Hello everyone,
There are 24 Copy pasted Statues in the Hub alone. I haven’t counted the dozens of eagles and I see no reason for the various same shrines scattered around either.
Copy pasting assets is totally fine and essential for a game to not get bloated with hundreds and hundreds of gigabytes, besides the thousands of hours that would get lost for devs creating different shapes of the same item.
HOWEVER, this is not one of these essential gamedesign moments but shows that the Hub isn’t finished. Im therefore criticising the hub of the state it is right now and not the initial intention of its existance.
- The hub is lifeless
- prevents social interactions
- doesnt feel like a base
- is not a place where you want to “hang out” with others
- is too big (therefore bloated of copy pasted assets)
I understand the thought of the hub. It should be a mmo type Base where you can do various things and find teams outside of the classic Quickplay.
So far there is no reason nor is it easy to add people standing in front of you to your game.
Asking questions in the big hub chat is a function barely ever used and if so usually hits only deaf ears.
If you’d want people to find teams and be able to que up together there needs to be some easy form of queing with them, for example:
- clicking on others will initiate a question on their screen (do you want to join my strike team (janoti!) ?)
- Starting a game you have the option to tick a box to que with hub which sends a message to all people in the hub asking if they want to join the game or not. (could also add some sort of general voiceline that adds some sort of announcement)
Having this would give the existance of the hub a reason but it would not fix the design problems of it.
I don’t want to compare the hub to vermintide as it is a different design, however it is much more fitting to this sort of coop game.
In the end it is a coop game and not an mmorpg. You play together with 4 other players and that wont ever change. The other 20ish people in the hub are just lifeless bots standing around, obscurring your view (I know it sounds rough but that’s how I look at it at the moment)
The hub has all the various shops and interaction points you’d expect but at the same time is missing a place where you usually are and is too vast to feel like a home.
Where does my character sleep? Idk
Where does he eat? idk
What does he do when there is no map played? idk
I dont know and I have no option to give it any sort of context myself either.
It’s great that my teammates are in my hub now, on the other side there is no point of them beeing there except that I can see them.
I can’t do anything with them, except counting the 24 statues.
How could you fix that? Well make the psykanium open for your whole strike team.
It allows testing weapons, talents and chitchat about whatever else there is in the game.
Maybe even open it for the whole hub (or give the option to do so)
//Testing a few weapons in the psykanium, some random dude comes up and talks in the chat, try x melee weapon with y combo it’s great. Another dude joins the convo, combine it with z talent and you have bla bla. We chitchat about weapons and strats a little, I click on them, add them to my strike team and we play a few games//
How cool is that? Easy and super enjoyable social interactions.
Ideally the psykanium is just another part of the hub without any loadtimes etc.
Ok but what about the rest of the design?
Right now you run up to the armory or to the map picker and that’s about it. You have no idea whether or not your teammates are ready or not and you also don’t know what they are doing.
You can’t que a map without them beeing ready, which in itself is already bad enough but increases frustration when thinking of all the timed maps (another very unsocial and up to discussion type system)
Well sure what could you do?
Add a flight deck where a ship is ready to depart. As soon as everyone is ready your teammates will be standing there and you know it’s time to que a map.
Also give your strike teammembers some sort of identification to where they are in the hub.
Right now the Challenges are in your esc menu (where I’d probably never expected them at all).
Give one of the varios book shrines a purpose and make it interactable.
Give shortcuts to all the different shops and interactables.
Why you ask? Well some places you walk to when you have time and some places you dont walk to when you just want to play. I dont always use my shortcuts in Vermintide and I wont change that behaviour in darktide.
Walking up to the mission board, challenges book, or lohners shop is awesome and I dont want to miss that. Same with weaves and the chaos wastes. I know shortcuts exist I just dont use them.
Why?
Multiple reasons:
- It’s cool
- The distance to it is fairly short
- It shows my teammates what is about to happen
eg
I stand in the portal: Im ready to play.
I stand on the map board: I will que a map now.
I stand in the garden and hit a dummy: Im testing weapons and need more time.
I could go on and on about this.
This is very basic social interaction without forcing anyone to even type a single word in chat.
I have friends from all over the world. I dont understand a single word they say and they don’t understand mine but it doesnt matter because vermintide doesnt need any words. Darktide on the other hand doesnt have this type of unspoken body language.
Ok next topic: The hub itself.
There are many closed doors and an area over the main area connected by bridges. So far there is no way to get there but I can think of a few reasons why it would be cool to get there and find:
- maybe a sleeping area
- a small artarea
- a collection of your personal armory
- a collection of slayn monsters and end bosses?
There are many things you could “show off” to other people that way.
In the end there could simply be a party leader which achievements will be displayed there.
Adding these sort of things in the entire Hub would allow further personalisation and increase immersion as well.
Ive probably spend tens, no hundreds of hours in the keep in vermintide punching a dummy, jumping the parqour, doing dumm stuff with my friends or simply standing in a corner idle and waiting for someone to return for more games.
I dont want to spend any more than the absolute minimum of time in the hub as possible, it feels like a distraction from the game. It might as well not exist at the moment. It has no purpose right now.
The Hub is a great idea and that you guys made it and achieved it technically is super cool but in the end it has to serve a purpose and it’s not doing that yet.
Im looking forward to a new design and rework of the hub area to yet again spend way to much time in the hub haha
Greetings
Janoti!