Extending my feedback from my first submission.
Following is based on version 1.0.6 and Malice/Heresy level difficulties.
Classes
1. Veteran, level 30
- Overall, good early, mid, and late game experience.
- Feels balanced for the challenges involved.
- Traits should be reworked. Each tree should provide better build diversity.
- Gunner tree: focus on improving ammo capacity and stability
- Demolisionist tree: Focus on improving grenades. Burns, bleeds, aoe blast, etc.
- Specialist tree: Focus on improving volley fire.
2. Zealot, level 22
- Good early game experience.
- Mid/late game experience is bad when the AI director spawns too many ranged units.
- Zealot shouldn’t be staggered or pushed back from gun fire or flame patches.
- Zealot should have slightly faster sprint speed than other classes.
3. Psyker, level 12
- Weak and boring in early game.
- Very strong in mid/late game.
- Warp abilities are powerful, but too easily spammed. Reduces or eliminates the need for cooperative play.
- Peril should not be quickly removed by holding down the reload key. Like Sienna from Vermintide, use Traits and Curios with bonuses to speed up cooldown. This will allow for more strategic use of those abilities rather than spamming them and trivializing the game.
Weapons
Kantrael MG XII Infantry Lasgun - High Damage, High Capacity. This gun has high damage (High Damage perk = 3x baseline dmg), excellent ammo economy (800+ rounds), and sniping capabilities. This is what I consider the gold standard for what guns should be like in Darktide. Effective, fun to use, not constantly worried about ammo.
Autoguns: 150 ammo capacity, 20 rounds per mag. Hard pass. 150 ammo isn’t anywhere near enough for a hard mission with bullet sponges. Especially when used in hordes since the ones you kill in the front are meat shields that soak up your bullets even after they are registered dead. It takes 3x as many bullets to do the damage of a Lasgun. So I would want 3x the ammo capacity (800x3 = 2,400), and picking up ammo drops should also restore 3x as much ammo (100x3 = 300 rounds). It’s the only way to make this gun feel good and fun to use.
Shotguns/Bolters: I honestly don’t bother. at 40/80 rounds in the store options I’ve seen, I’m just not going to bother. If 150 round autogun doesn’t do it for me, neither will these weapons. I’m sure they’re fun, but playing melee in a mission where I’m getting sniped and out gunned, I need better ammo economy.
Flamer: This gun is a bit slow and clunky between primary and secondary fire. As a weapon, it’s effective against hordes and CC enemies, but it’s a bit of a niche weapon. Under pressure, I’m going to switch to melee anyway, so I’d rather have a weapon that can deal with annoying snipers and other ranged enemies. I think something more is needed for this weapon, but to start it needs to operate much faster. Visibility is also an issue as the flames fan out too wide and tall. I have no idea if what I’m shooting at is dead or out of range. I think the flames need to be much more narrow so I can see what I’m shooting at, and the burn effect needs to last much longer. That way the flamer is more of a CC weapon with follow-up from melee.
Bugs
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Logging in from the title screen often hits the “Backend Error” popup. No further details given. Ignoring the error and spamming login several times will eventually log you in.
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I haven’t had any crashing since the beta started, but in the last 3 days I have been crashing quite frequently (all crash reports uploaded). At least one crash every other mission. When crashing out of a match, if the user cannot recover to that match (either it ended or the recovery failed), then the player progress up until that point should be awarded. It’s very unsatisfying putting in the work and getting nothing for it over something that was out of your control.