I played Darktide for the first time in months - feedback

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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The last time I played was on the 1st of January. I waited for a content drop to get back into it and… well it was disenchanting.

Good thing first: I enjoyed the gameplay. Dropped into a Heresy match mid-game, it ended in a mad dash to the finish line with all my teammates down and me on 1HP. Quite exciting.

Now to the bad. I opened the new armory and what struck me immediately was the inability to distinguish between different MKs of the same weapon. What’s the difference between the various new Twin-linked stubbers, for example? Brunts armory tells you NOTHING about the weapon you’re about to purchase. For new players or even just for any newly added weapon, this is absolutelyy horrible. Give us at the very least some basic info about the weapon like you already did in the comm-link about the new additions.

I was in a discord call with a friend and had to explain the crafting/itemisation to him. Actually putting Darktide’s mechanics into words just made it all the more clear how borked the entire process is.

Getting gear, upgrading gear, customising your character, everything that has to do with gameplay customisation is horrendously tedious. And it will only get worse the more weapons, blessings/perks, etc. are added.

Let’s go through the process. Quick and dirty:

For every weapon you purchase, you have to keep a close eye on the modifiers. Are they of a high enough rank? Are they distributed well? What are the distributions for this specific weapon’s modifiers that I want? Are those modifiers satisfactory? good? bad? How do I know? What are this Mk variants base stats on which the modifiers act upon, and what are its movesets?

When you upgrade a weapon you add the following considerations: Is this Perk good for this weapon Mk and its modifiers? Is this blessing good for this weapon Mk and its modifiers? Is the second Perk/Blessing too bad so I have to scrap this now bricked weapon? Do I continue upgrading this weapon even though the weapon has rolled lower rarity Blessings/perks?
(The latter two questions pertain to the locking mechanism of rerolling)

None of this is fun. None of this is engaging, convenient, practical or intuitive. It’s repulsive .
I do not want to interact with this system in any way whatsoever. And I won’t. Sorry.

In addition:
At some point you’ll absolutely lose oversight over your armory and you’ll have to slog through your inventory, remembering every stat distribution to make an informed decision whether to upgrade your new weapon or not. Upgrades cost too much resources to just pump them into something you already have an equivalent copy of.

In conclusion, it’s not looking good. This system can only work towards driving away players. I see almost zero potential for “player retention” in this. It’s too punishing, too hard to read, too inefficient, too poorly designed, not transparent enough and does not offer a proper path to a desired goal.

I did enjoy the gameplay though, well done! Same as last year though.
Anyway, see you in three months, at the next content drop.

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I didn’t even re-install the game after seeing that there were no “crafting” changes. So many good things were done in this update’s patch notes, but at the end of the day if i can’t make the new gear i want, then i’m not going to bother. Tragic is what it is, that the item system kills an amazing game.

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This is one of my biggest annoyances right now. I have to double check every time I buy a new weapon to make sure I’m actually getting the one I want. They have all these detailed stat breakdowns in the inventory screen and no way to use it in a way that’s convenient or helpful when you’re trying to decide what to use. The game is still so stingy with resources that accidentally buying the wrong weapon feels like a real setback, and that’s on top of all the RNG crap.

It’s really incredible how much DT stops you from playing the way you want to play and FS really needs to abandon whatever philosophy is leading them to do this if they want any longevity out of this game.

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I don’t think the complexity itself is a problem, there are many games even more complex than this one. But I agree there needs to be better communication from the game what’s what.

Especially in Brunt’s Armor. It should be a mouse-over field that quickly explains what the weapon is and does in a one-liner. Example:
Blaze Force Sword MK II - Force Sword with varied strikes. Allows Flexibility.
Blaze Force Sword MK IV - Force Sword with precise stabs. Great against single enemies.
Blaze Force Sword MK V - Force Sword with wide ranging strikes. Great against Hordes.

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If they just allowed removing or swapping locks, one little change, that would do tremendous good and health to the longevity of the game.

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The MKs need flavor texts that describe the weapons characters.

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This level of complexity is good and frankly doesn’t demand much from the player to understand it. In theory this should lead to build variety.

This is a massive discussion point on multiple forums (here, Steam, reddit) and elsewhere. I think we can all agree no one likes the level of RNG and lack of player control in crafting.

The rest of your comments narrow down to fighting with interface and poor user experience. Not surprising.

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It’s not complex, at least not in a positive way.
It’s demanding continuous attention to boring stat blocks and memorising the stat layouts of every single newly bought weapon and those you already possess. All the while no meaningful agency lies with the player. It’s tedious paperwork at best.

Build variety can be achieved without necessitating that players buy grey weapons in bulk and verify each weapons stats for approval. Multiply that tedium times every available weapon.

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But in reality, it does not.
I mean, technically it does, because everyone likely has a few weapons with a trash perk and/or a trash blessing, that they use because they have not been more lucky so far.
So yay i guess…

But that is not “build variety”. It is “being forced to use something else than what you want”.
Caused by what is effectively a diversity quota.

Actual build variety would require us to be able to actually make different builds when ever we want to, and not be dependent on massive RNG (or 100 hours of farm, just to get almost the weapon that we actually want, if we get lucky).

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