In the meantime I have accumulated almost 112 hours in Darktide and would now like to draw a conclusion and express my opinion as well as suggestions and wishes.
One thing first: This is my personal opinion, my impression of the game.
I have played both Vermintide and Vermintide II. I also played the beta and preorder beta of Darktide and tried every class once.
Let’s start with the positives first:
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The most obvious: the visuals. The game is really beautiful. The atmosphere is really good and I always enjoy running through the levels and killing heretics. The levels are detailed and you can see that they really thought about how the macropolis is built.
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Variety in the maps. I have often read that various players complain about the lack of variety in the maps. I can only partly understand that, because the different zones are very different from each other. There are dirty, dark factories, rusty and crumbling corrugated iron huts on a sandy surface, gigantic dark cathedrals to the damp underground. In my opinion, they have really thought about the maps and the “recycling” I do not find disturbing, on the contrary, it is always nice to go through some map parts differently, as long as this does not get out of hand.
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The Gameplay. It makes me just a huge fun to fight through the hordes. The weapons all feel massive and you have a lot of choice. Also the classes can be very different, but they don’t have to be. The playstyle is very dependent on the weapons carried and you can easily try out different playstyles with the same class. For me, the game also runs smoothly and without crashes. I have almost constantly 60fps with low RT.
So much for the praise, but there is also a lot of criticism…
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The most important for me by far: A mission selection. Please please please let me create my own games! I would like to be able to set which map I want to play when and on which difficulty and with which modifiers. Why does the mission board exist? I have already opened 2 threads on this topic because I really don’t understand why this feature was removed, but unfortunately I haven’t received any further information on the topic. The mission patched on Thursday I could only play a day later because it simply did not appear and even then not in the desired difficulty.
But if I then select a fast game as an alternative, because none of the maps on the desired difficulty appeals to me…I am nevertheless pulled into exactly one game with exactly one of these maps…it really makes absolutely no fun and is for me personally the really biggest point of criticism, which unfortunately robs me of a lot of fun in the game. A friend and I regularly stop playing because we simply do not want to play the missions that are displayed, which is really incredibly annoying. -
Bugs and glitches. Despite my praise for the stable performance, I have to say that the game is not in its optimal state. I glitched through walls and floors, mutants threw me out of the map and the balancing still needs some improvement. In addition, there are objects that you can not pick up, small optical errors and sometimes inputs are swallowed. This is nothing bad in itself, but in the whole package it is very disturbing for the gameplay.
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The price system in the real money store. Do I need to say more? The prices are pretty high, mathematically badly set for the customer and at times there was even a timer. Everything has already been discussed enough and rightly so. How can it be that the crafting is half finished, loud bugs and glitches are in the game, but I have a real money store, in a game for which I have already paid money? Here were clearly set priorities that are not customer friendly.
I have left out the crafting for now, since it is not yet fully implemented…
But if you criticize a lot, you should at least make a few suggestions. So let’s get to the last big part:
My wishes for Darktide.
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Mission selection. Yes, this must also be mentioned here again, this really bothers me extremely and is in my opinion something absolutely fundamental that is missing there.
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Shop System (Ordo Shop). I find the current shopsystem, to put it kindly, suboptimal. Here I would simply wish something that is not time consuming. One could eb the store with Ordo zettel new rolls. The price could always double with each time rolling. After an hour, this value could then be reset. So you also have a use for the tons of Ordozettel which accumulate over time then times.
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More bridge defenses!!! I LOVE the scene at the bridge! It’s so much fun, maybe you could make a horde mode out of it?
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Please revert the “hold space” to skip the intro
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Please give the Ogryn some advantages concerning his “mass”. I think it would be cool if he couldn’t be thrown by mutants or free himself from dogs. He is much bigger and stronger than normal humans, but the game doesn’t really make anything out of it. I know the balancing can be very difficult, but I still wanted to include it, because the Ogryn, in my opinion, somehow does not feel as fun as the other classes.
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Please fix the cover and give the walls collisions. I’ve had it happen a few times that I could kill enemies through walls or get shot through corners. The cover in the field often gives much less dekcung than the textures show, or at least it feels like it.
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Please extend the ping system. As soon as a teammate marks something further away it doesn’t show up in the HUD anymore, that feels a bit strange. Also that you can only mark one enemy at a time is a bit annoying, especially on higher difficulty levels where really many elite opponents are widely distributed.
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Please another boss track. Do not misunderstand the current is great, I just want more of it
So that’s my opinion and wish list for Darktide.
I myself am satisfied with the basic framework of the game. Fatsahrk currently gets a lot of headwind, and rightly so (real money store, state of the game), but I would like to mention that I had a lot of fun with the game so far. I would also like to play it more but currently there are just some things that bother me so much that I just can not and that definitely needs to be improved.
Especially the, now mentioned for the 4th time, mission selection is really a point where I have no understanding for. As well as the prioritization of features such as the ingameshop and crafting. These are things that really don’t work at all.
But to let this end on a positive note: I believe, and hope, that Fatshark has what it takes to turn things around. I think they are aware of many of the things and are already working on solutions, they have proven with Vermintide II that they can take care of their games very well. I’m willing to take a leap of faith here and thank you again for bringing out the game I’ve been wanting for ages.
See you on the battlefield!
For Terra!
For the Emperor!