It’s not our worry, but there’s a reasonable level of expectation here.
It took them a year and half to add 3 or 4 maps and to realize that the current loot system is garbage. While promising on release there’s gonna be a new class added each month (imo, a bigger job than designing and play-testing a map).
So, expecting an increase in speed with which content is released is most likely not realistic anymore. And if you continue this train of thought, a DLC with new enemies is either years away or not coming at all.
You can also follow the pattern of released content for Vermintide and make some assumptions as to what has been proven to work well and what wasn’t. And arguably, adding new enemies wasn’t received well at all there.
I might be absolutely wrong, of course, and this is just “Darktide is doomed” talk. But it’s just how i feel.
Games companies often work on lots of stuff that they don’t announce. This is normal. We have no idea what they have been working on, or how their managent is being affected or changed (feels like it’s changed beat recently imo). The machine god came out of the blue, given how long it would take to make a new map from start to finish. They obvs kept it to themselves for 95% of the time it took to make.
I know what you mean - and I’m sceptical about seeing deliverables too, but we shouldn’t let that shape our demands.
Also, a new faction could technically be a lot of reskinned enemies with only 1 or 2 new types added. It would still feel fresh and actually wouldn’t be a huge undertaking in the grand scheme of the game.
Up until now at least. They did pointedly mention how they came up with that “new tech” or whatever they called it for Sienna’s skeletons for AI vs AI combat.
I could see a new feature in levels where all of a sudden GSC ambushes both you and chaos, 3 way fight ensues, the current chaos dudes in the room all die, and then the rest of the level is just GSC.
Or maybe just have a single, larger than normal GSC horde show up like the Karnak mid level event, fight you and chaos and then the event ends when the horde is killed.
I feel like they were really excited to make use of that new AI vs AI stuff and this is one of the two ways I see it being used. Well, one of three ways…but the third one clearly hasn’t happened.
The second way is new pet class mechanics, either adding to existing classes or via an admech class.
The third way is having NPCs actually fight with you in some events, but Swagger did f*ck all but stand around.
Or maybe none of these things ever happen and they just got ahead of themselves being excited for their new tech they made. Which would be disappointing, but understandable depending on how much of a pain it is to implement.
There is a difference between AI/Bots vs tide (Or more exactly Player/Bot+Minion vs Tide) and tide vs tide (Player/Bot vs tide vs tide)
The way I see the Necro’s new system being used is in 3 different ways:
Allied troops: Troops that we rescue and who then follow us around
VIP escort
Summons: both tied to an ability for a future archetype (Admech with Servitor) and|or current (Zealot Enforcer with Cyber Mastiff), or to a new mode where we get to build and summon defences
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