Just reiterating what everyone else said, give full mission selection to private games. It sucks when there is a really fun map up one day (something like monstrous gloriana) but we don’t have enough time to play it.
Additionally would also help if there were some missions that were more difficult than they are now.
My personal favorite example is this:
“The answers will be Yes, and Yes.”, it’s marketing bs, strictly speaking wrong, and maliciously misleading af. And it only got worse in the same post!
“final stages of testing” my ass.
I’m glad to see some renewed attention to this, especially the participation from @FatsharkStrawHat.
I don’t share the anger and bitterness some people feel, but I do agree this is a frustrating limitation and likely a detriment to the health of the playerbase.
Most of my friends aren’t capable of playing HI-STG, so the ManyMoreTry mod has been fine for when we have wanted to play a specific map. I get that it’s not sufficient for Maelstrom.
I also find that Fatshark has a track record of doing a very good job of the bits they put time into, and I’m sure they’d like to build something amazing to replace the current system with.
But, please, don’t make us wait months for you to announce that you have a plan, and then another six to eight months after that before it’s released.
A very quick improvement would be to allow quickplay to populate games triggered by ManyMoreTry. This is far from ideal and I can imagine some downsides, but it’s a step in the right direction and it requires no UI changes unless you want to add a toggle.
Another quick improvement might be to make it possible (or at least easier) for MMT users to join in-progress games on specific maps. This might make sense if it’s a compatible part of building out whatever the eventual replacement is, without having to implement something like a lobby browser.
What I’d like to see in a more fully-baked solution is a multiplier on mission rewards that varies with supply, demand, and risk. This isn’t particularly innovative. The first place I saw this was over 10 years ago in Payday 2. Heists you selected often because they were your favorites had their rewards slightly nerfed, and meanwhile the heists you didn’t like had their rewards significantly boosted. This was brilliant. It made it fun to do heists you didn’t enjoy.
They called this the Heat System and it was per-player. I think there’s a lot of room for layering modifiers on top of this that vary with the choices made by the whole playerbase.
And if we’re worried about fragmenting the playerbase with players scattered over too many maps, there’s an opportunity to address that too. Add an extra reward for joining runs that are missing players, or maybe even more bonuses for joining a run that is going badly. Allow players that are in a run to offer a share of their returns to incentivize another player to join. Require players to spend resources if they want to customize mission modifiers, or if they want to make a mission available that wouldn’t otherwise be right now.
There are lots of opportunities here to add some more awesome to the game. Just don’t lose sight of the quick reliefs that would both alleviate a bit of the pain and also show the playerbase that you’re taking it seriously.
i clicked on that link out of curiosity because 1.0.6 seemed a bit old for my confused memory, and seeing the date november 2022 made me laugh loudly.
Yep! They did eventually give us private lobbies per the post, but unfortunately whichever dev coded private lobbies has a medical condition where he or she is confused by numbers less than 2 and it meant that we can’t launch a private lobby unless we have 2+ people in the party. It’s a tragic condition indeed, so tragic in fact, that Fatshark won’t fix the issue because they don’t want to hurt that devs feelings. I assume, after all it’s the only explanation as to why it’s not an option.
also, i’m actually interested to see new modifiers or new more combos.
even though these are the ones i don’t like, i’d like to see some variations like:
mostly snipers in lights out
(would be cool to be in the darkness and seeing many laser points from snipers)
ventilation purge + tox gas
or ventilation purge + lights out as someone said
mostly scab
(the ones with a lot of crushers, in ventilation purge and/or lights out) 
and many combos that we didn’t see before
but not sure if they will actually be liked, because least favorited, but hopefully with some lights out rework, where flashlights are enhanced with melee as well, for obvious reasons, because the poor Ogryns can’t have really flashlight in ranged weapons. (but it is also not very fun with other characters)
new special conditions overall if possible would be great.
I really wish they clean up their icon system for mission conditions. They were already digging themselves into a hole in a scalability sense when they decided that conditions are to be represented with a single icon, especially when they had to make start making unique icons for combinations of conditions.
It leads to readability issues when they don’t even bother to make the icon variations (like there is no unique icon for High-int/Shock Troop Infected Moebians/Pox Gas, for example).
It already exists actually!, there’s even a gameplay video.
Here :
exhilarating. To play it in game, just turn off your monitor and voila! vent purge + lights out.
Hey StrawHat!
I’ve noticed a trend in the Tide series where a vocal group of hardcore players often push for weapon nerfs and increased difficulty, which can leave casual players and those who enjoy the power fantasy feeling frustrated. A recent example is Helldivers 2, where catering too much to the hardcore crowd caused a player drop-off after nerfs. However, their recent decision to buff everything has brought players back, showing that casual and power fantasy players are a major part of the community.
Darktide is learning a similar lesson with the recent Lasgun buffs, which have been fantastic without nerfing other popular weapons. However, the plasma gun no longer penetrating bulwark shields, even when fully charged, feels off—I’d love to see that change reversed or at least allow fully charged shots to pen.
