Darktide like many Fatshark games has a variety of problems that seem, at surface level, easy enough to fix. I have no experience coding or developing games, but hopefully this feedback is useful and reaches the Fatshark team. I have 1,200 hours of left 4 dead 2; 4,500 in Vermintide 2, and a love for ARPGs, which is what the tide games are mixed with fps/l4d horde games. As a quick preface this game is much like verm games, an awesome base and core gameplay, but held back by lack of choice specifically on variety of difficulty and build.
I’ll start with a short one which is events, for the first 50ish hours I played, every event was the same copy/paste of 1 or 2 trash waves with some ranged trash, then a wave of elite gunners and repeat. Last time I played there was an event with no elite gunners and only melee elites, which is what I want (variety with hopefully more higher tier melee elites mixed like crusher and monster) but I’m afraid if I go play silo cluster or any of the other initial release maps again, I will see only gunner waves. There is a good chance Fatshark is aware and changing this as most of Vermintide events have unique waves.
Now the most obvious flaw, and should be amongst the easiest fixes; the map selection. Put shortly: if there is going to be no mods to edit our difficulty, make it built in the game. If in the spirit of 40k you want to be a facsist regime and limit the choices of players, at most it should be the map selection and 1 modifier, with the option to select others.
Variety is the spice of life, in V2 the only way to play Cataclysm deed modifiers is to use a “glitch” which was at one point patched then put back in, weaves were a fun twist but unable to be integrated into the main game (unless through modded realm or twitch mode), and Chaos Wastes could have been an amazing mode (and is on modded realm), and had some great ideas but I won’t give my full opinion of that here. Twitch mode adds some nice variety and chat interaction, but would be only a small step in the right direction Darktide needs. (perhaps twitch mode would have incentivized interaction and kept all those viewers you got from streamer and product promotions around longer xdd) What should have happened in V2 is that Deeds, Weeklies and arguably even Weaves should be a simple toggle to add more spice and choice into the base game.
If you invest 1,000 hours into any tide/4deadge game, and want more challenging content, usually mods have your answer, and there is usually an immense selection, with recently a surge of balance and difficulty mods being released in V2, and Peregrinaje (Chaos Wastes), one of my favorite mods. All to say, if Fatshark doesn’t want modded realm in Darktide, they need to give players more choice on how to play.
After that long rant here are some ideas:
Sliders/Percentages up to triple for increased horde frequency/size, ranged enemy frequency, melee enemy frequency, special frequency, event difficulty like more elites or monster, maybe even enemy hp/stagger resist if no tier6 is planned, etc. ideally with an option to reduce one or two, like many games give the option to increase difficulty (juice your map) for slight loot gains. I understand that tripling everything is not a good way to increase difficulty, and would cause massive frame drops, but unless we get CBT DeathWish Dutch Processed Cocoa 2 million Scoville settings, it’s a start.
If that is too much to ask within a reasonable timeframe, just give checkboxes on modifiers, starting with simple things like: increased hordes, increased ambient, increased specials, Tzeenchian Twins would probably not be lore friendly™, Vanguard, Stagger resistance buff, Mark of Khorne (killing grants permanent hp, not killing drains hp, or even the chaos wastes curse of inspiring elites buffing nearby allies), or literally anything inspired from vermintide 2 or other ARPGs
From what little I’ve heard about this game, apparently less hordes gave increased ambient, and vice versa. I’m not aware how much these ideas would conflict with those modifiers, but hopefully I can hear back from fatshark.
From here onward are mostly my and other experienced Vermintide players’ opinions, and I’d be interested to hear other opinions about these topics.
Firstly about ranged enemies, as I’ve heard a few different opinions. It is a clear upgrade from beastmen archers to have ranged enemies have decent ai; seek cover, get suppressed, seem like they care to keep living, and switch to melee when engaged, these were fairly well executed and realistic. When asking random players for feedback, Royale w/ Cheese said, “ogryn kinda feels bad to play, but amazing to have one in the team”, I asked what the solution could be, he said, “make suppression consistent, basically just a way to force enemies into melee” so here are a few potential fixes, explosives should have a higher suppression range, while writing this sentence I turned over and watched Neildarat as ogryn shoot a grenade and around 10 gunners within 10 meters of the explosion gave 0 sh1ts and walked up with no cover to all shoot. My solution would be either make all explosives have a higher suppression range/explosions suppress through cover or more suppression intensity or duration whatever the metric is, or make it built into the melee classes themselves with either a talent or passive to make explosives suppress more or force ranged enemies into melee when nearby, or simply smacking a ranged enemy should make all ranged within close proximity pull melee out.
Another easy solution would be to give them a passive akin to slayer, after using ability gain 10 seconds of no ranged knockback.
Looking at ogryn weapon traits there are suppression traits for everything but the grenade launchers, I have no idea how this interaction will work with a group of ranged enemies, but maybe it’s a solution. But also I would find some cover if tyler1 was throwing grenades at me.
