Why would that happen?
Agreed to disagree; I consider myself and many others on this forum and in the playerbase as a whole to be very good at the game, and while I’m not as well informed as you, I have fairly good game knowledge and reaction time/know spawn locations/directions on my five fingers when I actually tryhard.
Everything I say is simply my personal perspective, but I don’t believe that higher-level players and their buddies deserve a special club.
Fatshark is already a studio with clearly lacking infrastructure and resources to put out content to engage the playerbase (we’re at 6k concurrent on Steam BTW and have been for a long time) and we have way too many game modes and difficulties now.
It’s a mess.
A business wants money, and they will not get it from sweatlords like you and me since we are small in number and rarely spend money, whereas “casuals” (I despise that term) are always the main source of revenue in any online game.
And you know; Darktide for me is a fun game because playing with randoms is completely RNG; if you are really “unlucky” you get a good random team and the match is a complete snoozefest where noone goes down ever, but if you’re a bit lucky you will get a good, but not “super good” team, which means that now you will actually get challenged (neuron activation) in a fun way (Auric Maelstrom and Havoc)
The better the team the worse game experience for me unlessI specifically want to grind Penances without fail.
I respect everything you do for the game, @Reginald, and I like your videos/content/forum posts, but I disagree that you/me/whoever deserve a dedicated game mode “special club” designed only for us.
If you want Darktide to continue to exist in the next five to ten years, you should think bigger IMO.
What can Fatshark develop so that Darktide does not become stuck with 6,000 concurrent players on STEAM (this is after the "biggest update yet BTW))?
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Of course! I think disagreement is healthy. But I’m still gonna try to win the argument.
Sorta true sorta untrue. In a demographic analysis the longtime adherents of a game tend to have a small percentage of players who are ‘whales’. There are other less easy to represent metrics that are well known by companies at this point. Ardent players like ourselves are actually the best network effect evangelists for the product. We’re the ones who generate hype when new patches drop. Not just me as some youtuber but just the average excited player telling their friends and posting online and generating the vibe of excitement. These effects are real and extremely important to a game’s long term viability. I would not have gotten into vermintide if it wasn’t for such players and I wouldn’t be playing darktide either.
Thanks! I probably spend too much energy on it but I like what I like I guess.
In any case I don’t think “difficulties” are a “special club”. They are merely spaces designed for different players to get what they want and retain those players. There are 40 havoc ranks many normal difficulties. Plus two alternate game modes. ONE of those can be for me.
With every ounce of respect to everyone involved - pretty sure that’s exactly what FS thought and tried with Mortis Trials and Expeditions and look what that got them? They appealed to “new audiences” and got nothing to show for it. Player counts are right back on their way to the aforementioned 6k.
Compare that effect to the Arbites launch. Arbites gave long time players something we’ve wanted for a long time. A new class. MASSIVE pop of public interest, huge sales no doubt. The biggest update yet wasn’t Expeditions - it was a new class for previously, seemingly, dead game. Yes it was temporary but it was HUGE. Not only that but - a lot of new players found their way into my regular players queue because of it. Some players got hooked. 0 players got hooked as far as I can personally tell from Expeditions.
Why? Because it appealed to the core audience and it appealed to what makes this game special. If I were a business man in charge of this game (I am a business man, I am not in charge of this game) I would double down on that concept. More weapons, more classes, more enemies, more adventure maps. That’s how I’d attract more and new players.
This game needs to believe in itself.
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This could’ve been made in the form of modded realm, but Fatshark didn’t want that /shrug
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I was wondering about this, because FS seems focused on catch and release. New modes and DLCs to draw people in, but not much maintenance to keep people happy if they’re around long enough to notice flaws.
As an average sort of player, I like the idea of Havoc existing as something for me to attempt to climb, but likely fail. The fun would lie in seeing how far I get, and trying again when I feel like it.
The saving grace of Havoc, I would have thought, is that it gets really frikin difficult toward the top, and changes regularly. So the devs don’t have to concern themselves with balance beyond making sure it’s tilted against the players in ways that vary and keep the even the top players seeking the right answers.
As things are, though, the general balance is so poor I’m not inclined to play at all, let alone put up with the Party Finder.
This game needs to believe in itself.
Hear, hear!
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Then Fatshark ruined this by implementing Deranking, which causes Havoc Players to gatekeep via only accepting Players with meta loadouts, thus refusing to ACTUALLY engage with its insane levels of difficulty. People would care so much less about their Havoc win rates if Havoc didn’t PUNISH them for losing a lot.
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what i want first and foremost are more classic (“adventure”) missions, especially expanding the worlds of gloriana and no man’s land. maybe something “outdoors, nature”
, resembling the forests in vt2. don’t know how well that fits a ruined ecosphere though. those plants have to be rather aggressive.
a new enemy faction, like the often quoted genestealers. or at least a few new enemies, dreg maulers, ogryn berserkers and such. actually, victor magnuson mentioned in that interview that he’d like adding a new faction “if he had the budget”.
now fatshark has no doubt put a lot of work into developing the open terrain for a modest gain in player numbers. maybe that open world can be used for expanding classic missions too. tbh, i like expeditions, but it’s a chore with randoms who ignore pings and run off with the wind, so i prefer playing classic missions when i’m alone.
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I don’t think there’s anything to “win”.
We’re just having a discussion.