Now to the main point: I believe power fantasy, casual, and hardcore players can coexist through a system inspired by Halo’s LASO (Legendary All Skulls On). Power fantasy players enjoy challenges but want to feel powerful while facing them—not weak, which is the essence of their playstyle. By allowing players to select any map, difficulty, and literally every modifier that exists—even exceeding the current Maelstrom limit—you could offer a truly customizable experience. Hardcore players could stack all modifiers for a real challenge, while power fantasy players could enjoy the same difficulty without nerfs artificially creating that struggle. Introducing more modifiers in the future would offer even greater flexibility, allowing both groups to enjoy Darktide in their own way. Best of all, casual gamers aren’t affected by any of this because the base game remains the standardized Darktide experience, as it should be for them.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope you’ll consider my proposal.
The plasma thing is most likely a versioning bug reverting the change as limb damage, that was changed at the same time, also made a return.
Yeah, I thought plasma was OP, and still do think it is, but anti-bulwark is part of its identity. It shouldn’t have been nerfed this way - I think it should simply have less ammo to work with.
so sad that the weapon that is anti-everything lost this feature !!
then they should make a modded realm where we can have fun
Wow. Such toxic
Hello 
ex- vocal hardcore player here 
I’d like to challenge a little your point of view. Weapon nerf and increased difficulty are only called for when weapons make difficulty go away ; and when “big numbers” take over actual skill.
One of the reasons I admire the tide games this much is the learning curve. How a new player with a level 30 optimized character with ideal weapons will get absolutely wrecked if they play on the hardest difficulties - because the most important factor for winning and being good is actually learning the mechanics of the game.
I have nothing against casual players - and there is nothing wrong with playing in medium difficulty. Once you become good at the game and can tackle damnation, malice difficulty becomes a walk in the park. This is where the power fantasy lies.
I argue that the balance of the game should not only be for Malice, despite being where I believe most of the playerbase lies.
There is a nice balance to strike that makes Malice enjoyable for casual players, without trivializing Auric Damnation, and both these aspects should be taken into account when analyzing buffs/nerfs.
On your actual points : plasma penetrating on fully charged shots makes sense.
More freedom on map selection = more ways of creating difficulty for those who want to, which leads to more player retention, variability, and overall fun.
Balance for “Vanilla” Damnation and Malice to be kept in mind.
I don’t want to derail the thread with a long argument, but I’d like to explain why I’ve always disagreed with the logic behind how some hardcore players think difficulty should be structured.
In Halo: Legendary, the challenge didn’t come from nerfing the player’s tools. Weapons like the plasma pistol still melted shields, and headshots were still effective—what made the game harder was the increased lethality of enemies. For example, Halo 2’s Jackal snipers had pinpoint accuracy and fast lock-on to the player’s presence. One shot from their beam rifle would kill instantly. Some people hated them, but I loved the challenge because I still felt powerful—my equipment wasn’t neutered. What changed was the Jackals’ lethality, which went up tenfold, making me both fear and respect them. That’s what I loved about OG Halo’s Legendary mode: the difficulty came from the lethality of the enemies themselves, not from weakening the player’s tools. That’s why I’ve never been fond of the idea of nerfing equipment to artificially create difficulty.
In Darktide, I don’t believe Damnation should be an ‘exclusive’ difficulty for only the top 2% of players. It should be accessible to a wider audience, with the base game balanced around that. The real challenge for hardcore players should come from additional modes or modifiers—just like Vermintide’s Cataclysm or Twitch mode, and now Darktide’s Auric missions. That way, everyone can enjoy the highest difficulty for maximum rewards, while enthusiasts can push themselves further with extra challenges, like high-intensity or hound waves. The choice of what challenge you want to face should be in the player’s hands, not something that forces everyone to fight with weakened tools.
Which is why I think it’s best to expand on the system we already have by allowing players to choose what modifiers they’re up against, similar to the LASO system. This would provide hardcore players with the difficulty they crave, while power fantasy players can still feel powerful in the process.
we have ways to indefinetely stun enemies
I don’t think that’s quite healthy
Game is currently a pisseasy cake walk with shout spam and stealth, plasma obliterating everything, psyker existing in general.
Yellow toughness is not healthy
Players are overtuned.
Also doesn’t help that events don’t function and spawn half the chaff, and hordes being on timers only
This comment actually reinforces the point I’ve been making. You’re advocating for nerfs to player tools—like plasma guns, psykers, and toughness—essentially arguing to make the game harder by weakening the players rather than increasing the challenge through smarter enemy design or higher lethality. This is exactly what I’ve been warning against: artificially creating difficulty by nerfing equipment, which takes away the fun of feeling powerful.
It highlights the tension between balancing the game for hardcore players versus allowing a broader player base to enjoy it. Nerfing player tools doesn’t add true difficulty; it just makes the experience more frustrating for those who like to feel powerful, which is a big part of the fun for many players. Instead of taking away from what makes certain builds and weapons enjoyable, we should be focusing on expanding challenge through smarter mechanics and modifiers, like the system I mentioned earlier.
this could be solved with modded realm but oh well lmao !
cant have shi;t in this company
bad players can stay in malice and live out their power fantasy there honestly
also i dont know how would you intend to make enemies smarter
maybe fix them not spawning first LOL
The devs have no problem with mods. Darktide simply isnt compatible with game changing mods because of how its multiplayer works.
It works in vermintide because the multiplayer there is local as in you’re the one hosting the session so you can alter it however you want.
In darktide its the company servers hosting it so you cannot alter it.
…we could have local hosting on modded realm then ?