On May 1, six months have passed since the release of the game. And still I have to wait for two weeks to play the mission I want, and that’s not the end, the mission I want will be on for 30 minutes and then I have to wait another 2 weeks. For example, I need a Refinery Delta-17 Damnation Hi+STG, If I’m not mistaken, I saw it once on Monday evening at 01:00, for 30 minutes, and once on Saturday morning, like at 10:00, for 40 minutes. And if you want to try to do it from the very beginning, when you see your team and decide which weapon you should choose, because for this type of level, it is important to manage the group correctly. You’ll have to do a couple of re-logins because when you log in in the middle of a fight and you want to play from the start you have to re-login, and because it takes 1-2 minutes to log in, plus while you join, you you have to wait for a while, all this leads to the fact that you have not 40, but about 10-15 minutes to try to start it correctly. this type of level takes over 40+ minutes so if you fail in the middle of this level you will have to wait another 2 weeks. FOR TWO WEEKS MORE CARL!!! just to try Carl. Maybe this map with this mods was on another day, and at another time in I dont know for shure, but it’s clear that I can’t just sit by the PC and wait 24/7 for it to show up again… Can we already play the game, developers? Please…
I mean i get the arguement for mission select, I’m just not sure why the mission and its modifiers need to be so specific. Is it for fun? If it’s the difficulty then Refinery Delta is available on occasion on regular Damnation. Is it like a completionist thing?
Quite a lot of people only get the kind of challenge they’re looking for from high intensity shock troup gauntlet damnation. Unfortunately this combo is very uncommon to begin with and often not even in the modifier rotation.
Regular Damnation, even normal high intensity just doesn’t cut it for a lot of people at this point. FS already provided a good modifier for this they just currently refuse to let people actually play it with any regularity whatsoever.
This. I don’t even look at any other difficulty anymore, other than T5, and even then, I will somewhat often go for high-intensity rather than regular or even low intensity, as it is just too boring. I’m actually happy to see that a lot, if not most players I come accross in my public games, are on the same page.
A good chunk of the playerbase already knows how to play, already knows what works, and with that, regular t5 can be a breeze, so the closest thing to a challenge is high-intensity, and if available, STG.
In short, this system is wack af, and whoever thought it was a good idea to implement this dumb live-service model to our beloved Tide game, clearly does not play the games, or does not care for the players enjoying it. I’m sure and I have faith the good developers who enjoy the games like we do, want to do something about it, but as of now, logging in and being 50/50 if you like the current missions available or not, is just absurd, especially when you can go to VT2 and pick whatever you want.
It might be possible that these limitations (number of missions and specific modifiers available) are intentional to prevent splitting the player population and increase the matchmaking efficiency (less people spread out = more people available on the given missions/content).
Still, it would and is limiting the precious player agency and the fun we can expect from the game.
Derivatively limiting the player count because part of the players just won’t engage with the game within these restrictions.
Only FS telemetry might give them (and not us, obviously) the viability of the design (including servers cost, infrastructure stability, etc.).
Checking the Steam player count on SteamDB, it keeps reminding me DT is structured and designed as a game as a service and that it might just fail like Back 4 Blood (Turtle Rock Studios will not develop additional content for the game).
Only time will tell and even if I still want to enjoy the game for the years to come, it’s on a countdown due to its nature.
Just my opinion of course but I’m pretty sure the current data, player count/retention and state of the game doesn’t stand as overwhelming success.
(and that’s from a player that’s just having a lot of fun by hitting Quickplay regularly, not bothering with what mission and conditions might come up)
It’s all part of the standard GaaS template. In the case of the map selection system, some of the benefits include:
- Concentrating the playerbase, which improves matchmaking and queue times.
- Encouraging people to log in daily to see if their favourite maps/mods are available.
- Extending the lifespan of maps/mods by limiting player exposure to them.
These things, and more, are designed to encourage player engagement. To keep the game in our minds and monopolise our available game time. This is important for GaaS, as exposure and spending are closely correlated.
Everything people are complaining about with the map system is by-design. We’re supposed to get antsy about our favourite modes not being there because (in theory) that pushes us to log in every day. The original design simply pushed back too hard, which was why one of the recent updates eased the restrictions by cycling maps and conditions more quickly and adding more mission slots to the board.
Except now there are websites where you can check available missions and armory inventory without even having to log in, which is a whole other level of fun in and of itself - don’t even have to play the game anymore!
Well done FS.
I think this is the most imminent issue. Why I can’t play what i want?
Everytime I launch Darktide, 50% possibility with dogs modifier… I’m sick of it.
2 low intensity + 1 normal damnation. This is joke…
Modifier selection is the best.(Lobby system)
or 1 hi intensity + modifier mission should be always fixed on board.
Not global modifier. Just random.
After thinking about it more this it the best solution I can come up with that doesn’t require them to entirely rework map selection.
