Musing about 'Darktide Killers' and why they didn't work for me

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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This is a disorganized ramble. Fair warning.

Not going to drag the two games often touted as ‘Darktide killers’ (Helldivers 2 and Space Marine 2) because they’re both well-made, extremely fun games in their own right.

But I’ve played both, and neither grabbed me at all the way Darktide did. And after a while, I think I understand why - with slightly different reasons for each one.

Before we get into all of that, some housekeeping:

Both Helldivers and Space Marine are, at least judging from Steam Charts, more successful games than Darktide. SM2 was the more expensive with people paying up to $100 for the game, and had a player peak higher than Darktide’s at about 185k to Darktide’s 110k. Meanwhile, Helldivers 2 was a runaway success with a peak of 460k players. Both currently maintain player numbers higher than Darktide’s with SM2 at 9.5k and HD2 at 50k. Both games have (somewhat) better monetization practices than Darktide, with HD2 keeping costs low and rotating items swiftly while the currency can be easily earned, and SM2 with a more standard season pass/cosmetics upfront model.

So why don’t they grab me?

Well, SM2 is easy. It’s a campaign game which I had fun with, but in all honesty was not drawn in by the co-op aspect or the gameplay proper. Maybe it’s because it’s optimized for controllers, but I found the combat excessively fiddly and the guns not good enough to make use of. Good game, enjoyed it, was worth my time and money, didn’t want to touch it again. Plus, it didn’t have the…for lack of a better word, immersion of Darktide. It was big and showy and felt more like WWZ (another co-op game I enjoyed but ran out of content on) and that alone wasn’t for me.

Helldivers 2…Helldivers 2 is a little harder. Because it does have a lot more going for it - a fun story, lots of satisfying explosions, constant death and destruction, a ridiculous premise, good guns, lots of fiddly bits to mess around with, and an absolutely insane cosmetic variety. By all accounts this should occupy my time. And yet…it doesn’t. And I keep coming back to Darktide instead.

There’s a couple reasons for this. One might be that I don’t feel that ‘attached’ to my character (since, you know, they die). Even the minimal choices Darktide character customization gives at least allows me to focus on them and make them feel like ‘mine’.

Another might be time. HD2 has a lot of rewards behind ‘operations’ - strings of 3 missions at random. This is usually about an hour to an hour and a half of time, and while you can do quickplay, it ‘feels’ off to do so since you’re technically ‘losing out’ on bigger rewards iirc.

A third, might, ironically, be the warbonds system, which I would otherwise praise. Every time new content releases, since I don’t play enough to grind the earnable currency, I have to weigh whether I want to spend the bucks on a new warbond and unlock everything on it. And, usually, I don’t.

It could also be the focus on what does the big damage. In Darktide, you’re down to your own abilities and weapons. In HD2, it’s all about stratagems for the most part - your primary and sidearm will not help you past a certain level or against most enemies, at least not in the majority of your damage output.

But, regardless, neither of the games that are ‘better’ than Darktide grab me in quite the same way - where you go down into a hive with your comrades, your weapons, and your wits.

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yep, similar feelings here.

only i skipped helldivers altogether cause i hate parody games with a passion.

if a game isnt taking itself seriously and gives the vibe of attracting the “spring break”(mallorca eimersäufer) crowd for cheap puns and never ending banter i stay faaar away personally.

third person i can live with, see space marine 2, but no serious tone is a serious no from me.

as for space marine 2, it aint the controller optimized but CONSOLE optimized controls.

the difference being, no matter the device, the quick time event-ish patterns like gunstrike or finishers that serve as mobile recharge stations stand in stark contrast to darktides fluid combat pattern.

space marine is basically real time-chess with move 1 as finisher from A–>B and gunstrike as A–>C result on a rail.
game takes control, auto pilots and your in hyper armor for the time be.

so you read the room,count the majoris and “make em red” in a pinch to recharge or even build a path from finisher to finisher to finisher, basically hopping from animation to animation.

what looks stylish for a few hours, gets stale cause the moment you want to play “freely” you realize the game isnt giving you enough health/armor and ignore the pavlov bells.

graphics/immersion/atmosphere is top notch and one biiiig bonus it lets me play solo to finish my challenge runs without distracting people when i wish to do so.

but after 1-2 hours i switch to darktide every time.

