system. This functionality will allow you to replace one Perk on a Curio or a Weapon. The same Perk slot can be replaced multiple times, but will block replacing other perks on the same item. This is the next step in building out our crafting system.

Repulsive.

[vsTerminus]

@Aqshy

Our commitment remains the same - for all players to enjoy our game. Our hope is that many of you can see the progress towards this commitment in the past few weeks, having released 8 hotfixes and updates since the pre-order beta launch - 4 of which were released since full launch last week. This isn’t to say we have addressed everything. In fact, we are not fully satisfied and still have work to do.

Good, but like at launch I couldn’t even play the game without crashing and/or disconnecting multiple times per match. Either way I’m glad to see you fixed a lot of that already.

@Aqshy

Commodore’s Vestures (In-Game Store)

We heard your feedback on the store loud and clear, and we are making adjustments to how Aquilas are packaged. We are working on adding an 2,400 Aquilas pack to the store, which will arrive next week. We will also add a 100 Aquilas pack within the next few weeks, allowing players to buy smaller fractions of Aquilas. In addition, we are also going to change other functionalities of the store over time.

This is good, but I don’t buy “we forgot” nor “it’s immeasurably complex” which were given as reasons previously. The store was very clearly designed with the obfuscated cost and FOMO timers from the beginning.

Speaking of timers, they were removed today and this post doesn’t mention why. I’m glad the timers are gone, but what’s the plan? Did you not have any other cosmetics ready? Or are you moving to rotation-free shop? Please say you’re moving to a rotation-free shop.

@Aqshy

Crafting System

In our next content update, we will add the “Refine Item” functionality to our crafting system. This functionality will allow you to replace one Perk on a Curio or a Weapon. The same Perk slot can be replaced multiple times, but will block replacing other perks on the same item. This is the next step in building out our crafting system.

Understand that the problem with the crafting system is the lack of agency. There are too many layers of RNG and almost no ability to reduce that. You need to find

• The right item
• With the right base power
• With high enough rolls
• With high rolls on the correct stats (for weapons)
• With the right Perk(s) and/or Blessing(s)

Currently if any of those things are met, it’s not worth investing your extremely scarce crafting resources into.

And when you do upgrade it, whatever perk or blessing it adds also has to be both the right kind and a high number.

The crafting update can save an item that has one (and only one) bad perk. I assume we’ll get an equivalent system for blessings. That’s nice, but there are still so many layers of RNG to deal with here.

My hope is that you keep this in mind for the remaining crafting elements; We actually need agency, not just more RNG.

@Aqshy

Emotes

Good. As long as they don’t become a cash shop darling or are otherwise asinine to acquire.

@Aqshy

Progression Siloing and Shared Ordo Dockets

Since launch, we’ve seen feedback from many players requesting shared progression across characters to ensure a smoother progression loop. Our designers are taking this feedback seriously

Are they???

@Aqshy

and are discussing how to best implement a solution that meets our players’ desires and gameplay goals while also striking a balance with the game’s design intent.

Please elaborate. What is the original intent? Because from my perspective it feels like the intent is to artificially extend play time by requiring players to grind weapons and resources each class separately.

I don’t mind leveling each one up separately, but I don’t want to grind ordos, weapons, plasteel, diamantine, requisitorium tokens, and weekly challenge progress individually per character. Those should all be shared so I can play whichever class I am enjoying right now.

This is discouraging me from playing other classes, not the other way around.

@Aqshy

Penances

We’ve been working closely with our community support team on how you all feel about penances in the game, and some of the pain points surrounding them. There’s been a lot of feedback to pore through, but we’ve found there’s a disconnect between how we phrase the requirements of some penances and the criteria to achieve them, making them more frustrating for players than we intended. Based on the feedback received from the support team, we’re currently working through solutions to make penances smoother and more enjoyable for players.

If this is what you think people are upset about then your team is not actually listening.

Several of the penances encourage or require you to play in a manner that is counterproductive and harmful to teamwork and toxic to player interactions.

Requiring players to complete a level without taking melee damage or without firing a weapon requires the rest of the team to carry them. Requiring the psyker to suicide into a horde of elites, or the ogryn to bull rush into a horde of ogryns can tank an entire run.

It does not feel good to attempt these penances, and it does not feel good to be on a team with someone who is attempting them either. Maybe you intended for players to only attempt these in a full party with friends who are on the same page, but that is not how it is working out in practice.

Is this also feedback that the team has heard and understands? Do they have a plan to rework penances to encourage teamwork instead of doing the opposite?

@Aqshy

This is far from everything

Well, what I would love if I’m being honest is a complete list of feedback that the team has heard; Just for FatShark to acknowledge that “we understand players aren’t happy with XYZ, and here’s why we originally did it this way. We’ll discuss it and have a statement for each thing on the list at some point in the future.” because right now it’s not actually clear what feedback you’ve actually recorded and are discussing.

