Mourningstar Status Report - Week 14

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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TO: ACOLYTES / VARLETS
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EXORDIO: This communication will provide an occasional check-in on the status of operations aboard the Mourningstar and progress of Inquisitorial activities, capabilities, performance, and forecasts on the mission ahead. Weekly updates are not guaranteed and subject to the vagaries of the warp.
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REFERENCE DATA: Disposable Asset Tracking Cogitator
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Alright, with a bit of fun out of the way, let’s cut to the chase: what is this post all about? I’m hoping to provide some reflections every few weeks on the current status of the game, highlighting recent changes to the game and how that’s shaking out and landing with the community, and also reflecting on where we are and where we’re going with Darktide.

Player Count Trends

We’re currently at Week 14 since launch (by my reckonings). I think it’s fair to say that with the last patch (Patch 4 / v1.0.3) the game is in a state that it should’ve been on release. Basically three months late. We can argue about feature design and level of polish, quality of life, performance/stability, etc. but at least it appears to be “feature complete” (i.e. no “coming soon” banners next to essential crafting features).

Unfortunately, these 14 weeks of elapsed time spent lost in the warp has meant that the player counts have dropped relatively low (see the tracking link above). Week 8 (and January 23rd specifically) is when the peak daily player count dipped below 10,000 and it hasn’t gone back above that since. Most of February was in the 4,000 to 6,500 peak player count range.

Patch 4 did give a boost in counts, from ~4,000 up to over 8,000. But sadly, and not wholly unexpectedly, the counts are already back to where they were in mid-February (the last two days are below 6,000).

Progression System Woes are Ongoing

As it has always been, I think it’s fair to say that the core combat gameplay in Darktide continues to provide a great experience, especially on higher difficulty levels and when players are embracing good teamplay. But this experience continues to be tarnished by a frustrating, RNG-heavy progression system that not only makes it difficult to experiment with different builds easily (it’s hard to find good items with good blessings) but also silo’s progression between characters making it arduous to switch characters.

While Patch 4 made some improvements on paper, in reality these have proved to be a continuation of RNG heavy mechanics. Much of Fatshark’s touted proclamations of “Our community is important to us and we are listening!” continues to be lip service and the needle has NOT fundamentally moved with respect to mitigating RNG. The community wants item perks and blessings locks REMOVED, wants resources (and even shareable items) un-siloed, and wants the base ratings of items to be consistently higher (e.g. 360-380). We’re still pushing for this!

Fundamentally, this likely won’t change until and if Fatshark is willing to concede on their casino-like slot-machine dark-pattern approach to progression, and realize that the core audience for this type of game wants agency. We’re willing to “grind” for it, but we want our efforts to produce predictable progress towards a desired goal, and not be subject to extreme variability and RNG-grief. If the RNG goes away, and is replaced with a predictable “grind,” people aren’t going to suddenly play less, they’ll play MORE because they’ll know there is a huge stream of rewards that are all in reach. As it stands, players are leaving in frustration because they are literally throwing hard earned resources into the trash can (that looks suspiciously like a slot machine).

The next patch is anticipated to include some improvements to the RNG system, but the community sentiment is that it’s more lip service and minor tweaking as opposed to changing anything foundational.

Mods have Reignited the Game (for me)!

Another big event is that mods are finally coming out for Fatshark, on the back of a good piece of news from Fatshark stating that they will allow modding so long as it doesn’t disrupt or impact the experience of other players. This is actually really great, and I’ve already loaded up over a dozen UI and Quality of Life improvements.

Honestly, the mods have breathed more fresh air into the game than any patch that Fatshark has pushed out since launch. So many little things are improved to make the experience better. Some of the big highlights, for ME, include the following:

  • Scoreboard Mod - I can’t believe I played DT for as long as I did without this. The whole gameplay loop feels so much more satisfying by having the scoreboard to give feedback on your performance. It’s really a game changer and awesome that a modder was able to add what Fatshark (so far) has not.

  • Hub Hotkeys - Finally, no more running around the Hub and wasting my time. This mod adds hotkeys to all the vendors, mission board, test chamber, etc…

  • Player Outlines - Fatshark teased this option during the beta, removed it, and now a modder has brought it back. Crisper player outlines (like in VT2) that are always on makes it so much easier to see your teammates during messy fights.

  • Blessings of the Omnissiah - It looks like Fatshark will be implementing their own solution to managing Blessings, but this mod is a great improvement for now. It adds a glowing icon next to weapon blessings when viewing inventory and shops if the blessing is NOT already in your blessing library. Makes it easy to find items to extract blessings from.