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Give us a true difficulty 6 that doesn’t just revolve around special spam. It’s crucial that this new difficulty gives no more rewards over Diff 5 other than maybe ordo dockets. This way it’s clearly sectioned off as a difficulty that just exists just for difficulty, we don’t have to balance it in consideration of the god awful crafting system.
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Due to the popularity of STG pull it out of the map modifier pool and implement it as something you can optionally toggle both for mission selection and joining via QP. Does this split player base a little? Probably. Considering how many STG fanatics are choosing just to not play the game at all or only log on when a website tells them STG is available I don’t think it would be a major enough impact to offset the pros of this.
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Ensure there is one hi int, one low int, and one normal map at each difficulty (probably unnecessary for diffs 1 & 2).
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Other rotating map modifiers and how they come in and out of that pool can probably remain largely unchanged in consideration of the other changes. I think the main reason people get upset about STG rotation is it basically exists as unofficial difficulty 6 for a lot of people. I don’t think people are gonna mind toooooo much if they can’t play vent purge this week.
Pretty sure doing it like in DRG would not overload the servers, and would probably help with matchmaking.
Just offer the missions + modifiers on a random rotation, and let people choose the difficulty.
Then dynamically start instances on the dedicated servers as people request them - the same number of people will play and use the server power as before, they will just be playing what is most popular instead of whatever they can get.
This would also give the devs important feedback going forward in terms of designing and balancing missions in the future.
All the servers need to do is hold 1 open instance per mission for each difficulty level in the event that someone wants to join it, and open new ones in the background as they are needed, I don’t think this would be much of a burden if done efficiently.
they should do this with all conditions and allow them to compile on top of each other in an infinite amount. such as STG + sniper gauntlet added to a high int map. also allowing more precise choices when you queue for quick play would make sure that you can find people for your games. if i could choose to quickplay only damnation high int stg then i would but currently there is no reason to quickplay because you have a chance to get low int or normal and nobody wants to play those.
Back for Blood actually got some expansions before they stopped. Darktide is missing content from teaser trailers.
Chaos spawn anybody? Six months, what a joke.
Yeh central comedy in the room, does anyone remember January Warhammer 40,000: Darktide - Vox Transmission VII - YouTube
and nothing after, new boss, new enemies, remember? you have to check…
We need to at least be lag-free, bug-free and play at the level/challenge we want…
I mean, every one of them was trash, but at least they tried, right?
Worse than even a teaser trailer. Its in the game’s opening cinematic. Also you still can’t get the boxart veteran helmet.
yeah, at this point by just time gating access to favourite maps and modifiers is making community to:
- play less and use 3rd party tools to go around artificial limitations
- focus more on other games
- put worse reviews
- not recommend this game to friends anymore
- certainty not use money shop to buy cool skins
- certainty not use money shop to buy cool skins
- certainty not use money shop to buy cool skins
definitely that has reveree effect than anticipated because this is not game as a service. there is no service here…
of course reversing original design would require someone to admit it was wrong, hence getting fired… so it might take a while to get out of this limbo…
so much potential, so shitty artificial restrictions /vented
You nailed it.
Personally i am without any hope that the upcoming May content drop will be of sufficient girth to provide any real value add to us content starved players. It was something like January when i wrote a big ol’ post about how to save darktide and the core thrust of my arguement was all the bad things are mostly extraneous to the core issue the game had which was lack of content. So quickly finish the crafting system to whatever garbage its going to be and get new classes and maps out ASAP.
Even my worst projections weren’t sitting at 6 months for one new map. So here we are with a dwindling playerbase that wants to love the game but can’t.
i was hoping for redfall by arkane studios to offer nice continuation for coop gaming for me, vampire world sounds cool and i love their previous games (attention to details and story was top notch)… but it turned out to be dumpster fire as well
judging by that, and few other recently released games, that all corporate game divisions need some serious restructuring to stop releasing poor quality products
Darktide’s development team clearly has a certain passion for their project. I give them a lot of credit for creating a game that is so fun to play, even if their vision exceeds their work ethic and thus pisses me off. Hurry up already guys you have gold here and you just need to execute!
But Redfall was a funny joke wasn’t it? It seems like beyond just over-aggressive designs there may be a talent and education problem in the industry. The tools keep getting better and easier yet the game quality keeps going down and that probably has a lot to do with poor educational resources for netcoding and programming. Believe it or not a lot of stuff is nearly impossible to learn and where you might want to learn from a senior dev in the game space they usually are too busy. This race to the bottom is crashing and burning right now and we’re going to see a bit of a misery point for like the next 5-6 years I’d wager as the world economy does a backflip off a diving board over concrete.
Then some people with some vision, guts, and work ethic are going to come along and make THE BIG MONEY. big number go down for a while then big number go up.