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I would have played more SM2 but the combat feels super boring to me, mechanics and gun/gameplay feels “clunky” and weapons feel underwhelming, i started on pre-launch with assault class+power fist and it was horrible underperforming compared with boring melta classes, i still max lvl every weapon and class, but for me the gameplay is nothing compared as how satisfying darktide is.

On the other hand, i like helldivers 2 a lot, but if im not playing with friends it turns out a lot more boring to play compared to darktide.

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Part of it might also be the characters. I drag on em for not doing an Ubersreik 5 (because they really should’ve with how the personalities ended up effectively being characters, making the whole ‘your dudes’ thing pointless) but the disposable nature of the Helldivers and the lack of mission dialogue keeps it less immersive.

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SM2 I don’t think has much going for it as a Darktide replacement.

HD2 however, looking at Steam stats, basically cut the playerbase in half on release. It’s a great product with a lot going for it.

However, it scratches different itches than Darktide. Darktide is hyper-twitch experience on rails, where your reaction speeds and clicks per minute ability are extremely critical, mobility is off the charts, and everything is happening at what is effectively a super-human pace. Darktide is a firehose of gun-fu action, but built basically like a Disneyland experience where you ride the Hab Dreyko or Archivum Sychorax rides on pre-built rails through highly coreographed encounters.

HD2 is a much more “tactical” experience. Player mobility is far less supercharged. You aren’t going to be matrix-ing your way through combat dodging and blocking bullets and blades in the same way, though you can dive out the way of a charging monster. At the same time, there are proper actual towering monsters, heavy battle tanks, indirect fire artillery, aircraft, etc, not just some bigger heavier infantry. As a result, you need different tools to counter different enemies and to manage their use to ensure they’re available when you need them. Likewise, the maps are big open procedurally generated areas with strict time limits, you need to actually look at the map and plan what, how, and when you’re going to do things.

Where DT stresses your twitch reflexes, HD2 will stress your tactical acumen. DT is where you can block, dodge, snipe, reload, slide, and stab all inside of a couple of seconds in a magnificently crafted universe setting, and tremendously rewards that top 1% edge of sweatlord skill. HD2 is where your twitch reflexes and reaction speeds aren’t nearly so relevant, but where you’re gonna have to look at the map and plan your route of advance (or advances if the party splits) and how to manage the limited tools and time at your disposal against a wider array of threats types (and realizing when not to take fights), all while being presented with some truly glorious cinematic pyrotechnics.

I do wish less new stuff was locked behind warbonds however, particularly as the most effective way to farm Supercredits is basically to grind low difficulty missions, if that scaled with difficulty better I’d be less irritated by it. Beyond that, I think HD2’s stratagems and ship upgrades are an order of magnitude better than DT’s talent trees and equipment design in most ways. Loadout variation is far easier, there’s a lot less ambiguity and player education required, etc.

For me, HD2 didn’t kill off Darktide, but it did reduce my play frequency, currently I’ve got it in rotation with Darktide and Deeprock Galactic, and these fill some different niches and make for a fun rotation when people want to do different things but still play some chill coop.

In fairness, 40k is no less a parody setting, and the quotes you get in both games during loading screens are practically interchangeable.

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That might be it. I’m not so great at the whole ‘carefully think through all tactical objectives and bring a varied arsenal’ thing. I prefer the violent first-person hallway fight scene that Darktide effectively is, where the director provides just enough variety to keep me entertained.

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I bought Helldivers 2 for £20-25 steam key, got 70-80hrs so I would say got good value out of it, ended it there. If things have changed, someone kind enough to let me know if random match making experience is better.

Movement

Limited options for evasion. Face plant dive, kite around a rock to interrupt enemy pathfinding or equipping jetpack. The worst and best player are funnelled into this restrictive movement. The limits are the same. Now look at Darktide or even Apex Legends - The limits to movement is skill because you mix the environment, jump, slide, initiate ability, dodge and prepare heavy attacks all in same scenario simultaneously or chained to maximise movement. The limits are much higher depending on you.

This is why crossplay isn’t a big deal in this game. You’re both limited in movement anyway.

