The design is gorgeous, as usual. The design aesthetic is hands down the best part of this map (and game), second only to the combat. Clearly this team is incredibly gifted when it comes to map design, which is a shame considering there are so few of them.
The story: no one cares. I don’t mean this ironically, or even insultingly - the story in this game is offensively mediocre and forgettable. The cast of characters are poorly written self-contained wit boxes that do not amount to anything, none of them have any arc, and they get REAL boring very quick. "“oOoOoOOo I can’t wait to learn what Sister Prine is hiding!” - said 5 people in the Youtube comments while queuing on Uprising.
Then, when you finish the map; you get to fight a World of Warcraft raid boss. “You heard Brunt! KILL HIM!” said Sister Prine, comically, as the boss becomes invincible for the 10th time as you have to fight off maulers, Crushers, annoying balls of Nurglesnot/Pink Goonwave and do the hockey pockey until you die. And much like a Dark Souls 2 boss, the run-back is you have to play the whole map again! That’s what it’s all about!
Please stop making “boss fights”. At least in the Karnak Twins mission the “run-back” to the boss once you inevitably die is relatively short - and that was a chore as well. Having an “invincibility period” doesn’t it make it “more challenging”, it makes it more idiotic, when you can’t shoot in a game about shooting.
Much like Expeditions and Mortis Trials, I’ll play this map for the penances , and then move on and happily forget it ever existed.
I’ll agree on the story being subpar. At best I found brunt coming in to be entertaining, and funny.
But whats wrong with the horde density? I see this complaint constantly. Aren’t you playing on auric? Don’t you play auric for the horde density? Why is it suddenly an issue with the new boss? Why not just play on a lower difficulty if you don’t like the horde density?
The boss isn’t even that hard, it just Creates an arena where you need to pay attention to how the ground molds and move to the cleanest ring. And shoot the projectiles in the air, you can even melee them.
The reason the boss becomes invincible is because everyone just got buffed, zealot especially with martyrdom and Fotf. Do you want this boss to die in 10 seconds like all the other bosses? Whats fun about steam rolling through everything with no actual bite back?
the mission being capped off by a high stakes boss fight is fun. it’s definitely not too hard or punishing, i think people need to drink some milk, it’s not a hard bossfight by any means. some of the vt2 bossfights were way way harder.
on a slightly tangential note, the story is not worth investing in to me at this point since a lot of the dialogue this time around seems ai generated. the way the ragged king speaks specifically is EXTREMELY grok. if you ask grok to create dialogue for an intimidating, quiet type fantasy character those exact sentence structures are 1:1 what it outputs
but then again, at this point a lot of people are starting to write like AI due to the chameleon effect. so maybe it was written by a person, i just know it’s horribly cringe
I’m not colour blind. The choice of colours in the game, saturation, filters, whatever make it hard for me to see where the safe zone is. Except that, a very cool map.
Fatshark makes those colour choice mistakes over and over. Their choice of colours in the game might look atmospheric, but is very poor from gameplay perspective. Everything just blends together, and this is NOT just DLSS / FSR issue.
Yeah the boss fight is very mid but I think the map design itself is pretty neat until the bit before the end. Having a pathway loop back to the start of that path was very surprising. Having the players actually use their eyes to notice a symbol was something very bold. I think both of these statements disappoint me but here we are.
I think the colors would be fine if they didn’t purposefully blend them in. Darktide’s darkness is everywhere but the floor, and no one needs to look at the floor to know where it is, they look at the objects that visibly lift off the floor in a contrast to indicate things, like walls indicating places you can’t walk, or cover indicating you have to go around or vault. bright glowing flames and big clouds of gas to indicate places to not stand in, enemies indicating something to hit.
mmorpgs can put visual indicators on the floor, because it’s 75% of the screen, with the hud being the other 25%, and the hud tells you everything else including timers, boss health, team health, etc. Even so, they still do intense visual indicators, such as big shadowy objects, or bright glowing orbs, to indicate where danger is, places to stand, where not to stand, etc.
Darktide can’t reliably do this because the floor is a very tiny fraction of screen real estate. It’s especially noticeable in the final phase of the boss fight, he teleports back into the air, with players still capable of dealing damage to him (boss healthbar at the top of the screen btw), and then places all of the indicators on the ground and activates them. That’s the type of design that will cause pubs to wipe, especially first attempts.
My personal fix would be a visual wall that separates each zone with a screen filter applied to indicate when you’re in the danger spot, having it intensify when the danger becomes active. Everyone sees the thin dark pink mist, no one can tell what is going on with the bright green floor.
which as a gameplay mechanic are actually a needed toughness refill station that comes to you.
dont know if only few people realize that but without constant enemies to hit some classes toughness refill are non existent and thus would lead to a far sooner health loss.
guess its a byproduct of yellow toughness seen as “normal” for far too long
but when you’re scattered around and not near the yellow pee stream, cheap horde enemies are your lifeline
I did not find the boss particularly hard. I like the mechanics, they’re fine.
Even from VT1, though, when we got our first boss fight in the Stromdorf DLC, I saw that boss fights don’t fit in these games that well. The first handful of bosses in VT2 were pretty meh to start with, though they did up the ante with some of the later bosses (like Nurgloth). They still feel gimmicky to me.
One problem is that they aren’t even really set up. The boss fight I think I enjoyed most in VT2, at least the first couple times I played it, was definitely Rasknitt. You wanted to kill Rasknitt! He was set up from early on. Most DLCs are like “oh no here’s a new boss - oh and you killed him.” Gotta give these things some room to breathe.
It would help if Fatshark hired a writer to do at least some stories to build things up!