Winning means that someone is correct and someone is incorrect, and neither of us is right or wrong; we simply have different points of view.
Discussions (what we are having) are never about “winning,” but rather about sharing perspectives, understanding the other person’s point of view, and, in the best-case scenario, learning new/expanding your ideas through that interaction and grow as a person.
I completely agree with you, and my wording was bad.
I’m trying to avoid using the term “casual” because it has so many different meanings.
Is a casual someone who plays a game for five hours only in a week, or someone who plays for ten hours every day but at a lower difficulty/challenge?
The term casual is a terrible and rather derogatory term that has completely lost its meaning, but what I meant was so-called “casuals”.
Is there a way for us to collect a larger amount of input (maybe content creators can use their platform they do that in WoW for example) to send to Fatshark?
I’m not sure whether there’s a better solution than using in-game polls, but perhaps we can come up with something together as a community.
I understand that the forum, reddit, and STEAM forums represent a very small proportion of any game’s playerbase, but perhaps it could be a start if someone can take the lead?
The most broken and poorly designed class that has significantly harmed the game, but you are correct.
At the same time, Fatshark cannot just keep cranking out classes as balance deteriorates by the day, or they can, but it is bad for us! 
On this, we completely agree!
This is sheer speculation, but to me it feels like Fatshark wants to move on to bigger and better things.
I have no basis or evidence for this, only my thoughts!
Fatshark needs to get on this ASAP.
We NEED a new faction to evolve the game.
Helldivers 2 got so much better when they got the Cyborgs and Illuminate’s back into the Helldivers universe after we had been fighting Automatons and Terminids for a long time.
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You mean Hive Scum, right?
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Both, then. 
The upcoming class will prob be the most broken Fatshark has ever done.
vet could be able to have an unlimited number of grenades, and other classes must pick up supplies to refresh the item. And obviously, vet need some balance changes.
If you are able to adjust or improve my idea to be good for DT health ;go for it.
I can give idea how to change things but I lack bigger balance undestaning which you have and other vets have.
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I wonder how much not displaying H-rank might alter that. But of course a mod would reveal it.
Hmm … how about everybody gets deranked except the last player standing, who gets a promotion? If it’s going to be toxic, it might as well be interesting.
Bad idea. People will run away from their team just to save their own ass as soon as things get too toasty for them.
People will be punished for going for revives, while cowardly teammates who want to only farm scoreboard damage will be rewarded, despite the revive guy doing a more skilled and risky play.
Either everyone gets derank, or derank should be removed.
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I dunno. Seems to be shifting the toxicity from the Party Finder into the actual game. How could that be bad?
It doesn’t fix anything - it’s sweeping the issue under a rug.
Sometimes I do wonder why hasn’t DT given players access to more debuffs, instead giving them silly amounts of damage in form of blitzes like Kraks. Couldn’t they get a soft rework and:
- Apply 16 brittleness to main target/epicentre, and 8 to any caught in the outer radius?
- Make it either unique (as in, make it stack with other brittleness debuffs - kind of like regular Brittleness and Arbites Mk8 shotgun special shells do) with a longer-than-average duration (10-15s); or infinte for good measure/stickiness,
- Increase the stagger they apply in non-epicentre radius, so to throw off-balance any small units,
- Decrease their damage substantially (should kill any elite up to Mauler size - maybe also Reapers with upgrades), and noticably damage Crushers and Bulwarks; which would effectively make them a tool for debuffing and staggering big game.
That way they would lose merit as a tool for removing complexity through evaporation of Bulwarks/Crushers, and demolishing bosses, but instead empower follow-up actions on debuffed targets while retaining chain-stagger qualities.
Yes, it is important for the literal anti-tank ordnance to retain chain-stagger and words can’t actually describe how kind you are for maybe perhaps letting the nade kill a guy in a wife beater but only when improved, making the anti tank weapon equivalent to a 2 headshots a from bolt pistol
Now instead of trying to turn brick into a pillow while still calling it a brick, how about this?
- Lets remove Krak and replace it with something else, maybe a Rad nade
Good ideas are a rarity on this board and few in between on a best day, no need to self-sabotage the literal unicorn by refusing to start at the beginning!
There’s no way they will replace this blitz with anything else.
@Jado @dragomusic not to totally derail the conversation but I’m kind of of the opinion that both of those classes were designed fine in total.
Like Arbites was OP on launch for sure. But now it seems like its generally fine and serves an interesting niche as human tank guy with a neat little dog mechanic that isn’t able to solo the game by itself anymore either.
While Scum was different enough from the other classes in movement and survivability tech that there was a massive community wide row about whether or not it was the weakest or strongest class in the game. (its now widely regarded as top 1/2). Now that its kinda figured out that you just spam dodge on cooldown for perfect safety its kinda trite.
A cooldown adjustment is an obvious choice. Its reasonable.
Reducing max cap is also a way to reduce the power without adjusting the feel too much. You get roughly the same value per game (about 42 instead of 43), but you can’t use them in as much of a ‘bursty’ way. So if you find a grenade pack you’re throwing 4+ not 6+ and that could dramatically change the balance by itself.
Reducing the statistical chance of triggering Demo Team could work too. Go from 5 to 3% for example.
A lot of people in my circles are very staunch, and tend to go for the big nerf swings. But I favor more subtle changes personally since I want the game to be more balanced without removing the fun highs the game can provide. I’m not always right about this, but its a reasonable approach.
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