  • Numeric UI - Simple adjustment that adds health and toughness numbers, and exact ammo quantities to the UI. Helpful!

  • Creature Spawner - This mod adds a host of options to the test chamber for turning AI on/off and spawning units of your choosing. This is awesome, since now you can test defensive abilities, practice fighting enemies, and so on. Really excellent.

There are of course many more mods available, but these are some of the no-brainer, high-impact mods that have made quite a difference to my enjoyment of the game.

Future Balance Updates & Content When?

The latest communication hints at a large patch coming towards the end of March, with both Psyker and Ogryn buffs in the works alongside more to be revealed in the next Comm-Link. I think continued balancing work is always appreciated, even if just to mix things up a bit. While many people are finding Psykers and Ogryns to be plenty capable, those classes do seem to draw the most criticism for feeling weak or underpowered. Warranted or not, I’m sure any buffs will be appreciated, especially for Psyker that has suffered from a number of stealth nerfs in recent patches as a result of “fixes” (e.g. Deflector sword not working during reviving, removing the faster cooldowns from non-force weapons, etc.).

I think looking ahead though, what is really needed to bring players back to the game is content. Crafting was essential to not continue to lose the core, base players in total frustration. But for roping back in older players or bringing in new players, we need some new maps and mission types, and hopefully we’ll be getting a new career/class sometime soon, but that might be a pipe dream. I’m hoping Fatshark has something planned to advance the story and offer up some fun new challenges in the game. Right now, this “Live Service” game feels like a model saddled by all the bad stuff (i.e. dark pattern manipulations) and none of the good stuff like regular content drops, seasonal events, free maps, cosmetics etc.

For me? I’m still waiting on that 4th Sienna career. But despite my grievances about progression, I AM enjoying the core combat gameplay in Darktide more than I have in a long time, and mods have helped mitigate some of the QoL frustrations I’ve had with the game all along.

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I really wait for a TPS mod… not to use on all maps (i mean here all difficulties), but to take pleasure to see my char :slight_smile:

I totally agree about the lack of content, and when I have read big patch, I have the tentation to think that it is what they will address by it.

I also agree about the buff for psyker. For Ogryn, this is a tank, and as a tank it is a really good class. So, I am not sure it needs a real buff… I started to play it, and I really love it now (at start it was difficult to like this gameplay that is so… slow).

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Ogryn doesn’t really need buffs. His melee weapons need to have working headshot priority, that fixes Mk IV cleaver. Give Mk VI cleaver the animation speed buff for heavies Mk VI got since that is the only point to this weapon on paper (2 vanguard heavies) they just loop too slowly to be useful. Bully could literally do 40% more hit damage cleave and not step on any of his melee weapon’s toes its that bad second target damage atm. Shovel could use more hitmass in a swing even if they fix Brutal Momentum to actually affect more than the Special and Heavy 1. 3 targets per L1/L2/push is weaksauce for an Ogryn weapon, particularly one you’re sweeping from one end of the screen to another. Also, as a ‘jab’ single target attack at the end of the combo, shovel L3 is complete garbage compared to bully L3 or even p.maul L1/L2. Its one of the only single target Ogryn melee attacks that even manages to pack terrible carapace damage. It feels bugged.

As for ranged, Mk 6 Ripper needs the damage scale of Mk 2. All Rippers could use another magazine or reload reserves adjusted to where they get like 40 rounds back from a small pick up. Stubber trigger delay is disgusting and needs to leave, no response gameplay is the worst kind of ‘sluggish feeling’ programming you can make. It makes me physically ill pressing the button and waiting.

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Nice post, vwry well done.

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What story?

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The gripping narrative and story of trying to figure out, among the cast of characters, who the traitor was. And after killing 10,000 heretics they think it could be a really committed deep cover to sabotage the room full of rejects and handful of warband members as a double agent. And then finding out the traitor was no one you possibly could have guessed! Breaking the mystery tropes.

Honestly I would have been impressed if the twist was you were in fact the traitor. Sometimes when I play 40K I think my character has cybernetics and these gross pox walkers I am killing are just regular citizens trying to fight the oppressive imperium, and the whole chaos thing is just propaganda.

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Honestly I think the worst part about it for me is that you don’t even take part in the story. Your character never talks in cutscenes outside of the tutorial, none of the missions are about it, and none of the characters ever talk about it

This is a cool and interesting concept but I don’t think it would’ve worked here just because they want to keep adding content to the game, and that really wouldn’t make sense if you were a confirmed traitor.

