DARKTIDE makes me feel rejected. A summary of criticisms

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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EDIT: Aaaaaaand Refunded

I have over 700 hours in VT2, and a good chunk from VT1. Despite the issues with those games, I stuck with the ups and downs of the development churn for years because the core gameplay was so good.

But with Darktide I’m struggling with doing it all again. My hand was wavering over the refund button but my friends talked me back from the cliff. Many aspects of the game design feel worse to me than in VT2 (which I’ll describe below), and the core gameplay during missions is just barely good enough to justify putting up with all the BS surrounding the core gameplay. If the goal was to make players feel like rejects, mission accomplished.

As a preamble, I feel that essentially all of the years of community feedback and refinement on Vermintide 1 & 2 were forgotten when it came to Darktide. It feels like we’re starting over again from scratch and there is so much work to do. I enjoy the core gameplay to a modest degree, but nearly everything surrounding it (progression, loot, the hub, mission selection, “crafting” etc) is all just immensely frustrating and makes me not want to even bother playing.

Let me get specific in my critique:

PROGRESSION & LOOT

  • NO SHARED RESOURCES, MONEY, CRAFTING MATERIALS BETWEEN CHARACTERS. #1 ISSUE RIGHT HERE.
  • Lack of consistent mission rewards
  • Inconsistency of secondary mission objectives and paltry rewards if you even bother with them.
  • No daily quests (we only get weekly)
  • Horrendous grind for crafting materials to upgrade items
  • Basic shop has only a limited selection of goods on a timer to reset. Ugh. Why can’t we just craft basic items from scratch?
  • Crafting and item upgrading is way too RNG reliant. Ugh.
  • Penances are either trivial or ridiculously niche and toxic for quickplay environment.
  • Takes too long to level up

This is the biggest set of issues. Since there are no shared resources, starting to level up another character is painfully slow, forcing you to drop back to lower difficulty levels where the game is more “boring” to play. Crafting and upgrading items is the worst possible combination of grinding for resource inputs only to be rewarded with heavily RNG-based outputs. In combination, this feels many steps WORSE than VT2 in my opinion (what happened to adapting the weave-forge weapon system into darktide?!). Doesn’t feel rewarding to play at all given the “grind to meaningful reward” ratio. And having to do it all over for subsequent characters? Ugh. Even most MMOs and ARPGs have shared stashes between characters on an account! This is even more brutal.

THE HUB

  • Forced 3rd person perspective (totally immersion breaking for me)
  • Forced to load a separate area for weapon training. And even then need to level up to unlock the full range of training dummies.
  • Can’t slide, jump, crouch in the hub - hence no jump puzzles
  • No private hub or way to way load into a hub with your friends straightaway.
  • No hot keys for terminals/stations
  • No emotes

The hub is a lifeless, functionally-void place. It looks cool but the immersion is ruined by the MMO-like forced 3rd person view (IMHO). If the argument is “seeing other players’ cosmetics” you’ll actually see them better and more up close in first person view. So I don’t get the argument here. Compared to the VT2 keep, which is great fun to run around in and practice weapons in while waiting to group up etc, the hub is just dull. There aren’t emotes or anything to do to prompt interactivity with other players. You have to load a separate level just to practice weapons. It’s just poorly thought out and a big step back IMHO.

MISSION SELECTION

  • Inability to pick what mission to play
  • No way to select preferred/desired mutators for missions
  • Not enough variety in secondary objectives
  • Can’t make private games or configure bots (maybe coming in December?)
  • Lack of mission diversity

VT2 threw up a lot of ideas for how to mix up missions. Deeds, weekly challenges, mutators (ala Winds of Magic that occasionally made it into weekly events), the mutators from Chaos Wastes, twitch mode, etc. The hope was that all of these nice ideas would’ve been unified into a common configurable mission selection system. What we have in DARKTIDE hints at this a little, but falls woefully short. The whole mission selection process of randomly generated missions just feels lazy. God help you if you’re trying to do anything mission specific, as you’re at the mercy of RNG (again). Just feels like a major missed opportunity.

I know there are other “zones” to be revealed setting wise. But we have a good chunk of the missions already on hand and they do all feel very similar and blend together. The mission start areas are visually impressive, but most of the rest of the mission areas feel like a similar mix of hallways and similar-sized atriums. There are very few distinctive moments visually mid-way through the mission. Which is too bad considering how unique and varied most of the VT2 missions are.

WEAPON PROPERTIES & TRANSPARENCY OF ITEM MECHANICS

  • The use of stat bars instead of numbers, with bars only being comparable between two of the same weapons (wtf?). Why no numbers?
  • Weapon rating being boosted by properties /blessings meaning that higher rated weapons might be “worse” than a similar rated base (gray) weapon. Queue WTF levels of confusion.
  • Icons, terms, and effects of weapons not described in-game at all.

