Darktide Pre-Order Beta Feedback
At the time of writing this I am trust level 19 and have nearly 20 hours and as it stands right now there are many glaring issues within the beta that must be addressed before I can recommend the game primarily around leveling and loot.
leveling and progression
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the biggest issue facing leveling is a lack of clear direction, aside from unlocking a new trait group every 5 levels there is no clear benefit to moving up a level and in general the progression lacks a sense of purpose and incentive. I keep asking myself “why am I doing this? What reason do I have to want to move up from my current one.”
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As you level up there are very few rewards that make you happy that you actually got a new level outside of the RNG gear shop which requires its own point down the line.
Solutions: The addition of more rewards and benefits per level would greatly increase the reason to want to level up and grind out missions. Aside from traits every 5 levels you should get more apparent boosts per level, that may already be there, but you need to make it clear.
Loot and gear
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This is the biggest issue facing the game for me at present, alongside the lack of cosmetics made available through progression the pure RNG mechanics for any and all gear acquisition hinders the overall gameplay experience immensely.
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The gear shop absolutely sucks, as mentioned above it is pure RNG about what’s going to be there and if it will be good at all. If you want to level your gear at all you have to wait and see if the next refresh is better and that happens every hour meaning that you can go for at least 60 minutes without any gear in there that’s good or fits your playstyle.
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The lack of weapon crafting/upgrading/modifying, I am unsure how this was overlooked in a game of this style and in this setting. It is absurd to me that I am unable to upgrade the weapons I like, swap out perks, add a bayonet or flashlight, and other things of that nature especially given how the game is meant to be “play your way, make your character”.
Solutions: Get basic gear at the end of every mission, add weapon crafting/modification/upgrading so that you can then scrap things for money and weapon parts which can be used for weapon crafting and modification. The shop needs a complete overhaul which shows all the weapons you have unlocked and can unlock down the line; these weapons can be purchased and when a weapon is purchased another RNG’d version is instantly in its spot. There also needs to be a drastic increase in the cosmetic gear you can acquire through normal gameplay, 40k is chock full of amazing apparel that could be used, while this may take away some of the potential income from microtransactions and premium currency it adds a lot more to the game, look at Destiny 2’s cosmetic system for a good example.
Weapons and gunplay
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Autoguns are absolutely horrible, from their horse kick recoil to horrible ammo capacity they are borderline unusable outside of a very select few from what I have heard.
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The lasguns ammo count needs to be reworked to actually show how many rounds it is using instead of the take 2-3 from the overall number. It makes it unnecessarily difficult to tell what your actual ammo count is.
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Why can’t we block with our guns? Thats a thing you can logically do and if you have a bayonet, it makes sense that you should be able to.
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Let us cook grenades, they take way too long to explode and it’s such a basic feature of any FPS.
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(Addendum) In regard to class specific weapons, I am starting to think that opening those up to all classes would greatly improve the diversity of gunplay and builds. While not everyone may agree with this point, I believe that the main differentiating feature between the classes should be their traits and abilities and not the weaponry.
Miscellaneous points
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While this may be something that I missed in the notes about the beta there seems to lack story content, IE missions and… well actual story, while still giving me cutscenes that make it seem like there is a story. Granted, all but one of the 5 cutscenes I have gotten where just me being told to “work harder and prove myself” which is absurd given that I’m nearly level 20 now.
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We should be able to choose the mission and its difficulty, it’s not uncommon to be stuck looping the same mission over and over due to it being the only one available for the difficulty level you choose.
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There is way too much RNG dependency in all aspects of the game.
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The maps are beautiful and wonderfully interconnected, sometime down the line I would love to see some kind of “patrol” mode where we patrol the zones in full so we can admire the work put into them without being rushed to complete the mission without being left behind.
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please change how weapon stats are presented and explained, its vague as all hell and does not tell us anything useful. Using actual numbers for things like damage would actually be useful.