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Thanks for the post! This is great and you have nailed it

The Blessings of Omnissiah was a good edition to the game but far from perfect. Brunts armory is frustrating with the range of modifier scores that you receive especially considering the cost.

Melk’s store sometimes has items with decent blessings as a reason to purchase them and the weeklies are easier to complete.

The regular armory is normally only trash tier as far as item modifiers and blessings go.

Once you have ripped all the blessings you had been saving up, there is really no good way to obtain higher level blessings or even know what the blessings you don’t have even are and that just shows you how rare they are. This pending update which will identify the blessings you have (and don’t have) is going to make it worse as you see these blessings you don’t have and there’s no reliable way of obtaining them (contract board would make sense here).

The only way I have found to get t4 blessings (other than the very random Melk trash item with a good blessing) has been to upgrade items through consecration but that road is beset with tremendous RNG to even get an item worth consecrating to transcendent.

The Emperor’s Gifts, even for completion of high intensity damnation missions are often not useful in any way.

This is why, imo the player counts have yet again plateaued and we aren’t seeing the return of allot of the initial player base .

Keep up the work on these reports I look forward to the next one!

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This is the crux of the frustrating part. There’s whole schools of thought emerging on the most optimal way to game their stupid casino RNG system to get blessings you want on a decent weapon.

Among the pipelines:

  1. Funnel ordo dockets into buying grey or green items with a high enough base rating that that can be upgraded to a blue with a Tier3/4 blessing you want.

  2. Throw ordo dockets away gambling on a grey items from Brunt that are a high enough base rating.

  3. Pray to extreme RNG gods for an Emperor’s reward at the end of a mission with stuff you want. Need to run Heresy missions at a minimum. No sense on how difficulty and secondary’s impacts rewards yet.

  4. Check Melk’s shop every day for items with good blessings to extract.

In theory, if my goal is “getting good blessings for all item types” and I know what to look for, I’ll be buying high rating items of all types to stockpile for future consecration in the hopes of getting a higher level blessing I want.

The issue I have, is that no matter how much I play…

…I’m bottlenecked by Ordo Dockets now, limiting how fast I can buy greens/gray from the stores.

… I’m bottlenecked by Melk Money (thankfully weeklies are obtainable again!) because you don’t get that much more each week than an item costs, so you’re basically hard-capped on how much you can get from Melk each weak, even if you could play more. Seriously sucks.

… I’m bottlenecked by Plasteel, as I burn it all upgrading greys/greens to blues. I have to save strategically to upgrade a purple to orange, but it’s not worth doing that unless I have blessings already lined up to swap in if I get a junk choice or if I don’t care about the item and plan to extract a blessing from it anyway.

Ugh.

It’s designed to never be able to get ahead, and it’s compounded and made worse by the inability to share materials between characters.

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This is where I’m at right now. I’m so tired of burning through all my ducats to get one profane item to be worth upgrading, only to get some tier 2 perk or tier 1 blessing that just means I have to start the cycle all over again. Its brutal.

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Only today did I realize there was a blessing on T hammer called Slaughterer and its one of the only ones that makes T hammer usable.

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Was farming axes on Vet, got a 379 one that rolled limbsplitter 2…was very upset!

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I last started the game on January 12, and that was only because of the poll, which for reasons I don’t understand was only available there. Honestly, crafting doesn’t excite me at all and therefore doesn’t move me to return, it took everything I already hated in Vermintide and made it even worse #RNG. And even if you ignore that, because the weapon strength/composition are more or less meaningless to play the game on Damnation anyway, there is still this frustrating hub, barely attainable content, lack of lategame motivations, few maps, the same mutators over and over again, and all of this is set against an overabundance of purchasable content, which honestly only made my mood worse every time I checked the store. Unfortunately, no QoL mods will help (which is even more sad since it doesn’t come from the developers themselves… but that was to be expected). So for the life of me I can’t explain what keeps the remaining people going… unless you’re really big in the casino weapons business.

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Slaughterer is one of the better weapon melee blessings and I didn’t know you could get it on a Thunder Hammer either until I ready your post!

:sob: omg I have gotten that before on axes too…literally wtf

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Darktide will remain a dead game until content begins to release at a pace sufficient to entrance the runaway players and entice new players.

I look forwards to that day.

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The “core combat” is mostly tarnished by having to mash your key 6 times for the game to acknowledge you swapped your weapon, at which point you already got mauled

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