Let's compare, then

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
21

It doesn’t matter and noone cares tbh, cause it’s just a fact HD2 is already more successful. You said about influencers, they were there for DT too. It is the reality.

And if you want to talk about 1 year later - it took less than a year for DRG and KF2 to make an all time high peak for online players.

Mostly yes. However HD2 has immeasurably complex things like scopes. But overall HD2 has a working concept, and DT doesn’t. That’s the main thing.

Your game could be 40 000 times more complex, but if it’s antiplayer, ingame systems poorely designed - people will choose a more simple game that just works and respects them.

2 Likes
22

:joy: Yes, ability to use scopes and change fire mode is going to replace my need for a decent mix of melee and ranged combat. I’m glad you are enjoying HD2 more than Darktide, I know I won’t in the long run (I play both, just before someone butts in with “you dont even play it”)

1 Like
23

You completely don’t understand what i’m talking about. My point isn’t about micro stuff like gunplay, hub size, cape animations, etc. Cause some things are better in DT, and some better in HD2.

This situation isn’t about influencers shilled dumb game for plebs, while elite gamers enjoying hidden gem. People don’t play games that doesn’t respect their time and full of frustrating, unrewarding systems.

I’m talking about the product as a whole, ingame systems and attitude towards players.

5 Likes
24

and I’m talking about my personal need for a decent combat mix, HD2 isn’t that, for “me”.

Every game lives and dies

image

We can defo agree that Fatshark isn’t helping themselves.

1 Like
25

I’m not saying that you personally shouldn’t enjoy DT over HD2, it’s just not about overhype and influencers.

The game industry is in such state, so just a simple fun game that doesn’t hate or milk you feels refreshing.

It is so, however some devs killing their own games.

2 Likes
26

Appreciate your touch Jan, I don’t want to steer anyone to anything. This is meant to compare the games in one thread, instead of in every thread.

The crux of your points is the mechanical complexity of DT’s combat - I can’t disagree, it pulls it off. As I wrote in the OP, that gameplay is the reason we’re all here. Good on you for testing other stuff and knowing what you like.

To perhaps start a new conversation here - Starship Troopers: Extermination is in Early Access, was marketed as an Early Access title, has a detailed roadmap and is far from an actual release. Something I feel DT could’ve benefitted from. The majority of the community’s pain points would’ve been alleviated should FS continued the open beta for another, say… 12 months. And to finish the comparison - HD2 state at launch is vastly superior to what DT launched with, and what many other games go forward with. The sudden popularity and access issues aside (those are well acknowledged and understood by everyone by now) - the game is stable, has tons of content for the 40$ mark and everything it sets out to do is done, ready to play.

1 Like
27

By what measure did HD2 launch with more content than DT did? I can’t wrap my head around that, unless you don’t believe the 60+ weapons DT launched with are content or you count the 5 or so mostly-palette-swapped HD2 biomes as “infinity levels” because they’re procedurally generated.

But anyway, the real reason I’m posting here is because I still can’t get into HD2 at 9am on a Thursday and even if I could my golshdang controller won’t work properly because nGuard blocks mouse emulation via Steam Input. The relevant thread in the “support forum” on Discord continues to grow with people experiencing the same issue. But, because it seems to be an nGuard problem that affects other games “protected” by it, the issue hasn’t made it into the “known issues” list in any of the patches. I have hopes they’ll fix it soon, but still…

There’s a comparison for ya: nGuard vs completely-disabled-since-a-week-after-launch EAC (and official mod support, bb).

1 Like
28

Ultimately, more than stuff like differences in shooter or gameplay styles, I think the biggest thing is that Darktide really is a much more niche product than something like HDII, it’s got a different value proposition. Darktide’s core market is 40k fans, and people in that general sphere who might become 40k fans, not so much the larger gaming world. This game’s basic value proposition is really about letting people ride the Warhammer-train while sporting some rad e-cosplay. The Mourningstar exists for people to strut around the outfits they paid for.

Darktide isn’t even so much catering to the survival-shooter genre hardcore people, they’re largely still playing L4D2 in numbers 5-10x that of Darktide. Now, the core gameplay loop (the ride) in Darktide is actually really awesome, which is what attracts more interest to the game than say…Slytherine’s 40k-reskinned iteration of Panzer General (Gladius), but most everyone buying this game was already a 40k fan or was at least somewhat familiar with the IP, relatively few players came into DT without any exposure to 40k stuff at all.