Stuff like:

• Some of the weekly challenges are just kind of mean, like completing # of secondary objectives on a specific map when we have no control over the mission board and which missions are available
• Some of the weekly challenges are extremely time consuming, like “complete 25 missions”. That’s roughly 12 hours, and it’s specifically on this character because weeklies aren’t shared.
• Many of the weeklies encourage high level players to speedrun low level missions. This ruins the experience for actual new players because their parties are just high level people trying to get 25 missions done in as little time as possible with as little risk as possible.
• You don’t get the weekly bonus unless you complete all of them, which cuts your progression here in half and can be caused by getting one of the goals I mentioned above.
• The “riveting gameplay” which is waiting for the store to refresh feels bad and encourages players to not play the game but log in every other hours for two store checks and then log out again.
• Not enough control over the mission board; Completely at the mercy of what’s available, resulting in players idling around waiting for the “right” mission to show up so they can do their weeklies or whatever.
• Mobs spawning directly behind players
• Elites spawning too close to players so that they can’t react, like bursters coming out of the monster closet door three feet away from you.
• The cash shop not letting you preview items on your own character, so like, I don’t know if a piece of headgear is going to delete my hair until I pay real money for it and that sucks
• Changing operatives requires a full re-load of the hub and takes absolutely forever. This is unnecessary and feels awful.
• I mentioned it before but the real reason people are upset with penances; They encourage selfish gameplay and often require you to sabotage runs and force teammates to carry you through the mission or stand around and not play the game while you do something specific.
• Every kit has some balance issues like the Psyker’s brain burst largely being ignored, or the Zealot’s Thunderhammer being so bad at dealing with hordes that its elite-stopping power doesn’t make up for it, and so on.

And so many others.

Notice that the vast majority of these complaints are for things outside of the actual gameplay. It’s all of the surrounding and supporting mechanics which are holding this game back. They are the reason for the poor reviews on Steam. They will be the reason the game bleeds players.

It’s like the game was intended to be a Free to Play MMO or something, because that’s what all of the shops and systems and even the hub remind me of, not a $40 co-op horde shooter.

Anyway, this update is a start but it doesn’t actually address most of the concerns I have with the game right now.

[Sneaki]

Translation: “We want you to put more hours into our game that has very little content.”

Based on Aqshy’s wording, they’re probably going to make it so materials collected on one character give a fraction of the materials on your other characters.

Shared materials is not a balance issue, it’s a time issue.

[Unskinner]

@nemy123

as an answer for the past week is basically “we’re listening and working on it”

To avoid false expectations: " they are listening and thinking about it" would be the right wording.

[Tzcheese]

@Aqshy

Since launch, we’ve seen feedback from many players requesting shared progression across characters to ensure a smoother progression loop. Our designers are taking this feedback seriously and are discussing how to best implement a solution that meets our players’ desires and gameplay goals while also striking a balance with the game’s design intent

This is great to hear. Can anyone on the team elaborate on what “design intent” means here? What system is the existing decision supporting?

[heretic_soup]

@vsTerminus

Please elaborate. What is the original intent? Because from my perspective it feels like the intent is to artificially extend play time by requiring players to grind weapons and resources each class separately.

@vsTerminus

, like completing # of secondary objectives on a specific map when we have no control over the mission board and which missions are available

@vsTerminus

The “riveting gameplay” which is waiting for the store to refresh feels bad and encourages players to not play the game but log in every other hours for two store checks and then log out again.

@vsTerminus

Not enough control over the mission board; Completely at the mercy of what’s available, resulting in players idling around waiting for the “right” mission to show up so they can do their weeklies or whatever.

Yep. Yep. Yep. T

There are several systems in place that either prevent player agency or actively fight with player agency

Why am I, the player, unable to select a mission to do especially when
a. some challenges require a specific location
b. I want to do a specific location
c. Vermintide 2 did so
?

Why am I, the player, subject to waiting on arbitrary shop timers for RNG rewards?

[Sensanaty]

It’s a dead horse at this point but seriously wtf are they thinking with these RNG weapons?

The worst part of all of it for me is that they already have the perfect system implemented in VT2, that is the winds of magic weave system. We’ve been begging since the day that DLC came out to just implement it into the base game, but apparently their genius designers think forcing you to wait for a real-time clock to tick down is a lot more fun than just being able to f****g pick what weapon traits you want and actually getting the chance to play the game

I’ve given up on DT. I’ll check back in a year or so, but as is the state of this game is absolutely hilariously laughable to me, especially when I’ve got VT2 that I still play religiously to compare it to.

[gordonz88]

This man/woman/individual has the right idea about crafting. If you need anything to show your higher ups, show them this person’s description of crafting.

It’s ridiculous to have to find a weapon with:
The exact base stats you want + one of the perks rolled exactly how you want in order to consider upgrading and changing blessings to end up with the item you want. You’ll probably tell us you can only change one blessing forever too.

If you do the math, the odds of seeing the WEAPON TYPE YOU ARE LOOKING FOR, WITH 380+ STAT SCORE, AND ONE PERFECTLY ROLLED PERK THAT YOU WANTED is probably 0.0000000001%

[freqlectic]

@TmanDW

I’m honestly very near to just dropping a negative review and being done with this game.

