If can’t say my expectations for Darktide weren’t high but this is very underwhelming. There is a handful of cosmetics that you can actually earn and a god-how-many-knows cosmetics that look different than the plain ones you can get free of cost (if we don’t count the 40 dollars). This really rubs me the wrong way because I love customising and personalising my characters in video games.
The skins from the cash shop feature entirely new models with different themes and aesthetics and what do the players who paid “exclusively” for the game? Veteran players get a vest, a vest (with shoulder pads now), a vest (with ammo taped onto the shoulder pads), and a vest (with ammo and paper taped onto the shoulder pads). The headgear is exactly the same. You get a helmet, then a helmet (but now with a scarf) and then also a helmet (identical to the others but now with a respirator for a scarf). Each cosmetic you earn isn’t really new but instead, it has more stuff kitbashed onto it.
That’s the first problem. Same-looking cosmetics that don’t stand out from one another with little to no variety. Every Veteran player has either the same scarf helmet or scarf respirator if you’re playing on heresy. There is absolutely no diversity on how all players look. We literally have one chest piece and one headpiece with a few variants of it UNLESS you spend money on top of the 40 dollars and get something from the cash shop. It’s straight-up disgusting.
The second problem is that you can’t buy recolours of penance gear you unlock or the items you get off the cash shop. That is also the reason why everyone looks the same as if we’re still playing a beta. If you buy a bullgryn Ogryn armour with aquillas or whatever they’re called you should absolutely be able to then buy brown, black, green and blue variants of it in the armoury you unlock at lvl2. It would take an elementary school CHILD 15 minutes to create 4 colour variants of the same armour by changing the colour hue and that’s including the time it takes to watch a youtube tutorial.
Honestly, I feel like crap being treated like a free-to-play player when I just spent 40 dollars on the game and gave lots and lots of feedback free of charge since you didn’t even bother to hire any QA testers (I honestly don’t know if you did, but the state of the game right now screams that you did not). It really does feel like as if I have bought an early access to Darktide and not the full thing.
They look underwhelming in order to nudge people to buy monopoly money for macrotransactions in the cash-shop. Everyone wanna look Special™ and Unique™.
Absolute true words. I was kinda expecting this to happen, very sad to see my prediction was correct.
Truth is VT2 had some very nice weapon and character cosmetics earnable with gameplay.
I feel less willing to buy the “premium” cosmetics with this strategy.
As always your feedback is a pleasure for me to read, thank you for the write up. Vermintide 2, in this regard, is a bit better. Though most of its non-premium skins were simple recolors, they at least weren’t gated behind a premium shop that required the usage of real money. The cosmetics were also varied enough that it was a treat to work at unlocking them by doing challenges - not the type of optics that Darktide throws at player, mind, but progression based ones that weren’t a pain to complete. Chaos Wastes also had its own type of skins that had little cute gold accents which made the skins memorable for me, and those weren’t gated behind premium currency either.
The main failing of Vermintide 2’s non-premium based skin, in my opinion, is that they were kind of, well, lazy. Warhammer Fantasy has loads of inspiration for cosmetics. C’mon Fatshark, you could have done more in that regard instead of mostly recolors. The ones that had effort put into them required money to get - I see that trend has continued in Darktide. The other thing that I feel the need to mention, is that early in Vermintide 2’s life; non-premium based skins were an arduous endeavor to get, but the developer would later rectify this by allowing players to earn a currency that would allow them to obtain the rare hats. Said currency is quite easy to gain through weeklies, dailies, completion of challenges, or through daily logins. You have many ways of earning it or you could, of course, just buy it.
Why I mentioned that currency though, is because I’m astonished they removed the ability for people to work at earning it in Darktide. Now players have no recourse at working towards a cosmetic they want. Sure, Vermintide 2’s cash shop wasn’t perfect, and the nice looking skins could only be purchased through real money; but it had options for players to earn the other skins that didn’t cost money. It’s all just ridiculous.
Red is my least favorite color. AND EVERYTHING IN THIS GAME IS F***ING RED. I’m purposefully only using the “in game currency” cosmetics because it’s not red. I hate how much they touted that there would be “CuStOmIzAtIoN” and everyone looks the same. Real impressed FS.
I get you don’t want people running around in hot pink trousers and neon green shirts but FFS give me some real color choices besides RED and GREENISH BLUE.
what? the free character cosmetics were nothing more than recolors of the base outfits. There’s far more diversity in the free cosmetics in DT than V2.
Your penance gear should at least be the color of your prison garbs chosen at the start… they have absolutely no meaning in the game like most of the rest of your character choices.
Even though I agree with you and it really sucks, cosmetics are the least of the problems right now. I’m already really struggling to keep playing the game after having 3 chars at lvl 30, there is no more incentive to keep playing without a full crafting system and scoreboard implemented. NONE!
SO, what I do is I log in, check the (horrendous) RNG shop to see if there’s a better roll in the weapon I want, then check the (horrendous) RNG weekly shop to see if there’s anything worth buying (if not, oh well, wait another 24h and try again!), then I maybe do 1 or 2 missions to gather some extra mats and log out.
I know many players are doing the same. So if this keeps going, I give till the end of the month and the game will be “dead”. Good (free) cosmetics or not. What a shame.
Fantastic, knowing I’m not the only one checking in and just straight up leaving after 50 minutes. These penances are near impossible and every time I attempt them I just straight up fall flat on my face and get turned into a meatball. (I’m stuck on the 100% accuracy one)
The dark skins for compleatimg the game on legend and the white ones for chaos wastes where really good. Not forgetting weapon skins, a lot of them were really cool, not only the legendary ones (shiny ones)
Lots of nice hats too.
Tbf i do think the F2P cosmetic shop has some underrated ensembles hidden among all the variations of blue. Getting the pistoleros punishment uniform top and shooters punishment bottom for my vet was the most valuable thing i bought with my ordo dockets tbh; left me looking green, lean and mean like a proper guardsman in a sea of red people decked in more baubles than a christmas tree.
It was good enough to get me accused of buying from the cash shop at least lol
Can definitely think of some super simple F2P cosmetics they could add in to give people a bit more base variation, Tank Tops, scarves and goggles are simple things to model quickly that any class could wear.
