Good Update, What's Next? (or should be imo)

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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Talent Tree overhaul was excellent, crafting is… acceptable, penances are reasonable and a fe wlong-lasting …question is what else is missing for ‘long term’ play?

Sorry over generalizing here, but I just want to say it outright somewhere what I think the Next Steps for this game need to be to get it where I imagine most are hoping to:

Priority Most to Least:

  1. Red items – Any Vermitide player will know why, a reason to grind away in hopes to get that lucky perfect item find --there are enough varients of weapons now to make this grind nearly endlessfor perfectionist, the items simply need to exist! (i’d say only ahve dorp chances on Malice [tiny] and up …extra bonus to Auric Missions.

→ Also Red items, like VT2, should be ‘bartered’ to gain a ‘Red Crafting Resource’ which with enough (say 3-to-1 salvage-to-upgrade)you can upgrade an Orange item to Red.

Questionable Deicisons:
What should the Weapon stats be? (random or instant max? not sure) … I think at minimum allow 4, instead of two, Mods/Blessings ot be modified (for a price) at any time… so the true benefit is “Highly Likely/Guarnateed to be found with 380+ core stats”… or… something like +20 to random stats (make it 400 if you have a 380)upon upgrade … as well as have total control on the entire blessings/perks to be set on it.

Anyways, I think ‘reds’ is/can be a topic in its own right, so I’llcut myself off there

  1. Prestige Leveling
    (i) Entry level implementation → Allows players (after a round) to receive one additional ‘Gift of the Emperor’ for every level up… lvl30 or not … combined with “Reds” above, this amkes +XP curios not entirely worthless as they’ll speed up your chance of finding good gear (by speeding up levels 30+ to get the extra drop)!

(ii) Nice-to-Haves: Have penances/frames and maybe even a number of the 'total levels beyond lvl30’for a given class… at least let those that play religiously be clear (lvl2000+) and somewhat rewarded for their efforts/bragging rights?

(iii) Ambitious, but nice-to-have: Actually cross-character/account-based ‘Paragon’ system … ie: tiny buffs through it’s own dedicated/general skill tree to permanenelty enhance allcharacter sin that account (like +x% curio drops, +x%ducats, +0.1%toughness, whatever) ---- the reason i call this “ambitious” is that it’ll be a TON of work and balance and likely will require several (like 3-7? more?) additional difficulty levels to be make, much like every other game that does this, beyond Damnation/Auric, those new difficulties need to have appropriate rewards (like Red drop chances mostly) and such.

  1. Earnable Aquila’s (veyrslowly) — Bear with me, I know some of these ideas might be cringe, but it honestly works for so many other games and builds up FOMO and meaning being playing long-term:

Sources I’d personally like to see:
(i) “Battle Pass”/Seasons (yeah I know…) – FS can monetize it with premium cosmetics (maybe season specific/unique) on premium track as I’m sure they’d love to like so many others, but for “Free” players there can still be earnable Aquila’s and “less cool” cosmetics along the track so say a full season completion you could buy yourself something cool from the shop

To go one step further, one could make these passes limited to ‘Season Characters’ (forcing everyone to start fresh, can have track reward bonuses on new milestones/penances season specific using a season character, etc) — this would drive people to come back for a new season, start fresh, have fun with all the updates and get some nice rewards for a while before going on another break --ie: keep playerbase motivated/healthy to come back (hopefully).

(ii) Hardcore Mode: This one is tricky, as it’s hard to justify splitting player-base up for, but personally, with the tone thats set in the game and character ‘expendability’, this is how I thought the game was going to launch at first and I’d still think it pretty awesome and replayable:

— Create a Hardcore character, dead is dead (maybe only say on a mission fail at least to be ‘nice’)… BUT (credits/crafting loot) earned are still account sharable … maybe sell all gear/curios on death to ‘cash out’ fi you oops) and playing Hardcore, I’d say on Malice and up can next small amounts of Aquilas otherwise unattainable in normal play — so the game loop is not to reward playing “too easy” (tiny amounts fo Aquilas, 1-10), but building a character up to start doing malice, Heresey and for the ‘betters’ Damnation and Aurics which have exponentially higher acquila rewards, so for the ‘best’ players, they’llbe able to deck out their characters better/faster for taking bigger risks and good team play to net faster incomes of Aquials! (or die horribly trying) yay!

Not only is this ‘theme appropriate’ it also adds a new level of difficulty and new level of unique rewards previously unattainable without opening your wallet.

YES, people will probably Alt-F4 and find ways to cheese it, hardest part is to develop a system that is ‘fair’ and not heavily abusable, nor too punishing where someone legit crashes and their character is now gone… I can’t answer this, but I recognize it as probably the biggest barrier. [Curious how Alien Fireteam did it hoenstly if anyone has input].