The ‘tide series has always suffered from a lack of transparency in weapon mechanics, but meme-value aside this takes it to a whole new level. It’s ridiculous. And the more people seem to learn about the system, the deeper and more confounding the rabbit hole seems to get. Who designed and approved of this system and why? It’s just baffling and mystifying and a total turn-off for new players just trying to make sense of it all. Players shouldn’t have to look up Reddit posts from people mining game data just to have a basic understanding of how the system works. It’s crazy, but here we are (again).

CLASS BALANCE AND BUILD DIVERSITY

  • LIMITED NUMBER OF CLASSES/CAREERS
  • Yo-yo’ing and poorly thought out balance adjustments.
  • Balance adjustments trending towards overly radical “nerfs” that remove the fun instead of making careful tweaks to bring things into alignment
  • Effectiveness of classes relative to each other is all over the place
  • Limited diversity of builds (based on feats) within classes

Something clearly went wrong with the early concept of heavily customizable classes, and we instead got a repeat of VT2 careers. This isn’t the worst thing per se, but only having 4 careers at launch feels like a step back. I’m anticipating having to wait two years to get two more psyker classes (which I’m assuming I’ll have to level up individually from scratch each time and all pay for). The balance is also all over the place. Veteran remains highly powerful across the board while the poor psyker just has a limited and broken feeling kit on higher difficulties (for example). Having to wait (and pay!?) for new careers when the existing ones have so much more work to be done doesn’t instill me with much confidence (or desire to pull out my wallet).

IN MISSION - COMBAT

  • Dodging feels janky and inconsistent and overly limited.
  • Weapon switching feels sluggish and animations sometimes cause weapon swaps to not register. Not nearly as smooth or consistent feeling as VT2.
  • Taking CHIP DAMAGE THROUGH TOUGHNESS is frustrating, defies the games own tutorial/logic, and just feels unrewarding and conflicts with certain builds (eg low health zealot).
  • Cover doesn’t work well - still regularly take damage when should be hiding behind things
  • Sprinting with stamina doesn’t let you effectively make space or outpace enemies (I’m not asking for permanent outrunning, just getting away from a horde enough to shoot at it).
  • Suppression mechanics don’t work consistently on enemies, and feels awful for the player.

All in all, combat just doesn’t feel nearly as a crisp and precise as in VT2. It feels like this mushiness is deliberately used to make the game harder than it otherwise would be. Why not keep it crisp and make it harder in other ways (tougher enemies, more damaging hits, etc). The lack of polish in the combat system and constant tweaks/nerfs is frustrating and undercuts the core strength of the series - the crisp combat. Feels like there is no vision or clear direction here.

IN MISSION - SCORE BOARD

This gets its own item. The lack of a score board to provide any sort of relative performance feedback on how you did compared to your squad is aggrivating. The scoreboard is a fundamental part of the feedback loop between play performance and how you get better. Ignore the circle chasing element of it. The need for a scoreboard is about self improvement and giving you basic feedback on how your kit and skills shook out. Without it, the end of the mission leaves the team with nothing to discuss or reflect on. Its omission is galling. It sounds like it will be added, but who knows when or what it will look like. The lack of communication here is frustrating.

IN MISSION - CONTROLS AND UI

  • UI is not numeric (eg icons for ally ammo instead of a simple counter like XX/YY)
  • No option to double tap to dodge (a VT staple)
  • No support to bind multiple keys to the same action
  • Can’t chat during mission loading screens

This is just some basic QoL stuff that VT2 has (except the last point) that would be great to have and is frustrating that it’s missing.

PERFORMANCE

  • Still seems to be a lot of performance issues across the board for people.
  • Inability to turn down texture and model detail for lower end systems forces uses of DLSS/FSR to get a playable frame rate, and the result is just a mushy look.

One of my family members computers still has shader caching issues and simply can’t get past the initial splash screens. Was reported in the closed beta and is still a problem. Others have this issue to. There’ a plenty of concern here across the board and no consistent fixes.

NO MODDING

The switch to dedicated servers is nice on one hand, but it is also a reason why modding probably won’t ever happen. FWIW modding saved me and my groups ability to maintain interest in VT2 because the mods fixed all the broken/missing QoL functionally - much of which still hasn’t been patched into the base game. That we’re stuck with what we have in DARKTIDE, with no potential for modding to help us get by, is a grim reality IMHO.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

I want to like DARKTIDE. If I shut off my critical thinking mindset, I can enjoy myself well enough during a mission. But dropping back into the hub and confronting of all the BS, grindy, RNG-heavy progression mechanics just slaps me back to reality and makes me wonder why I’m even bothering.

