This isn’t intended to necessarily be a diatribe. But with the itemization update looming, and it confirmed to not include weapon customization, I feel that there needs to be a hard look at how weapons in Darktide work, both in terms of balance and identity.
And, in my opinion, Darktide does not do this well.
Let me lay this out as best I can.
HOW IT WORKS:
Darktide currently utilizes weapon ‘families’, where, with some exceptions, similar-enough weapons are grouped together with a shared blessing pool and skin selection. This family, usually 2-3 weapons, is defined by a shared behavior among its members, and the only meaningful difference between individual weapons within that family tends to be either fire rate/damage adjustments (ranged weapons) or combo types (melee weapons). All braced autoguns share the same ADS. All infantry lasguns have the same scope. All Helbores have a bayonet, and all catachan swords have the parry mechanic. You get the gist.
There are some exceptions to this - weapons often are singletons, and psyker’s staves are all each their own ‘family’, but overall most weapons in the game comfortably fit on a continuum with the other weapons in their ‘family’.
This is where the problem lies.
I’m going to deal with this from two angles. The first is the game-balance angle. The second is the ‘identity’ angle.
GAME BALANCE
We can actually see the issues of how Darktide approaches itemization pretty directly.
Weapon families, assuming they’re not collectively ineffective at the highest realms of play (see: pre-buff recon lasguns, infantry lasguns currently), often see a monofocus on the ‘best’ of a given gun at the ‘job’ of that family.
Infantry lasguns are meant to be full-auto leadspitters - so everyone uses the Columbus MkV, because it has the most shots and therefore triggers the most ‘on repeated hit’ things to make it more powerful. The slower, more powerful versions don’t see as much use.
Infantry lasguns are supposed to be precise weapons - so back when they were able to one-shot-headshot everything not an ogryn consistently, the one everyone used most was the Kantrael Mk XII, because it hit the hardest and most consistently on ADS.
Revolvers? Meant to be precision headshot weapons, so the Zarona is constantly used and its hipfire variant in the same family gets dumpstered.
Chainaxes and Eviscerators? They both got more effective variants dropped in the same update and now nobody uses the old ones.
This problem is consistent across weapon families. The game balance philosophy weapon families are built around just means that there’s only one actually effective entry and two long-distant runner-ups, because only one of any given weapon will best fulfill its niche.
And that leads into the other topic…
WEAPON IDENTITY:
Let’s be honest. ‘Tech’ aside, memorizing movements aside, what is the difference between family members? Is each heavy sword, each catachan blade, each braced autogun, really distinct enough to be considered its own weapon?
No.
Darktide’s weapons lack identity, with the weapon families only serving to bloat a pool of weapons that started life as a RNG fest. There’s not enough to differentiate different marks, and this comes down even to the skins - because each skin applies to a family, and usually overwrites it to a specific ‘mark’ in terms of the ‘mesh’ of the weapon.
CONCLUSION:
In my opinion, Darktide’s weapons need to be dumpstered and started over from scratch. The coming itemization update could potentially fix the RNG and grind problems, but they won’t fix the identity and balance ones. These issues are going to be pervasive and constant, sapping dev time and making it impossible to consistently balance weapons.
The solution?
Simple.
Make weapon customization a thing.
Consolidate the weapon families down to single, modifiable guns. You don’t have Willywonka Version 2324232 or Sillyface ABCD ‘marks’. You have an infantry lasgun, or a braced autogun, or a heavy sword, or a knife, etc etc etc. You then choose what bits and pieces, what ammo, and what accessories go onto that weapon, which customizes how it shoots, what movesets it uses, and all the things currently handled by weapon ‘marks’.
Yeah, yeah, the meme, we all know the one.
But Hedge hasn’t worked here for at least a year, last I checked.
And y’all have this issue to fix.
