Overall Feedback after 250 hours

After seeing a few negative comments about things like e.g. the loot system, I would like to add a different point of view. I am at about 250 hours and 100k kills into Darktide, with 4 lvl 30 chars. Coop games are my favorite type of game nowadays, played all of them since L4D. Despite all the problems the game has, I think i never had that many hours in this type of game, in such a short timespan. So some things are definitely done right and quite a few at that.

I must say, I like how the loot system works so far. The item shop is a good idea. You can’t just grind for a specific item, but whenever you play, you can check the shop for good items and then buy and improve them by crafting, but only to a point. It adds to the game longterm.

Also the idea with the locked perks when refining is fine, in order not to invalidate the shop too quickly. Obviously this system is not the best approach for people who just want to minmax / grind for the best gear and then boast with it by easily doing the hardest difficulty, turning even the hardest level into a boring grind. But the system is great for players that want to enjoy the game and keep returning for a long time. A few more item drops as mission rewards would be nice though and dismantling not needed weapons into crafting material would be very welcome too.

I do hope though that Fatshark is not going to listen to the whiners that complain about the loot/RNG/crafting system, most of which will just move on and abandon the game anyway, after they got what they want. This now is a well thought out system for the long run and does not need more than some fine tuning.

What really pulls down the game for many players though is the performance issues, the game is just too power hungry and especially AMD gpu performance is abysmal. My girlfriend and I can play it fine thanks to FSR, but there is a lot of room for improvement there.

Next point I saw is complains about the cosmetics shop. While I do like the cosmetics shop, I believe that the balance between cosmetics achievable by penances / playing and cosmetics to buy with money, is already now bad and will probably become worse. I did buy some Aquilas and intend to spend more in the long run, but what puts me off a bit is that the prices feel way too high for this type of game and that there are too few cosmetics achievable by other means. It is not a game where you play versus other people competitively or where you see your character the whole time (like for example in LoL). Because of that, prices need to drop by at least 50% if you want me to buy stuff regularely, but you can compensate for the lower prices easily, by adding more cosmetics and simply selling more. Easy sells and most importantly, very little production costs. Make sensible use of that and don’t rely on greed mechanics which seemingly have proven themselves elsewhere.

However, it is very important that at the same time, you add more penances and more penance rewards (skins/frames etc). In my opinion it is super important to keep the balance in favor of the free cosmetics, or you will put off players, lose sales and even lose lots players in the long run.

There are also a lot of obvious penances and rewards missing. Why for example, is there no reward frame for the “all missions on Heresy” penance? Why is there not a seperate penance line for each class for completing all missions on Malice/Heresy/Damnation? You urgently need more penances and more rewards. That’s important to keep the treadmill going. If you combine that with lower prices for the cosmetics, you got a happy playerbase which will happily buy cool cosmetics with which you can regularely update the shop. Don’t strangle the game by adding too little to achieve by gaming.

To counter the excessive loading times, you urgently need two things. For one it should be possible to check the status of your weekly missions of all characters, without changing character. Plus you need to be able to select the char you want to play, when joining a mission. So your char changes automatically when you depart for the mission and you do not have to endure more loading screens.

Another thing that would be great, is a quick way to see the achievements of players. Nice would be also to have filters, when forming a group. Make level or penances a requirement, to get into your lobby for example. At least for the highest difficulty, this is a must have in the long run.

It’s a great game so far, but in some aspects it is dangerously close to becoming problematic for the size of its own player base in the long run. The high number of negative reviews certainly mainly comes from the combination of high difficulty ceiling and bad performance optimisation. Then on top they can’t just easily obtain OP weapons (which would however kill the replayability of the game, so that would be much worse even), so they vent it in the reviews. However player numbers seem fine and if you fine tune things a bit, I’m sure it will stabilize at a decent number of active players, because you did create a gem of a game and with a good eye and much love for the detail. Feel free to contact me for more input.

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This is the opinion of someone who, I quote, thinks they

If you put yourself in the shoes of someone who doesn’t have hours on end to spend weekly in game, it very quickly becomes a terrible grind. Hell, even with that kind of time it is bothersome.

That being said, I dont dislike the system in itself, I hate that everything is random. I would like more agency, not necessarily less grind.

Coming from Vermintide, I can tell you getting reds does not carry you into Cataclysm.
If that is the case in Darktide, the difficulty curve is wrong and needs either readjusting, or more difficulties/modifiers (Cata3 Dw Ons) or both.

Again comparing to VT2, the shop here is akin to the end-of-game loots.
In fine, they get invalidated and that is not a problem - the issue I’m having with the current shop/crafting system in DT is that is never gets invalidated as there is no way to craft a weapon from A to Z.