The extensive list above is my “wishlist” of sorts for what I’d like to see addressed. Ultimately, Fatshark may or may not address any of the above issues I’ve pointed out, many of which the community has been very vocal about (and many of which were finally fixed in VT2). Feels like little was learned from VT2. One thing can be counted on: whatever Fatshark does, it will happen slowly, with limited communication, and inevitably in a “two steps forward, one step back” manner that typifies their development history. It’s just frustrating to watch the game struggle to reach its potential (again).

At this point, I’m telling myself the next two years is Darktide’s unofficial “early access” period, as I like the core gameplay enough to stick with things. And I doubt throwing up my hands and refunding would make any difference at this point anyway. I do wish that it WAS an “early access” launch and that the devs would then at least feel more comfortable engaging and talking with the community openly about what improvements are needed and what the roadmap is. But transparency and communication isn’t Fatshark’s MO.

So here we are at release and there is a long, dark, grim way to go.

P.S. Where is the “For the Emperor Button” ???

EDIT: Aaaaaaand Refunded

38 Likes
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Just refund it dude. A lot of features aren’t even in the beta so you are just wasting your time grinding.

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Lol. There’s no way you read that that fast :wink:

Anyway - whether now or 6+ months from now I’ll pick up the game - so not worried about the refund, other than as a symbolic gesture. But I doubt FS cares about symbolic gestures.

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Fantastic write up. Captures many of the feelings I’m having. I was really looking forward to a successor to Vermintide in terms of learned lessons and improving on already fantastic gameplay loop, but what we got … is not that. So many steps backwards. Too many of the same issues that got fixed later are back again.

I find myself thinking “this will probably be pretty solid in 2 years”. Sigh.

The expensive character and gear grind is why I can’t recommend it to friends who want to play casually. Especially the ones who like to rotate between characters rather than focus on a single one. Vermintide was already on the edge, but at least there was shared jewelry and hero level across a class.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to write up your thoughts. I hope they get read by FS.

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I agree with everything that you’ve talked about other then the scoreboard. It’s really not needed to see where improvements in a person’s play can be, it’s very apparent if they’re critical of their own play. The amount of variables that are in a 'Tide game means that a scoreboard is worthless as a gameplay improvement tool.

But you’re spot on with the rest of it. The biggest issue is that Fatshark flat out ignored the feedback that they got from both VT1 and 2. Many of the issues that we see in DT are things that were either pointed out or solved in those games.

I think the final piece we’re missing is the monetization. We know that they want to do seasonal storytelling, so we’re going to be drip fed content. Combine that with whatever the monetization looks like and I think we’ll have the answer to most of the design decisions that seem just like a step back.

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Agree with everything here except the “refunding won’t make a difference”. I know the people who play this preorder who also played Vermintide and are frustrated with all of these issues is probably a small subset of the people who will eventually buy and play this game, but if the game is this much of a barely-tolerable slog for a year or two after release then there’s no reason to not just refund and wait for a sale once Fatshark has put their thinking hats on and actually made a product worth purchasing. And if it helps result in a deserved flop for this clunky-feeling, feature-starved, buggy downgrade of a game, then all the better.

I pray every night to the Emprah that the devs read these posts and don’t just go “aha those silly little players, now back to making a terrible crafting system ;3”

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For mission select, don’t forget too that they’re only giving us a small pool of missions at one time.

So even if we get up to like, 50 missions, with this current system, every play session you’re only playing like…4ish missions. Over and over. It’s incredibly un-fun and is severely sucking my enjoyment out of the game.

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Exactly. Yes refunding does make a difference. Everyone says Fatshark is a small dev… so why would refunds not affect them? I think the whole idea of refunding being an empty gesture and FS wouldn’t care is absurd lol

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Refunding is the only viable tool we have tbh. Like many others stated before in other threads: unless there’s some form of acknowledgement regarding all these problems before release, me and my friends are set to refund on the 29th.

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With the amount of effort you put into your post I would say you should NOT refund. It appears this may not be the game for you on release but it might get there later on. Fatshark deserves your support so instead of refunding, just shelf the game for a bit. Keep your eye on it and when you see an update that really looks good jump back in.

We will all be here killing Heretics in the name of the Emperor of Mankind waiting for you.

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At this point I’m not going to refund it, and I’m going to keep playing it. I have a group of friends and we all have similar gripes but have a fun time once we get into the missions and play together. I just wish all the other stuff was in a better spot, per my initial post. We’ll see…

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In 3 days I think a lot of people are going to either take a step back or dive in. It really depends on how Fatshark delivers the goods. People have very legit complaints and feedback on mechanics and general game play that some of the patches have addressed for the better but also for the worse. A lot of us are VT2 vets so the expectations are set high even for day one.