Gating resources at higher difficulties

There was a resource locked behind T7 missions. It made people go into this difficulty where they didn’t want to hoping to grab then never doing that difficulty again. Why not let people earn this resource at lower difficulty even if it means earning that resource at lower rate. Guess what happens now - people going in and dying over and over due to gated resource to earn 100% ship upgrades. Imagine if Darktide only gave Orange weapons at Auric, would be disaster in random match making.

Friendly fire and host abuse

Friendly fire OK. But zero penalty here for abuse. “Play with friends”. OK more people use random match making than pre-made squads. You have to accommodate both.

So what happens is this people host so then they can kick people and can’t be kicked. Then you have opposite problem where host can kick someone at extraction for their own humour and waste 40 min run for someone.

The best game design has to think of the worst behaviour possible and create mechanics to eradicate/minimise it and at the same time encourage positive behaviours through rewarding supportive actions.

In Bad Company 2 I could easily have the worst KD, but I have highest XP per game just by being hyper focused on destroying objectives. What happens if someone made a multiplayer PvP game you get zero XP for kills and only XP for winning as a team. You will start to see people playing more supportively and as a team.

Warbonds engagement tactic

“Pay to win”. OK lets look at this deeper. Every month is a warbond, grind then get the new weapons. Very clever in that they also added caps to your resources, very low. It meant you could not supergrind for 1 month then have huge stockpile then you can casually just play for the rest of the year and unlock new warbonds. So you had to play frequently monthly rather than intensively. That’s the engagement tactic here. It isn’t “Pay to win”, it is “Pay to save time”. Saving time sounds like a win to me.

Darktide. You’ve got 20 millions dockets, you’ve got over 2 million plasteel. You could take a break for 2 years, come back and still have enough to create all ideal weapons released since then. There is no tactic here to make you play every month and cause fomo. Of course 2 years ago this was not the case with Darktide with its old RNG.

Visual

Look at Helldivers 2 maps. That is what happens with procedural generation you lose details and becomes lifeless flat textures like Ubisoft Far Cry 2. Even POIs point to point makes it feel like a Ubisoft game. Darktide’s crafted maps puts you in a mission journey designed as dev intended and alot more details.

Also look at the animations of Darktide. Follow a team mate body running animation, reload your weapon, aim, brace, weapon swap transition etc… Darktide has higher frame count of animation of body and weapon actions. Looks great, real like and smooth.

Just a different type of coop game

Helldivers 2 is not shooter as a primary game. It is tower defence and shooting secondary.

Darktide - One man can clutch, one man cannot be restricted in movement and skill is only ceiling. Darktide is power fantasy and Helldivers 2 is a team work based tower defence.

I wouldn’t say one game better than another here - Just completely different games. They’re just both co-op horde based then they diverge away from each other after.

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Darktide’s animation work is a hell of a lot better (which tracks, it’s first person so you’re gonna want solid work for something the player ALWAYS SEES).

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This is actually a good one that didn’t occur to me. I literally only ever play these games with friends, if I don’t have at least one person I know to play with, I’m not playing, they’re exclusively a form of social hangout for me, but I can 300% understand where this would be infuriating in HD2 playing solo with randoms.

It’s one thing to get randomly killed just as your friend giggles out a “sorry” over Discord for their hilariously bad throw. It’s another when some rando buttwaffle nukes the party for giggles or the host decides that no fun is allowed.

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For me, the tide games have literally the best melee system in any first person video game I’ve played, and it’s not even close - which is why I keep coming back to them. Your game can have melee as a “primary weapon”, but Darktide did it right for making it feel good to use.

I played F.E.A.R., which as a side note, was not scary once I found the Hand of God (shotgun), and it claimed to have interesting melee, but what that REALLY meant is that your half-hearted shoulder bump can smite anything, sliding kicks ragdolls across the country, and kicking while jumping gets you killed.

Skyrim wants to have good melee, but it’s literally just waving sticks until somebody falls down. There is no depth to it - nothing that’s satisfying or rewards mastery.

The depth at which Vermintide and Darktide work create an interesting set of mechanics that reward mastery, punishing you for making careless mistakes, and rewarding you for maneuvering it properly.

Summarizing your post, though, what I see as being fun for you is that you want to be unique, to do all the work yourself, and to know that the game respects your time - that you can drop it at any point for a while, pick it back up, and not have missed much.