If Fatshark had released this game with slightly different art and another name, most of us wouldn’t be here right now, “Battlesmasher Fifty Billion: Blackwave” would have gone nowhere, and the core gameplay wouldn’t be enough to salvage it as far as it’s gone.

Much like tabletop 40k, the game is really secondary to the IP, a vehicle to experience the universe through more than a fundamentally great comprehensive product in and of itself. Similarly to Games Worskhop, that’s honestly where Fatshark excels. They’re great at the visuals, creating cool spaces and intense scenes, and evoking the feel of the universe. They’re also both known for significant gameplay/balance/rules/support/communication issues across many different products as actual games since…ever, with associated weird company decisions and painful failures across the years.

Helldivers isn’t a vehicle for an existing IP franchise in the same way, the IP exists for the game, not vice-versa. Nobody is buying HDII because they were enthralled with the lore and story immersion of Helldivers I. Efforts are far more focused around delivering a polished and complete game as a product in and of itself. Server/capacity issues aside, HDII is certainly is a far more developed and feature-complete state at launch than DT was.

2 Likes
29

I don’t give a toss about 40k, just like I didn’t about Warhammer Fantasy. I’m a gamer who plays games that engage my mind and reward skillful play. And I don’t think there’s a single other PvE game out there with anything nearing the complexity, quality, mechanical expression and skill ceiling of the Tide combat system. I’ll be Tiding as long as they keep improving these systems, like adding deep ranged combat and expanding to talent trees, despite whatever IP it’s tied to.

1 Like
30

I admit I didn’t even notice HD2 until a day after its release. Didn’t know it had a different perspective than the first game.
And I was interested. Until about 5 minutes in of reading about it, and noticing it had a kernel level anti-cheat.
Nah.

Still, pity.

1 Like
31

Let’s compare:
DT, shared among the 3 lil’uns:
(Autogun (Braced) x3, Autogun (HH) x3, Autogun (Infantry) x3, Autopistol, Boltgun, Axe (Combat) (3), Axe (Tac) x3, Axe (Chain), Lasgun (Helbore) x3, Lasgun (Infantry) x3, Lasgun (Recon) x3, Laspistol, Revolver, Sword (Base) x3, Sword (Chain), Sword (Dueling) x3, Sword (Force) x1, Sword (Heavy) x3, Sword (Power) x1)

With the variants, we get a very marketing-friendly number, but the bases are 15.
I’ll wholeheartedly make the case that these variants were absolute bloat, and a lazy copout, which for the majority of time (to this day), remain unused, irrelevant and forgotten until they pop up as rewards or at Brunt’s.
What they achieved was making the base-odds worse within the context of the crafting.

So, taking this into account, we’re looking at actually used/relevant (at launch):
(Autogun (Braced) x1, Autogun (HH) x0, Autogun (Infantry) x1, Autopistol, Boltgun, Combat Shotgun, Lasgun (Helbore) x2, Lasgun (Infantry) x1, Lasgun (Recon) x1, Laspistol, Revolver, Shovel, Sword (Base) x2, Sword (Dueling) x2, Sword (Force) x1, Sword (Heavy) x3 (? let’s be generous), Sword (Power) x1)

That’s 25. Add to these the Ogryn and Special weapons:
Cleaver x3 (1), Club, Crusher, Eviscerator, Flamer, Foprce Staves x4, Grenade Gauntlet, Heavy Stubber, Kickback, Latrine Shovel, Plasma Gun, Ripper Gun x3 (1), Rumbler, Slab Shield, Thunder Hammer.

And that’s another 18, to a total of 43 among all 4 characters. Still seems like a good number?
The shared weapons were shared in type only, but items from one didn’t (and still don’t) transfer between characters, leading to the reality that at launch, and playing… say… a Vet, you have access to 9 melee options and 11 ranged options. And that’s the generous take, I feel (and mostly because it was the most popular pick at launch.)
I started with the ogryn. I had… 3 melee choices and 7 ranged options…

HD2 launched with 30 singular, distinct weapons that every diver can equip and use at will. Add 35 singular stratagems (the Support weapons were counted above), which are also available to anyone and take 25-40 hours to fully unlock, and 5 grenade options.
Of this arsenal, everything is used at up to 7/9 difficulty.