I believe a small problem in solving this issue will be the slot system (I could be wrong on this but without more research which is hard to do without modded realm or an explanation on what the range for shooters to engage melee is idk, if fatshark is reading this i’d love to know what the general flags are for engaging melee combat in ranged enemies), if you don’t know what that is, melee enemies try to fill fixed slots around your character, if no slot is open they will seek another player or just reposition. Search Jsat Slot System vermintide 2 on youtube if you want to know more.
From the little 79ish hours I’ve played, it seems if a ranged enemy should switch to melee but there is no open slot near them, they will instead choose to keep ranged out. I doubt these heretics have any semblance of respect for the lives of their comrades, but I don’t believe it’s realistic for them to keep shooting you while 2 feet behind their comrade who is engaging you in melee. This clip shows a few things, either the shooters have rng or the range is really that short, or the slot system making the AI say, even though there is clearly a slot open around you, but because the 2 or 3 slots near me are taken, I will sit here and shoot because that other slot is not close enough.
(Twitch)
Last thing I want to mention about ranged enemies and in my opinion the most important, variety in how often we see these fux throughout the mission. Right now almost every room has as much if not more ranged trash as it does melee trash. Perhaps if some of the above problems get fixed, they won’t feel so annoying to fight. But I still stand by the opinion and have been saying it since the first day I played the game, please do something like make an occasional room have vastly more melee elites or trash than ranged, and put crusher and bulwark in events. Please don’t wait for dlc maps to add the hard enemies into events xdd.
A counterpoint to the above is that assuming Fatshark will either add elites into hordes with a mutator (which you could opt into!!!) or on tier 5 or 6, it is not so necessary. And as a random point about if they add tier 6, it feels like the only thing they took from DWONS was making specials tankier, and holy crap are dogs and mutants tanky so please if there is ever a tier 6 consider not making disablers any tankier.
Melee combat feels clunky, we don’t need to be superheroes like v2 but just slightly buff dodge of the fast weapons, and slightly buff attack speed or block of slower weapons, just something to make the game feel smooth. With bcr being behind rng and lore limitations trademark it makes berzerkers feel more annoying naturally, not to mention enemies track you more in this game, which is fine but again rng bcr.
Quick mention of loot: hourly shop vastly inhibits the feeling of finding a good piece of gear, I honestly have no idea what the final crafting system will be, but if we are supposed to find gear, why not just tie it to doing anything t3 or higher, and tie it into better drops from harder mutations, like a normal ARPG would do, again I would actually enjoy the finding loot process if it was as simple as JUICE MAP = LOOT or run t5 fast and efficient = loot, I don’t think even the casual playerbase enjoys the dumb hourly casino roll. Again loot rng is not a problem in the previous games because you can craft, IF the crafting doesn’t let us get the things we want, then the loot rng is a problem if it is not a fun gameplay loop and is just an hourly shop. And I have to specify, I and basically nobody else cares to minmax this game, but as an ARPG enjoyer, I WISH the loot system was enjoyable and that is all, this dumb shop can stay there as just another option, no real reason to change it. In this game it doesn’t matter if I find an orange or purple, the only thing that matters is the quality or rating, and even though I don’t have many hours in the game, I don’t see the rating of things I get being increased by playing on t5.
Speaking of loot, the only thing I want to say about the traits is I hope there are some typos, and there are not legit traits with +4% power when you hit your mom with a nice phone call and an I love you while on the first monday of each month. (real example: “2.5% Toughness on Close Range Kill”. “5% power, scaling with stamina”, unless this means PER stamina which would save you a few letters so we don’t have to read too much xdd “5% Weak Spot Damage & Critical Damage for 5 seconds on successful Dodge.” like if it’s going to be so bad just make it permanent and not on dodge unless again this trait can stack on itself and that is just too many words to read)
Talents I hope can be tuned and fixed easier since there aren’t 15 classes. I’ll start with sharpshooter because that’s what I’ve played.
Sharpshooter:
Toughness talents are fine, as are the level 10 and 15 talents, maybe covering fire is useless but off to a good start.
For level 20 unwavering focus should be given suppression negation during volley fire to be competitive with camo expert duck and dive is essentially useless compared to the others, and in my opinion needs some thing like, stamina continues regenerating while dodging and sliding and maybe a bonus to stamina or something, it really needs a decent rework unless they plan on gutting camo expert or making camo expert just guaranteed invis while volley firing.
Level 25 frag storm is the outlier, please just buff bleed, it does almost nothing except to unarmored non pox enemies which there are like 4 of. It maybe doesn’t need a damage buff just make the bleed stacks combine so that the damage doesn’t taper off at the end. This or make pox enemies actually take bleed damage so that half the game’s hordes don’t just negate your talent that should be for clearing horde.
