The game has a lot of elements that simply can’t transfer between the two. If you put “spot-dodging” into vermintide 2, the game becomes immensely easier as you can now time your attacks for perfect dodges far easier during kites. If people could block overheads from crushers in darktide then holds become far easier and more dominant a strategy than it already is. You combine the two and now players are ultimate killing machines with agile feet and shields on every weapon, capable of doing anything.
Ultimately, darktide and vermintide are very much different games due to these two things. One has better blocking, which enables far better holding power, while the other has better dodging, which enables far stronger kiting. Because of this, enemies are just designed in ways that enable these strengths. It’s why ragers don’t stop attacking while plague monks and berserkers have “flurry” attacks, for instance. The problem for darktide is a lot of levels and enemies have old habits or are missing elements that make them good.
For instance, dropdowns and elevators are really dangerous in darktide. They often put you in very small rooms/corridors with little to no kiting, and often there is no way to pull mobs without attacks that go through walls or shooting towards/through weird angles/holes. On top of this, you have multiple boss triggers and horde triggers. A lot of these rooms need to be redesigned or reworked. Clandestium gloriana is one of the most obnoxious maps for a lot of these issues exist both at the very start of the map and right after the mid event. It would be a really fantastic map for vermintide, but is not designed for what darktide becomes when you take away the player’s strongest tools i.e. ability/nade stagger spam and huge dot sources. If darktide keeps these tools, the design largely doesn’t matter.
I think it’s very easy to look at darktide and fix it by largely porting over vermintide’s system of blocking and dodging. I think it would be better though if the game instead became largely focused on designing levels and enemies around kiting, making stamina a choice between sprinting quickly during a fast kite, or using it for push attacks and blocks during a slow kite.
There’s a lot of design choices that already comfort this, such as respawns for multiple players in large open areas that don’t progress forward when pushed, the ability to parkour around arenas into separating paths or having multiple paths, hordes that often spawn on doorways just outside of kite paths, ranged enemies naturally hurt these kites by constantly draining toughness, bosses often accelerate kites which become more problematic overtime, and no source of health beyond physical items on maps means this overtimes drains the player of resources.
I feel if the game stressed it enough there is plenty of decision-making during kites that enables a lot of player choice and freedom and also express a lot of skill. Breaking off to kill shooters, peeling a boss to a separate kite room, dealing with special pressure in front of or behind the kite loop, peeling to get revives, how many revives, etc. all can make for a fun and interesting gameplay loop that still remains unique from vermintide.
I don’t think the game will stress these options enough or really intentionally design around these options. With aoe stagger/damage spam being such a prevaling strat for the highest difficulty and not seeing any nerfs anytime soon to these tools, and with the new class coming with its own regenerating nades that damage and stunlock, and overall huge cc, I think regardless of changing block/dodge windows, player power will make it not matter.