DT launched with 4 characters, each having one grenade, one ult and one ability. That’s 12.

So… umm, here are some measures, by which we can determine how much “stuff” we got to play with at launch of each game.

Now - levels. DT launched with a total of 14 Missions, spread across 5 locations (Biomes). These were static, repeated the same objectives and are, for some reason, on a rotation?
HD2 launched with 21 Primary mission types, procedurally generated among 11 biomes (that we can see), with 7 (these are community-counted) weather-effects. All accessible, unless a planet is lost or a sector is fully conquered.
Pallet swaps? Ok. Fair. I disagree, but I can see where you’re coming from. But what HD2 achieves is a stark difference world-to-world. Diving on the Creek and then diving on Heeth is like playing two different games. On the DT front - for the first, I’d wager for the first 100 hours a player can’t tell the difference between Transit Hub HL-16-11, “Chasm Terminus” Chasm Logistratum and Transit Hub HL-16-11, “Chasm Terminus” Hab Dreyko at a glance, and maybe even by the midway point.

As to your login/gameguard issues - that’s unfortunate and yes, plenty of people are having them. And plenty of people aren’t. Let’s make a discussion out of this - why is it that one game, sporting the worst Anti-cheat, and having 3x (by the counts) the login issues, with crossplay at launch no less, is thriving, while another that had none of those additional problems, and a 40K IP, never came close to it’s original numbers?

1 Like
32

As compared to DT (the point of this thread) which has… what instead?

(Granted, GameGuard have a bad rep for a reason. I’ve personally never experienced any of it, nor am I now, but I understand why people don’t like it.)

1 Like
33

Nothing. And official mod support.

Edit: and my apologies but I cannot thoroughly respond to your previous reply as I cannot possibly compete with the energy you are spending to puff up HD2’s content (“30 singular, distinct weapons???”) and diminish DT’s (we don’t have account-wide inventory so really we only had 9 melee and 11 ranged options at launch wut?).

1 Like
34

image

You don’t have to keep up with anything, we’re literally, unironically just comparing here.

And yes, I personally experienced precisely what I wrote above. There were 3 armor sets divided among the penances at launch, and the ogryn had precisely that many options, of which I count all 3 rippers (but really, only one was any good) and only one knife, even though there were 3 options…

2 Likes
35

Compete was a poor choice of word. Match would be more appropriate.

And EAC has been completely disabled since a week or two after launch.

36

Oh, hey! That’s true!
I didn’t know. Good on DT.

When exactly was it removed? I can see Forum threads asking of it’s necessary to have it as late as January 9, 2023?

This is a good point of comparison. And leads me to ask -
If HD2 removed the GameGuard, how would that impact your opinion of the game? (apart from your controller working :smiley: )

37

I don’t have an exact date, but here’s a thread from December noting it had been disabled.

And removing nGuard would be good, because intrusive software is bad. It would also likely fix the Steam Input issues I and others are facing.

But official mod support would be better!

38

More power to ya, not hating on that, the core gameplay loop is magnificent, just pointing out that it’s essentially of secondary focus for Fatshark and the target market. The game launched with immersive detailed environments at grand scales in multiple dimensions and finely crafted character models, with early beta level gameplay and functionality. L4D2 and DRG have gone through nowhere near the gameplay revisions DT has, but one is effectively a HL2 mod and the other is an intentionally super low poly count experience. HD2 isn’t skimping graphically, but it’s doing procedurally generated outdoor engagements with a fraction of the detail that Darktide goes for. It shows where the priorities lie and how the products are designed.

1 Like
39

Personally I wasn’t talking about player peak, more about how you compare in mission flow and out of mission gameplay.

40

Bear with me, youre way better at formatting cleanly on here, no idea how u did that so nicely lol

"Consistent in what way?
If we look at the release schedule, it’s a tad slow for the majority of people, from what I can tell. Definitely too little and too slow for my taste. And considering how both games launched and the tempo of patching, I’d say there’s something to be said here - HD2 is already at patch 11.

