I can easily excuse how there aren’t things like multiple subclasses for each character at launch like Vermintide 2 (yet at least). Or even a more refined crafting system in it (again, yet). Crossplay (yet, but seriously tackle this sooner than later for the sake of the game!)
However, the one thing I stare at and wonder for: Why wasn’t this ported over? are hotkeys to do things like… Join a game, Go to shop, Refine items. Instead, we have to run from start point to end point… for everywhere.
The lobby everyone roams around in, beautifully 40k and immersive. Having to run to the console to join the next game every single time. It gets old. This feature seems like such an easy lift compared to everything else.
I’m just curious: how DIDN’T that design get ported over from Vermintide 2 to Darktide?
Forced to share the hub with random players so you can look at their real money store skins. Forced third person perspective so you can look at your own real money skin. Real money store is the closest one to the store area, unavoidable on the way to mission select, also on the way to every other shop. Also placed so that if you go to the weapon store then crafting or contracts, you have to pass by it once more.
Being able to enter mission select, crafting, or the store wherever you stand would mean that you’re passing by the premium store less, and you’re also less exposed to other players’ paid skins in terms of time.
Super simple stuff!
Did you know there’s a hotkey to access the cash shop. You also can access it via character select. And you can access it via start menu. Hmm. Really makes you think about where the priorities lie with this developer.
In the beta, Fatshark had planned to spawn us closer to the mission terminal as a fix to the run back to the board and were brainstorming other alternatives. I remember wondering and questioning why hotkeys weren’t considered, sadly there’s no other explanation than premium cosmetics.
At first I thought there was a legitimate design intent that served to better the game. Maybe something I missed that they were trying to achieve with Darktide that sought to improve the 'tide formula. However, upon closer inspection, you look at the mechanics, classes, features, even how you acquire loot by itself, and you realize how incomplete, unsatisfying, it all is. There’s no grand design there in which the game is striving for. Just an unfinished product cynically manufactured to drive engagement while turning players into payers.
For Pete’s sake, this is the first developer who has ever used the term ‘siloing’ when describing players desire to level up other characters.
I have an alternative for “why always the hub and why everything requires hub reload”. The power companies are minor sponsors of the DT - and since each hub loading takes at least 30-45 secs, it means more profit for them.
I think every other point you make is on point, and I may be misreading how you’ve written this here, but if you’re going straight to mission select from spawn-in, the real-money store isn’t on that corridor. From spawn, to get to mission select you go straight ahead and melk is on your right and an empty stall to your left. The real money store is beyond that.
If you want to go to the weapon store before mission select then yes, you do have to go past the real money store, that is correct. And the positioning of the real money store before you get to the weapon store and the barber for cosmetic changes does feel very deliberate.