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I’ve more than 1000h of gameplay in VM2 and I completely agree with you in everything, specially the scoreboard. Man what a crappy feeling having no scoreboard at the end. But they said they are working on it for launch or right after. Something that is so basic being implemented pos-launch. Go figure. Thank you for taking the time to make this post, as I did not want to bother with it.

“Feels like little was learned from VT2.”

Think this sums it up pretty well. Its like a completely different team that is just using Fatshark’s name to try to make a similar game to VM2. It’s crazy!

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Ironically I found level progression in this game to be much faster than Vermintide 1 and Vermintide 2. Now those two were a slog compared to this.
Here, a singular mission played and won is an immediately level up for the first 15 levels, given you play Difficulty 2.
Afterwards up to level 25 or so two missions played make another level up.
The only time where it took a little bit longer was the last few levels. Seems fine to me.

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How is stuff like elites killed and damage taken useless? Scoreboard was great. Im glad its coming back, leaving it out makes 0 sense. Nothing quite like having 5 digits of damage taken as a zealot lmao

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He can just buy the game again later. Fatshark doesnt deserve his money if he isnt playing the game lol.

Why pay for a product you wont use?

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Fantastic and very comprehensive feedback from OP. I can’t disagree with anything you said, except I am enjoying the game a lot in spite of all its problems.

I also don’t put VT2 on a pedestal personally; I quit the game for two years when Winds of Magic came out as did most of the people I rolled with back then, we were was so frustrated with changes, slow development and then greedy monetization. I’ve been thoroughly enjoying it again recently and it’s still one of my favourite games, but it’s very far from perfect and never reached its full potential for me.

On the subject of map design, obviously there are parts being re-used as you take different routes through the Hive city but developers re-use assets all of the time (they did in VT2) and in the context of 40k I think they’ve done a pretty good job here. I actually think a lot of the maps in VT2 were a step back from VT1 in terms of atmosphere and pacing and I can’t say there are any maps I’ve played in Darktide I actively disliked. They totally nailed the brutalism of 40k and I’m very much here for it.

The one thing that would improve the game significantly for me right now is tweaking the movement values back towards how they felt in the closed beta test. Melee combat did actually feel pretty crispy in that test but FS have since nerfed dodge, sprint-speed and movement speed into a place where it feels sluggish, inconsistent and unresponsive to play whilst actively punishing skillful movement or creative positioning on heresy+.

I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt right now but I’m not sure how long that will last.

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The amount of elites that spawn in a mission is extremely varied, and it only counted the last hit on them. There was no way to consistently see if a weapon or playstyle actually improved or if it was just more spawns that conveniently spawned within your sight.

The only stat out of the VT2 scoreboard that was even remotely useful was damage taken, and even that was pretty useless to see if you improved because again, each mission had too many variables in them to compare them to one another. Even that information is easily gleaned by how many times you went down and how many times you needed to use a medistation. We really don’t need a scoreboard for those metrics.

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I played again last night, and was discouraged by all the above issues from my OP.

One game had a poor sod that stayed behind the team to try and get the penance for pushing mobs off the edge. It was just sort of sad. That player was frustrated that the rest of us had moved ahead and ignored is plea to help with the penance. And the rest of us were frustrated that they were wasting our time and lagging behind.

Meanwhile I was aggressively searching for scripts no one else cared about to complete a weekly assignment that now I’ll never have enough playtime this week to complete.

I finished some missions and got no rewards other than a bit of XP and gold, which I promptly wasted trying to re-roll weekly assignments to get something more reasonable (I didn’t - I got a mission specific quest for a mission that’s not in the queue).

I looked in the crafting shop and decided the costs were so steep and resources so scarce there’s no point in wasting material crafting my middling level items. I guess I’ll just keep saving it until I get a high rated gray item I can upgrade eventually.

I contemplated starting a new character and decided that without shared resources and inventory items it just wasn’t worth it.

I closed the game and requested a refund.

I’ll post here when the refund officially goes through. But for now I don’t have the time, willpower, or enthusiasm to play with all of these issues undercutting my enjoyment.

The most empowering moment I’ve had relative to this game is clicking the refund button. I feel liberated.

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In my opinion this would lead to general heartache. It’s best to refund and move on to other games. I stuck with Vermintide 2 for so many years because I legitimately enjoyed the gameplay. Sure, it had problems and issues, but I managed to ignore that stuff and had fun with the game’s melee systems. Vermintide is a game I can log in, play a few matches, have fun. Then exit out.

I can’t say the same with Darktide. I don’t really like Darktide’s core gameplay experience nor do I like it’s half baked melee/ranged implementation, and that is on top of the awful performance, loot, class progression, and so on; in which one has to deal with. It feels like two different groups are at odds with how Darktide should be. One group wants shooty shoot. Another group wants the fantastic melee systems from Vermintide. Both groups somehow settled on a clunky awkward hybrid system that is neither fun nor engaging to play.