If we consider consistency in the sense of quality - some issues have re-surfaced multiple times. Shooters having knockback was one of the original complaints a year and three months ago. It also doesn’t help that every patch, more or less, introduces new strange interactions. "

We’re on our 4th update since the new year, 51(?) since launch, that’s consistent updates, bugfixes, and content throughout just a year. A big ass patch like yesterdays isn’t something done overnight, whether there is additional content within it or not. The fact there are so many hotfixes/updates is largely addressing issues that pop up and get worked on. I’d rather the game be in an optimal state than play a new map with potential issues. It totally makes sense that introducing one bugfix, and cause another unexpected bug to happen, that’s just how development is. The fact we get regular hotfixes/updates shows the issues are being tended to and worked on.

"This is an opportunity to compare - players asked for some of these fixes 3-4 months ago. Compare this to what you remarked in the start of your post - people can’t get into HD2.
Server cap is identified as an issue. Two days later, the cap is increased.
People still can’t get in. Backend netcode is identified as an issue. Three days later, the code is amended and keeps getting amended with following patches.
Players not logging off is identified as an issue. Two days later (today) - a patch comes out to implement an AFK tracker.

This tempo suggests a dev team that’s connected and wants to understand what’s going on.
There’s this idea that FS are happy and OK to service 4-10k players and don’t really want to adapt. The game paid for itself? No. You paid for it and are happy with what you got.
Compare this with a game that overshot their projected success by about 450% on launch and is scrambling daily (not weekly, or monthly) to adapt. "

Great to hear we can play the game. I hate that I have to do this playing devil’s advocate, but at darktide’s release the servers did not do that. Even at max, it had a queuing system in place.
To compare we would need time, as if we are looking at the first month of a game’s release as a comparison of a year long after a release, that’s not a strong comparison. Server issues are huge and the fastest to be addressed, I do remember a server issue early on in darktide that was mitigated within a few hours.

Thinking about it, I would say we are both comparing the wrong things here, as scrambling to fix server issues is fast on either end, with one (helldivers) just having more issues from the surprise load. So i guess they or even, or invalid to compare.

If we are comparing the first 1-2 months, Darktide was on Hotfix 1.0.21 by january, with 14 of them bring after release. (preorder beta was 1.0.6) …or are you saying there have been 14 content drops? If so… sheesh, sucks we couldn’t all play them.

"Why is “cost” in quotation marks? The only way I can acquire prem drip is by spending actual money. That’s the definition of additional cost. As to it being shoved down our throats - I dunno. The mtx shop being there on launch, working as intended, with Hallowette’s stand being placed right next to Brunt’s (they did move it later, granted)? The hub being 3rd person? Not the most aggressive advertisements, sure. But these were certainly intended, ahead of other - much more gameplay-oriented decisions. "

Because its an optional cost on either end of the comparison. Neither needs to be looked at as actual cost required for either game. Having a single vendor with a person standing there is hardly impeding gameplay decisions… realistically. Shoving it down our throats would be something more like Fornite, Pubg, COD, things where lootboxes, gambling, and chance are factors leading to skins costing some whales $100’s. It’s nice to be able to pick up a full set (if wanted) for $12 and be done with it. I expect all games to have some kind of purchasable cosmetics at this point.

I’m not sure what Mourningstar in third person would have to do with advertising, if you could reiterate?

“Those are two very strong and interesting takes slapped together. I’d be very interested to read more. HD2’s store is a point of contention, sure. So far it looks mild to the point of being a meme, the option to actually buy SC is far away from any main menus and even if you did throw real money at AH, you still have to unlock a good portion of the cosmetics by actually playing the game. In this sense, HD2 has far less “incentive” - how did you feel you’re pushed to spend in HD2? As opposed to looking at half the players in the Mourningstar running around with leopard-print pants, while the other is rocking lvl-up gear?”

My comparison to hallowette existing, and announcing it on the launcher (so people know to check because theres no way to otherwise know since its not advertised) to helldivers, is, helldivers is readily apparent in 3 of the menu screens that you can buy additional cosmetics at a cost. In darktide there is the launcher that you would know about cosmetics from, or manually seeking them at the vendor. There is no other advertisements at all.

Seeing people with different cosmetics in mourningstar, is less an advertisement, and more just seeing people in different cosmetics in the mourningstar. Though, I am sluggish to compare anything vendor or otherwise in the mourningstar, as helldivers does not have a hub of players outside of the party.

I tried really hard to be clear with everything, but I like the conversation/thread so happy to go deeper into things if you’d like. Great thread!! Constructive conversation is good.

edit why is no one comparing the crafting systems

1 Like