– One other spin on this would be to take a page from Vermintide 2 again, and the Rogue-like Weaves and/or Chaos wastes — perhaps going off of ‘season characters’ or ‘hardcore characters’, you can play effectively a Rogue-like version of Darktide that rewards Aquials & other unique cosemetics, portaits, etc. depending how far you get! … in this direction, you need time to allow loadout adjustments, etc. so It couldn’t be a continuous campaign of sorts I don’t think (though it’d be cool) unless a UI/post-round interface was made to allow gear purchasing/crafting, trait speccing and/or gear looting in-map (like Chaos wastes)… maybe in-map servitors/crafting tables and shops can exist in some way? Be creative I guess, but may be too much to ask too soon.

— Third twist on this could…literally just be Chaos wastesform VT2, have a map and a team pre-formed and vote randomized branching paths (for now, to existing maps/mission types) at a set difficulty from the start – a full successful clear can net some aquilas at the end based on difficulty of the run. … At least we know this was already done, and works in VT2 XD …I’d be happy with just this, or this plus the above at some point.

EDIT: Bonus (4) … Still waiting for a Voice Pitch Slider for character creation/modification at the shop XD. Like… Audio Post-processing already exists(mask cosmetics),this really shouldn’t be that hard to implement and gives a HUGE boost to personalization of one’s character (as intended)

Alright well that was an essay anyways, for those who made it though, thank you!

For those that shave some ideas of their own, criticisms/opinions, this is indeed an open forum and would love to hear your ideas too!! This is just one, my, opinions, but we as a collective have many, likely different ones and the only way to figure that out is to share them all :slight_smile:

Cheers,

Estebus(for the Rest-of-us)

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It absolutely is not. Making it acceptable should be the next priority. They’ve managed to make classes (mostly) balanced and fun again. They need to do the same with weapon acquisition and upgrading.

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I don’t disagree there is plenty of room for improvement, but functionally as-is gives you:

  • something to use crafting materials for
  • blessings unlocks to pursue (storen consecration and looting), and spend currency (though i personally hate how the UI handles this/tracks)

For all the lacking “end game” my point is at least the craftint gives you something to chase [imo i think the made it too easy regarding perks however, how you can just pick anything you want for max level at the right price, so you only need to luck out on 2 mods at most].

Without reds, and premium cosmetics, limit-time events and more diffiuclties/presige system, this game really has nothing more to offer once you got a decent set of weapons and a build you like for each chatacter … but veey little to chase/puruse once you’ve accomplished these things.

Crafting gets you to the point as-is, but not further, but its a start on the right track so I’m not complaining about it XD [and got me up to almost 200hrs of fun gametime honestly across 4x lvl30s now and really got me to feel ‘just’ satisfied enough for my moneys worth]

Yes it can go further, but i think to turn the game from a say 60hr per average player to 200+, red items, gamemodes and the works are needed to make it truly a replayable gem with lots of longevity and a continuous playerbase.

Crafting alone won’t keep this up no matter how good it gets.

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The ‘chase’, at least for me, actively prevents me from playing. I have an aversion to games that feel like a job, even more so when it takes a half hour per mission. That I cannot freely experiment with my gear is a problem - I’ve got build freedom now, and that made me put another 30 hours or so in on three classes (waiting for the Vet patch), but the gear being so unnecessarily painful to acquire has made me just…not want to play.

Crafting is several mistakes layered on top of each other.

  1. The RNG. It sucks, it should never have been implemented, and it’s there solely to waste everyone’s time. Ditch it, start over.

  2. The blessing ‘design’. Let’s be frank here: these are idiotic. You should never have utility power ups or ones that change how a weapon works having to compete with straight power upgrades. Perks are almost as bad since you basically want to take just the most common enemy types, but blessings in particular are in a very bad place. They should have been implemented as a ‘change your way of using this weapon’ method, like DRG’s overclocks: that would have made stacking up copies of weapons interesting.

  3. the weapons themselves. The bulk of auto guns, lasguns…all of it, also should never have been implemented as they have been. You can clearly see the bones of the original weapon modification system that now just exists to give the illusion of weapon diversity. Scrap it, start over with an actual attachment system.

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Something similar to V2 Chaos Waste mode is what I’m looking forward to the most for the next big update.

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Solo play with bots…full stop. There is absolutely nothing this game needs more then for them to lose the bulls**t 2 player requirement for private matches.

Crafting needs to change BIG TIME yes but at least crafting is in the damn game. Whatever balance or gameplay loop or wtf ever internal reason they have for not #breakthelocks there is NO f***ing reason for them to have removed the option to play with bots alone if you desire. They bots are already IN THE GAME and can be used up to malice with halfway decent efficiency (though they do need work) and through some messing around you can play full solo even on console but its a lengthy and complicated pain in the butt process. Every single step is there and balanced(ish) and working except for the stupid 2 player minimum to private games.

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