Sorry but no. Crafting needs to be able to tailor to individual players preferred playstyles by making a reliable way to progress through weapons ; it needs to tailor to experimenting with new weapons and traits to explore new ways to have fun ; and most importantly it needs to be flexible to allow veteran players to simply get a weapon they want and built like they want it at a whim because otherwise the game get boring very fast.

The current system does none of that.

Vt2 has 19 careers currently to chose from and some 20ish maps and gets very repetitive very fast, how on earth is DT with 4 classes and 12 maps (I know more is coming) supposed to retain my attention if I cannot have variety in my builds ?
Builds are so, so dependant on complete RNG…
I enjoy reading about people talking about weapon X with trait Y and hopping into VT2, crafting the weapon and trying it out in game to discuss it. Can’t do that in darktide, and it can be because of so many wrong reasons. Weapon not in shop. Doesn’t have the property. Has poor stats.

As I’ve said before, I wouldn’t mind the shop being the first “stage” of crafting a weapon, i.e. the actual crafting part of VT2 if the shop had one tab for each weapon type and random versions of each weapon within its tab.
I just need to be able to get a specific weapon whenever I want it, and that’s the single thing I’d change about the shop.

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I would like both. More agency. Less grind. This isn’t an MMO. This is a skill based FPS game with cooperative play. I’m not here to sweat my butt off in order to grind towards a minuscule .0001% bonus modifier.

We need more deterministic based systems.

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Huh, not sure if serious or high effort trolling, kinda impressive.

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Preach, bro.

People are addicted to grind. Remember when games were fun?

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I pretty much agree. People who want to rush to maxed out gear will hate DT’s loot system, but people who want to see upgrades dropping for years of gameplay may like it. Can’t please everyone.

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Upgrades dropping over years doesnt make sense when you hit a difficulty cap very quickly in darktide. As players are finding, you can do damnation runs fairly quickly once you’ve gotten accustomed to the game mechanics.

Do people really want to grind potentially hundreds of hours for the exact same weapons they have already that are only incrementally better? 5% extra second target damage? 5% extra ammo? That’s not a rewarding grind imo.

If Fatshark gated rare/compelling cosmetics or frames behind ridiculous grinds then I’m all for it, but the current system really isn’t very interesting or rewarding for how horribly grindy it is at the upper end.

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If your goal is to get the best items and be done with it, I understand why people don’t like it.

Personally, I like that I can play with the same gun for 200 hours and still find an upgrade or sidegrade version of that weapon.

The problem isn’t getting the ‘best’ items. It’s getting decent versions of weapons you want to use, with blessings that are suitable, without being at the mercy of dreadful RNG.

This is important because:
A) It’s good to feel like you are contributing as much as possible to the team and maximising your odds of success with any mission. Imagine one player who has stacked +health and revive speed, another who has +2% experience gain. Who would you rather have on your team when you’re playing a challenging mission?

B) Trying different playstyles by using different weapons is part of what makes the game enjoyable. Otherwise, why not just have one class with one gun? If the choices laid before me all look inferior to what I currently have, there isn’t much of a choice available.

The difference between orange and red in VT2 was actually quite small compared to the difference between the best and worst (or even average) possible weapons generated by Darktide’s RNG.

In Darktide, you can’t get the equivalent to one of Vermintide 2’s orange weapons without being extremely lucky. Clearing more challenging difficulties has no effect on your likelihood of finding better gear.

In Vermintide 2, opening a chest guaranteed an item of a suitable level (-5 to +10 of your overall item power level, so it’s more likely to be slightly better than what you currently have). In Darktide, items can be generated at low item levels and with low stats (e.g low damage stat). This matters due to break points, such as being able to 1-shot an enemy as opposed to needing 2-shots (which may not sound like a big deal, but can be the difference between that sniper hitting your team-mate, the trapper escaping, etc).

Darktide’s random blessings can wildly impact the usefulness of a weapon, such as being able to block ranged attacks with a Force Sword, or cleave through multiple enemies with weapons that normally don’t cleave so well. Worse still, some blessings are objectively inferior to others, such as +1 Rending compared to +2 Rending. Currently, a month after release, we still have no way to change these.

These variables make such a massive difference to the way weapons perform, and consequently how fun they are to use.

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It’s super easy to get decent items. They rain from the sky. People’s standards for “decent” is crazy skewed in this game. You can win with trash.

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I’ll agree with you that it’s easy to get decent items, because there is no challenge in opening the vendor. It’s just tedious, unreliable if you’re after something specific and completely removed from player skill and agency.

If your solution is to not worry about gear, play with trash, or just very casually check for upgrades, I’d say that’s indicative of a flawed gearing system.