Deep Rock Galactic ticks all these boxes for me. The overclock grind definitely does NOT respect your time, but otherwise you can drop the game for a couple of months and pick it back up like nothing happened. It’s good enough that I dumped 700 hours into it, but Darktide’s combat is definitely way more fun for me.

If you ever wanted to drop DT and play something else, and if you haven’t already, give it a shot. It’s good video games. Cosmetic DLC’s well worth the money.

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I don’t like the term “XYZ Killer” never actually saw a game kill another one , because most of them have a dedicated fanbase. usually player numbers fall and the “core fanbase” stays, heck i’m still playing a star wars mod for a 22 year old quake engine game and that mod still has 100 players daily and you will always have atleast 1-2 Full servers in EU/NA region. I also think it’s unfair to compare HD2 to DT because while they are both COOP games they have vastly different gameplay and it’s like comparing apples to watermelons.

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Yeah, I know the ‘popcorn games’ have all come around, but I’ll forever be glued to Darktide, until which point it sets my computer on fire. (and need to try out Vermintide 2 at some point).

To me the best thing about it is it feels ‘fluid’, I’ve come to understand that adding dodges to a video game will always make it 100% better, and that combined with the rest of the systems make it feel forever fantastic to play. You get rewarded in this game for playing it, which is an unfortunate rarity within the gaming space at large.

Another individual put Space Marines 2 the best, it’s just an animation simulator, an entertaining movie to play for sure but ‘popcorn’ with little substance. Helldivers is on the opposite end of the spectrum, focusing on farming ‘lmao’ moments over actually engaging the player, either through your friends/randos nuking you or you doing that to yourself or others.

Darktide instead gives you a whole host of tools to perform, the ability to craft your character how you like in multiple different ways, and then says ‘ok, now execute’. It’s melee’s have different combo strings that are rewarding to master, it’s guns each serve different functions that all feel fluid and powerful (mostly) within their respective niches. The fantasies each class provides are all rather unique and enjoyable, even the heavily nerfed Ogryn has people vehemently defending him just due to their personal tastes favoring him.

This game just has a level of depth and breath that no other game of it’s caliber really competes with, I can always be down to load up another game and see if I’m ‘asked to clutch this time’ or see what level of different reactions, movements and actions are asked of me within the next 20-40 minutes. Meanwhile I look at the two games brought up here and go ‘ok, I feel bulky, clunky, and just walk around doing the OP thing and either laughing at the enemy or laughing at myself. wooow…’.

Darktide feels like a proper ‘meal’ to continue the food analogy, you can sink your teeth into it and feel rewarded for doing so. You can feel skilled, and capable, in a game that will actively punish you for not being such. Where as other games simply ask you to participate and shower you in praise, the aforementioned ‘popcorn’.

To that end, Darktide will likely stay my ‘always go back to’ game, as I find enjoyment even now in every game I play, as regardless of how powerful we are, no individual session feels ‘solved’ to me, as while I know the tools that are required for success, it’s still up to me to ‘put them in order’ in the random way the game asks me to do so. And that plus the fluid, ever changing combat state with specials always shifting one’s immediate required actions, and team mates forever adding their own respective difficulty modifiers, make every game feel at least a semblance of fresh, even when it’s 4 golden health loons walking through the mission without a care in the world.

No other game has that to me, along with the level of immersion as stated as well. Say what you will about being ‘tired of it’, but your characters belting out dialogue and banter between themselves through out the mission is charming, and helps keep one engaged even when they aren’t in a pub with friends. Hearing the layered interactions, getting the random ‘cudos’ that you know would never have actually come out of your fellow players mouths, it adds that extra bit of ‘umff’ to the whole experience. And makes it that much nicer to return, even after a break, as you can truly melt yourself into the role, verses just being a milktoast silent mich shooty guy with no personality. I think a lot of developers forget that people play games to be people they are not, not to self insert themselves on some dude with armor. That’s what RPG’s are for when I can have direct capability to decide what my character says, not in my fast paced FPS where I just wanna be a Cadian trooper screaming “LEAVE NONE ALIVVVEE!”.

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I pretty much share your viewpoint. SM2 wants you to play to it’s tune otherwise you die, so I found it quite stifling creatively. Epic co-op campaign – and now I’m done, no shade. If anyone want more SM2 but less restrictions I would actually recommend World War Z – same developers and very familiar systems (but in FPS rather than scripted melee style).