Do it. I did this (below) a few hours before the Community Update post and I don’t see any reason to change it.

Secret

---

[kersakofu]

That’s nice and all but what about you know, making other classes other than Veteran feel fun to play? I know there was some design philosophy to balance weapons over class, but Zealot is damage the class right now, Ogryn doesn’t feel like they have meaningful choices, and psyker is still in a terrible state since BB doesn’t scale in difficulty.

Please for the love of god, buff Zealot in a direction people actually want to play in. Take out some of the least used talents and make them two handed focus. If the only way to get CD reduction on our ability is crits, don’t limit this to bleed builds. And have someone for the love of god look at the thunder hammer. I have 80% damage 70% pen and I do 0 damage to carapace with a light attack. This needs to be fixed to do more damage without charging the hammer, even if you have to lower the damage of the boom. Also, the special attack needs some kind of AoE, or remove the animation lag. Putting animation lag on two handed weapons that aren’t satisfying to use makes people pick one handed weapons instead. Thanks.

[LittleGreenFriend]

I was even more disappointed after reading this devpost than before. It seems like fatshark is deliberately covering up many other bigger problems by making vague promises.

[alsozara]

Honestly happy to see a lot of the things in this announcement, and I think the people in this thread who are getting vitriolic because they were expecting everything they didn’t like to be magically fixed by this point are living in fantasy land. A lot of good stuff coming I’m looking forward to.

However, there are some really good criticisms in this thread I hope you listen to, especially regarding crafting. Particularly concerning to me about the perk reroll is increasing cost each time. If this also costs plasteel then crafting is dead to me, I literally give up on it. It can go in the pile of things I choose to entirely ignore for the sake of my mental health along with weeklies and penances.

On that note, can you please at least give us a band-aid fix for Plasteel ASAP. It’s absurd how much more diamante I have than plasteel at all times. In general acquiring enough materials to consecrate is painstaking and unrewarding when 90+% of the time consecrating ends up in a useless blessing and that weapon going in the bin. It’s not an exaggeration to say the majority of actually good weapons I have come from Emperor’s rewards.

Let that sink in. The completely random weapons I get from the end of missions are considerably more likely to give me what I want than the in game shop + crafting system. That shows a system with no real player agency currently, despite you stating that as a goal.

Please at least double plasteel rewards for pickups next update while longer term tweaks to the shop and crafting are considered. It’s very demotivating currently.

[Reagent]

I don’t like that you are giving private lobbies to be honest. I feel like this is going to split an already slightly toxic player base even more. It leads to some of us not being able to find others to play with publicly, while also creating a less inclusive atmosphere. The ability to kick other players is already there and it can be abused for some pretty horrible reasons as well. I’ve been kicked at the end of completing a match only to receive nothing but grief for my time just because a group decided they thought it would be funny. In my opinion keep things public and remove the kick function. Also, make crafting materials more plentiful… Thanks.

[Moogle]

they aren’t adding the ability to earn premium currency in-game lmao, stop with the cope. Surely you are smart enough to see why games generally don’t do that and if they do it takes a lot of gametime to buy anything of value. It’s premium MTX for a reason and you don’t need it, stop whining. Just ask for better gold bought cosmetics if you want to actually put across any sort of logic.

[heretic_soup]

No way are you arguing against the ability for players to create private lobbies. No way.

“FatShark, please remove even more player agency. And especially make it so that players that don’t want to play with me or others are forced to. Oh. And make sure they cannot kick people either.”

Private lobbies are a basic feature that should have been included at launch. Such basic things as private lobbies and a kick feature in a mission based small squad cooperative game should always be in

But I suppose it follows the trend of 'Vermintide 2 had it, therefore Darktide doesn’t ’

[Scarletwing]

At this point, they are just flat out greedy that wants everything free with no reason.

[Adeon]

I can’t shake off the feeling that management is trying to kill this game with grind, RNG, and bad monetization while players and loyal fans of the Tide series fighting tooth and nail for the game’s future.

[AsukasHeadphones]

Well this has been a disaster, but we can still fix it! Rejoice! For the best way of addressing a problem is to acknowledge it first. Fatshark, do you have a problem, are you willing to accept that Darktide has problems? This is the only way forward. Seriously, some humility is in order after screwing your faithful Vermintide fans over. Humble yourselves.

I can’t believe I got burned by a video game. It’s been a long time since that happened. Back in the days I only had the cover art to go off of as buying decision. Nowadays I’m spoiled with how much information is out there: reviews, user reviews, gameplay videos, performance reports, and so on; that it’s easy to get a good overview of what to expect from a game. I guess screw me for believing in Fatshark and buying Darktide blindly.

[Reagent]

I honestly don’t believe that private lobbies should be allowed. Sorry you don’t like that. Private lobbies will be the downfall of the game, that is if the absolute lack of crafting/progression already isn’t. Private lobbies will absolutely separate and isolate an already very small niche community that Warhammer is. We need the matchmaking system to be public and randomized. The kick feature has and will continue to be abused for reasons other than intended. Sad Really.