Observations from a VT vet

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
1

I’ve played both VT and VT2 in the thousands of hours ranges. I can appreciate that this game is not those games, but I was still struck by just how bad my experience with trying to play two missions on difficulty two has gone.

Off the top of my head, here are some observations:

  • The tutorial instructs you to shoot at enemies or close to melee to get them to stop shooting you and instead use their melee weapons. This never seemed practical because enemies were already formed into firing positions large enough that they’d never all BE in cover for long enough to charge, or were just flat out in gigantic firing lines that melted anyone stupid enough to even try to shoot towards them. When you would finally close to melee, several other positions just have sight lines on you and you’re constantly losing toughness to 2 guys in a rafter somewhere.
  • Enemy identification is about as poor as I’ve ever seen in a game ever. A smear of greys is shooting me from a some position 80 meters forward that is just a smear of colors. Another smear of color has just peeled itself off the walls because my teammates walked right past it and hit me from the flank.
  • Psyker might as well be removed from the game – I realize the state it was in for the technical beta was OP, but the changes have made it basically a wasted slot. Paper thin, too little offensive power, slow recharge and long charge up time for head pop. I actively disliked the way this feels currently; it was distinctly unfun. I’ve failed plenty of VT2 runs, but I’ve never felt like playing a class was unfun like playing Psyker was in the current state. After two attempts to complete a level, my friends and I just decided to stop playing for the night.
  • No private lobbies is a deal breaker. Full stop. I do not want to play with a random 4th player. I do not want to make someone else’s run bad because my friends and I are on voice and want to go at XYZ pace and they want to go at ABC pace, and vice versa.
  • I realize the game director tries to keep the pace at a certain point – and I very familiar with it – but the threat pacing feels radically off. No enemies, no activity for a full 2 minutes, then suddenly we’re being shot from six angles, two people instantly evaporate to being unable to take cover fast enough, two dogs and two trappers are immediately upon us, and then a Plague Ogryn spawns??? For difficulty two?

I know this is still a beta, so I’m willing to overlook and forgive some blemishes, but if this is what I can expect from Darktide then I’m not sure it’s something I’ll be playing. I’d give what I played today a very solid D- grade if it was a school assignment; it wasn’t an F, but it wasn’t much better.

I’m really hoping you can make this one great like you did with VT2, Fatshark. I love the universe, and I think you guys get Warhammer. But this isn’t it.

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The last part specifically irks me a lot, especially because of the way they are handling progression.

I get there is meant to be challenge in the game and all that, but when you are throwing Elites at the players as commonly as regular Troopers, things get a bit bonkers, especially when a lot of those Elites you can practically stop before they reach you, aka the Mutant and the Hound depending on the map since both of them can do instant 90 degree turns around corners and catch you, so if you get the perfect mixture of Gunners blasting, Mutant snatching one guy, a Horde and several Troopers pinning down a guy every other room, it really gets obnoxious and not actually challenging.

I know the core issue is that the balance isn’t done with any focus on the early game, only late game with full skill set and all weapon types unlocked. I noted this in the Closed Beta as well. Start, pure agony because you didn’t have the kit to handle 1/3 the Elite types easily and as such were forced to mag dump, run out of ammo and then get gunned down by the Gunners and Troopers. Get to even just mid game and unlock the actual AP/actually damaging weapons like the Shotgun or the Revolver, suddenly that problem was magically gone because I only needed 2-3 shots to take out every Elite, my teammates could blast a horde before it swarmed us and the Troopers didn’t have the time to take perfect firing angles in such great numbers because you had the time to take out half of the squad before they did so.

As for private lobbies, I know I am still salty about the match I played earlier today, but good god-emperor do I want them so bad. Even yesterday when I did one solo game because the game had a meltdown for me and my friends so we couldn’t really play together, and during that game the other two I had on my team were so and so, when our Ogryn dc’d because he got killed (after getting downed twice), the bot that replaced him suddenly made the mission significantly easier.

The game today was even spicier though. A Healing Station, we have a medkit on us, 2 charges. Teammate health status, 60%, 3%, 99% and 45%. The 3% rushed for the station, understandably, with me (the 45% right behind), only for me to see the 99% go and take it. Later on, extraction, enemies coming in overwhelming numbers and everyone is basically running low on ammo. Two of them decide to rush right back into the enemy, one of them gets netted and I am calmly waiting in the Valkyrie for them to just drop since they don’t seem to realise the mission ends the moment everyone got in, so if they want to die before it, that is their decision, I ain’t failing a mission at the end because they can’t read the mission.

A note for anyone saying I was potentially in the wrong here. It was the ammo run mission. Everyone loads up the last canisters into the crate, the last two put the ammo boxes in, 0 enemies anywhere near the platform as I am blasting them before they can get up. The extraction opens up, me and the other guy start running that way, only for me to spot that he suddenly does a 180, runs back and I just turn to look, noticing that the two nits had decided to rush right down the stairs to fight off the several Maulers, a Netter, Sniper and Grenadier along the horde and a dozen troopers based on the amount of las fire I saw coming from down the stairs.

So yeah, I would like to improve my chances of doing missions by doing private lobbies when I am not playing with friends.

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I concur, what stuck out to me most was that melee combat and abilities like Fanatic charge just dont feel smooth or blend together will like abilities in VT did.

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I probably need to play a little more, but I distinctly remember in the CBT lots of traitor guardsmen with lasguns would have glowing green goggles which helped picking them out (apart from the laser beams)