Level 30 Ogryn talent would be useful if they actually put more ogryns in the map or events smile. Counter Fire is a very strong talent with the amount of trash gunners, but unfortunately the weakspot damage is not working at all which is the high skill part of the talent, here is a video for proof Sharpshooter weakspot talent does not work - YouTube Sustained fire is fine
Ogryn:
For ogryn’s ability I think he should either get Slayer’s unstoppable swings and immunity to ranged stagger for 10 seconds, or 5 seconds with damage reduction too so they are not forced into damage reduction talents.
Toughness talents seem ok but most people I think take Lynchpin, seeing as he has dog base toughness, I do think a buff to either base toughness by 50 or buffing the other talents here to 30 or 35 or even 40 would be nice, seeing as one shot from a ranged trash can do nearly 50 to 100 it doesn’t seem too crazy.
Level 10 again maybe Heavyweight will be more useful if we get more ogryns in events, other 2 seem fine, also pls buff bleed.
Level 15 Towering Presence should be part of his passives and become suppress all enemies within 15 meters while charging, and make Lead the Charge last for like 10 seconds.
Level 20 Again Die hard seems useless with his base toughness, maybe if you add on 25% damage resist, and either +35% max toughness or +15% damage then it could be good. Hard as nails should be reworked honestly, or give a passive 25% damage resist to ranged.
Level 25 I don’t know how it works but knife through butter reads as useless if you have to charge melee attack until it auto releases, I would say it should give a bonus to melee armor or weakspot damage. Raging Bull should be 2 or 3 seconds of buff rather than one attack. Payback time should give 10% attack speed also.
Level 30 Bull Gore is useless unless bleed is buffed in any way. Non-Stop Violence also not very good unless he gets the proposed ranged stagger resist or a toughness buff.
Zealot:
In my opinion Zealot should also get the slayer treatment and get ranged stagger immunity after using ability
I don’t know enough about zealot’s toughness talents to have an opinion but I’d guess purify in blood should be 100% or something inbetween.
Level 10 idk
Level 15 Benediction seems weak on reading it, simply because the 2 classes who want damage reduction have low toughness. Holy fervour seems dog water if you want to keep it as a team buff, make it 5% power per stack currently at, or just make it permanent for zealot themself. Inspiring Excoriation again seems weak because frontline characters have low toughness, maybe just a flat gain 50 or 60 toughness is better smile.
Level 20 seems ok, I’d guess faith restores all could use a slight buff, up to 50% like bathwater knight but idk. Maybe thy wrath be swift grant ranged stagger resist idk.
Level 25 idk
Level 30 They seem alright, prob buff attack speed, but compared to sharpshooter its an xdd moment
Psyker: Maybe fatshark knows but everyone says buff soulblaze talents so I won’t mention that anymore
Toughness talents I’d assume Quietitude is the weakest but idk
Level 10 seems fine if soulblaze is fixed
Level 15 if Psychic Communion works on all enemies and not just elites it seems fine, otherwise buff, I would guess Cerebral Lacerations could use a small buff but idk
Level 20 Kinetic Deflection and Kinetic Shield could prob also grant 10 BCR or something
Level 25 idk
Level 30 seems alright
If I were the one in charge of designing these talent trees, and I wasn’t planning on adding 2 more careers within a year of release, I would make each tree have 4 choices per column, have one melee focused talent and one ranged focused talent in each column. So that no matter the composition of classes or desire to play a melee or ranged, they can do it.
Honorable Mentions:
Solve the Silent horde and elite problem, specials sounds seem good (no a vague screaming or backstab sound is not equal to the amount of noise 50 footsteps would make)
Make patrols that arent just gunners and actually make noise
Fix enemies spawning out of nowhere in close proximity
Fix poxbursters spawning in your bedroom closet (this issue was in v2 where as long as there’s no line of sight specials can randomly spawn within 10 feet of you)
Fix poxbursters having too low push range
Fix poxbursters tripping on a leaf and exploding
Fix Silo Cluster start of map where enemies have aimbot and shoot through the stairs
If one player aggros a demonhost and nobody else damages it, they should go away after one kill, so griefing isnt a thing
Try not to make the crafting system get progressively worse throughout all your games when you had a good enough one in the first game
Let me just never see T1 or T2 as a level 30
Fix the memory leak xdd
Make subsequent characters after reaching 30 on one get an exp boost of 2x if you’re set on zero gear being shared, nobody wants to grind alts this isn’t an mmo
Add peer to peer hosting option, left 4 dead 2 had this xdd, can even limit it to private lobby at that point
Add mod support eventually when you have the time for it
Salty vermintide player mentions
Implement QOL mods, mainly invis fix, offline twitch would be a nice qol for twitch mode assuming we don’t get a new twitch mode update, but as it is I have no expectation it would pass
Make the grind in vermintide 2 always have double exp as base or even triple because nobody wants to grind in that game anymore
Remove hand of shallya, put healshare into hand of shallya, make healshare into a useful temp hp talent.
Fix cloak of pain bug
Thank you for reading. Questions for Fatshark, what are your plans to address the map selection, difficulty customization? And i’d be very interested to know how ranged enemies AI make their decisions.