General Feedback after 6 hours of play - Veteran class

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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Ok so after 6 hours of playing this Beta I have a few things that really need to be looked at to make this game shine, and avoid the issues I had with previous titles from Fatshark (Vermintide 1 and 2):

  1. As much as I love the aesthetic of the game and that it’s supposed to be gritty and dirty, at the end of the day it still is a game and I feel like readability of the environment should be better - there is a clear problem with enemies blending in the background too much. All the special units aren’t distinct enough and getting shot 5 times by the ranged enemies just to locate them by their laser trail or waiting for sound queues from Specials to know there is one in the area and spastically use your special ability to see them in the background is very not fun gameplay wise. Vermintide had done better in that regards I would like to see maybe more prominent lights coming from the visors of the range units and more distinct glow from other units in the crowd
  2. While I like the enemy diversity and the Specials, I despise one unit…The heavy armored axe guy… Seeing a pack of them rushing at you in the middle of a horde and slapping you for 50 hp per swing can be a run killer, I understand they are dangerous but the fact that they are hella tanky, don’t give a flying F about staggers and that most of the meele hit connections in this game are janky, they are really not a fun experience - 90% of the failed runs I had was due to them suddenly spawning in the scary number of 3 and wiping the whole squad, please nerf them a bit…
  3. Few things need to be fixed in regards to the combat, which some of them are present even in the previous games:
  • Enemies often times do a melee attack, you attempt to dodge them, and then they slide into you mid animation of swing and catch you regardless, that is a thing that really bugs me especially playing as a Veteran and doing the best I can to stay out of attack range, that also ticks me off when trying to run from a horde, often times when doing an objective which requires running after the squad the last person that slacks behind generally looses 75% of their hp due to 1. enemies sliding mid animation and taking a swing on you 2. slowing you down with each hit, which in turn results in more hits connecting to you. For the love of god fix that issue finally because this is worse in this game since it is a little more ranged combat focused, and make enemies a little bit slower so you can actually outrun them,
  • The action locking…Oh boy this have been my gripe with Fatshark games for a looong while and many times you guys addressed it and still are not able to get rid of the issue, Vermintide veterans will probably know what I’m talking about, you block, you want to do 1 shove on the enemy and a swing, and the result? You do 2 shoves in a row, and the game only then unlocks you from the animation to do a swing, same with shooting and trying to swap the weapons quick often times you shot, prompt the game to change the weapon and swing, and the result is that it shoots 2 times and switches the weapon after that, it’s a really sucky thing to happen in the middle of combat and would be nice to finally have it properly addressed
  • Please speed up or remove the animation on turning off the safety on the gun every time you switch to it, I understand realism but as said at the end of the day it’s a game and when I’m trying to snipe something it would be nice to not have to wait for an animation to scope in and shoot
  • Make Orgin hitboxes a little bit more precise being someone who needs to focus on taking out specials with a gun, it’s really hard to shoot something from that only peaks out from an Ogrins shoulder, dunno why but it really seems like their hitboxes are a square that doesn’t let anything pass through and it really makes it hard to be a marksman when you have 2 of those units running in front of you
  • Dunno if that is a thing already or not, but maybe add a distinct sound when you make a headshot or a weakpoint hit, it would really help to know if I am hitting the head on an enemy with all that chaos,
  1. Now for the UI and lobby:
  • so definitely as everybody say… Allows Squads in the same instance of a lobby or allow then to do private lobbies
  • Make weapon comparison a thing especially in the shops
  • some kind of inventory indicator of new items acquired, don’t want to waste time looking through each slot to see if I have something new
    *more stat explanation? I assume that each type of weapon will have their own specific uses like armor penetration etc
  • Let me see how much ammo each of the squad member has or how many grenades, crucial info when deciding if I can take the ammo pack or I should leave it to someone who is at half of their max ammo
  • Make Grimores effects and max corruption coming from it more visible to the players, hate to use the medi-stations to clear up some corruption for it to swing back around to the same point and wasting other people heal opportunities or people healing their corruption only to be confused why it swang back not realizing what is a Grimoire and what effect it has, and while at that look at the penalties of Grimores… You have to take 2 to finish a side objective and 1 is already a heavy burden to bear, and if you miss the other one you just made your run harder for no reward, as it is now, when I see that side objective I see every squad skipping it.
  • Make people getting caught by Special units more visible, I like the general effect of how it looks to see allies through walls, but due to the grittiness of the environment it’s really not well visible
  1. Optimization - please work on this one the most out of all of them, not being able to run this game without stutters on a 3080TI is really not something that should be happening. This is first game in a really long time that crashed my graphics drivers so hard that all my monitors and usb devices lost connection for about 2 minutes and only recovered after a reset.

And that is what I noticed from the short time I played the game, looks really interesting and hoping the progression etc will be expanded on and some maybe randomisation of objective vs map, in the future because some maps are really much more taxing to run than others and would not like to see the game have a “dead maps - stay away” type of deal like some Vermintide maps or campaigns been in the past. Game looks really promising

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had a similar feeling at first, that ebbed away with more play time, the starting gear for any character isn’t particular good at dealing with this enemy, but with more gear variety they became manageable

3

Still, the issue is that they are not distinct enough from something like a Stormvermin in Vermintide, they just sneak in in the middle of the horde and punish you, even if they are managable later it should not be a death sentence for starting players :laughing:

4

im not saying that, im just saying maybe give at least one starting class a better tool to deal with them early, and make them visually distinct and their melee attacks more accurate to the position of the weapon

if these things are done i don’t think they need a nerf of their stats

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Yeah, amidst the other enemies, the heavy axe boys are harder to spot, even as an Ogryn, which typically has a bird’s eye view on the incoming horde. Unfortunately, most of the non-mutant special enemies just look like SLIGHTLY taller dudes, and from a distance you can’t tell what you’re charging at unless it uses it’s special attack. They need to be more distinct for sure.