HD2 is some of the most fun I’ve had with friends, but I would never solo queue – it doesn’t take enough coordination imo so you don’t get those amazing team moments like Darktide.

So yeah – satisfying to play with randoms, satisfying to be in your own hack n’ slash zone, and satisfying to play with friends on VC. Just gotta sort out a few bigass kinks and it’s perfect :heart_eyes:

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There is no such thing as a Tide killer on the market rn.

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Is this a Tide ad? :grin:

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I await my money in the mail!

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:sunglasses:
coming from classic / arena shooters, you can guess what side i’m on

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HD2 is never beating the allegations for me. Even when Arrowhead was doing their gigantic apology run, they still went out of their way to kill the one off-meta build I enjoyed. I’m sure the new faction is fun, but in the month I quit the state of quick play woth randoms was wear light armor, blitz objectives, kill nothing, grind nothing, collect nothing, actively ignore team, and finish the mission.

SM2 is a scam. Biggest bait and switch ass game I’ve ever played. It’ll probably maintain a higher player count than Darktide for the rest of its lifetime because it has the correct 40k aesthetic. I mean, you can play the 40k game where you’re the literal 40k guys fighting the daemons, or you can play that Darktide game where you’re an unwashed homeless person. Like, I love this game, but there was, in fact, a correct and incorrect 40k aesthetic.

Again, you could play a suspiciously mid game where you’re playing the 40k guy fighting the 40k bad guys… or you could play this factually better game where you’re a nobody vaguely fighting other nobodies.

Darktide is basically Star Wars without the Jedis, Darth Vaders, Tattooine, space ships, stormtroopers, wookies, and the Lightsaber has to be repeatedly buffed to compete with a knife. And yet somehow the best 40k game you can play right now.

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I think why dt and more engaging and is more fun long term because

It has more distinct styles of play none of the classes play anything like eachother and they have multiple ways to further distinguish their gameplay

Hd2 is pretty straightforward into using weapons and call ins that specifically counter types of enemies with the most meta way of playing being having a loadout that accounts for everything.

Darktide nails the 30 seconds of fun loop repeatedly throughout our a mission where hd2 can have a lot of standing and walking around doing nothing missions can just sort of drag on at times

Darktide has several layers of progression from talents 4 classes and gear leveling with blessings where hd2 has pretty straightforward systems with no customisability that veteran players clock anything new in a day or 2.

Maps, I’ll take an actual well made curated map over a bunch of randomly generated pre made chunks any day.

I love hd2 and will occasionally drop money for war bonds as it’s a very well made unique game that stands well above of the mainstream industry slop and has some of the best community engagement on display now after they floundered hard last year. It just needs a lot of work on it’s progression systems and work on just refining the experience as a whole.

As for sm2 I gave up before the first update and now it’s watch as saber flounder in delivering barely any content and have no idea what balance or think fun is having to smack each individual nid warrior 12 times with a power sword out of a dozen nid warriors. Also salamander sniper lmao.
What’s next black Templar tactical

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I find a lot of Darktide’s draw is exactly the fact that it wasn’t centered on Space Marines. 40k has many different factions and settings. The underhives of Necromunda have been their own Space Marine-less setting for decades, while SM’s are 2nd fiddle in stuff like Battlefleet Gothic. The Imperium has 6 different playable tabletop 40k factions outside of Space Marines. Within the game lore, for every single individual Space Marine, there are literally billions of Guardsmen, not even getting into planetary PDF or other factions such as the AdMech or Sororitas. The vast majority of the Imperium’s wars are fought and won without the presence of a single Space Marine boot. That’s plenty of space to have games focused on stuff other than Space Marines. I actually found some of the SM-centricity of SM2 something of a turn-off, soldiers of the Cadian 8th for instance wouldn’t be gobsmacked at seeing a Space Marine, they’ve seen them and killed them before.

Additionally, from a game design perspective, Darktide is fundamentally a L4D clone, a title where the characters very intentionally are not the biggest baddest combatants in the universe but rather a random collection of surivors.

Honestly, most of the best Star Wars of recent years was exactly the Star Wars that wasn’t focused on those sort of things (Vader scene in Rogue One aside).

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