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My goal in Vermintide 2 when I got reds was to get done with the grind. So that I could enjoy the game without feeling shackled. I got the best gear about 200 hours in. I then proceeded to play for another 1200 hours, changing freely between builds and strategies, because the gameplay improved so much for me after I no longer felt weighed down by my gear. Instead, every session became an exercise in self-improvement, as I was able to fully accept that every mistake I made was my own and due to my lacking skill, not due to deficient gear.

Let me repeat that: After finishing the grind, I didn’t stop playing. Instead, I played the game ten times more because my enjoyment improved tenfold from there as I was able to constantly challenge myself without feeling tied down. The grind is an obstacle to me, one that stands between me and the ability to fully enjoy the game.

The grind is not the goal for me. It certainly wasn’t in Vermintide 2. It’s a means to get to that liberating feeling of no longer feeling shackled. Getting maxed-out items is just a means to enjoy the gameplay without feeling chained by avoidable limitations. Getting the best items in the game won’t cause people like me to stop playing after hundreds of hours. Instead, that will simply be the start for us, when we really start sinking our teeth into it for thousands of hours.

That’s why Fatshark’s arbitrary limitations on crafting are so off-putting to me. To me, it accomplishes nothing more than kill my motivation to keep playing, as I feel I can no longer escape the treadmill. If I want to play the game, I have to do so while constantly feeling like I’ve got a ball and chain tied to my leg. It simply keeps me from enjoying the gameplay to its fullest for no apparent reason other than the developer’s apparent fear that people will leave in masses the moment there is no more cheap dopamine rush to grind for.

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Agree with all of this right here.

When the grind is done, you can go completely zen monk and do solo cata, and stuff like that to improve your own skills.

This materialistic grind for ever better gear in game is just the hamster wheel of real life all over again. I don’t want it.

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It’s not even grinding. I can log in, check the shop, see what’s there, perhaps purchase something and log off without even playing.
It’s not grind, it’s a random, unrewarding shop system. It would be grindy if I had to play at all, like for example if the shop reset after every successful game, with item qualities depending on the difficulty you just beat. (That would actually be a better implementation of the shop than the current one btw… not a good one, but a better one.)

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Just gonna say this,

I play alot, i soon gonna have the 500 Special condition Frame
I have countless of god Tier weapon on my Zealot
Whats missing is the blessing changer, im buying a buntch of weapon just for their blessing in prevision of the update.

You can easly come back from work and have a god tier weapon.
Price of skin are understandable.
Too mutch thing cost too mutch plasteel.

This is a subject who come back over and over, due to different opignon.

Just be patient the game barely started on a chrismas vacation.
Most of what is happenning with the game was calculated.
Just another game who went out too early

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There are a lot of usable weapons, even without the strongest blessings. The issue lies in crafting, because changing and upgrading blessings is still not here. Otherwise the armory and buying / scrapping stuff would make more sense.

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It’s all about ingame time and it does not make a difference if you spend 100 hours in a week, a month or a year, it is ingame progression that counts. After all it is not an idle game nor a game that you should finish within a couple hours, just because you took a year for those couple hours. The game lives from people that play it continously, not the ones that finish it in a short time. Of course less RNG means finishing it faster (reaching a point where nothing improves), it is just not everyones taste and not in the best interest of the game. A hyped dead game no one plays ist still a dead game and microtransactions and income are not in a good position then. So for the longevity of the game, the way it is is just as good of a decision, as it is for playing it. I certainly hope they won’t change it just to cater to the whiners.

No point comparing it to Vermintide. I liked both parts a lot but this is a different game. They might have gotten better reviews by skipping the tide in the name. However it generated sales and the review score is inevitably going to go up in the long run, if they improve performance and streamline the game. Cause it already now is an amazing game and it sure will improve. V1 and V2 showed that they perfectly know what they are doing and it also shows in Darktide already now. I personally find downvoting the game for the reason of the crafting system utterly pathetic. But everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

The crafting does allow experimenting, it is just a bit slower, which is my point that this slowness is good. Although someone is already making a shop checker app, so people can cheese it to accelerate the RNG progress. Not that it is needed, as you can perfectly do everything with blue items, if the team is good and cooperates. I mean the point is, if you are not happy with the game with the current crafting, you also wont love the game with better crafting unless it easily produces OP items. So it’s kinda pointless to change it to tailor to those players imho.

Some more classes would be nice, but are not urgently needed. I would prefer more missions and more location sets aside from indoor and outdoor hive city. There are only 4 classes but you can play them very differently. I do not find it limiting thanks to the differences of the weapons. Even the subtle differences between MKs change gameplay quite a bit imho.

I have not a single time logged in just to check the shop. I simply check it before playing a map and buy what looks good and that is totally sufficient to progress and even carry in the game and as a very nice bonus, thanks to this system, this will stay part of the game loop very long, which for me adds to keeping the game alive. Matter of taste I guess.

Not sure why people call the game grindy. You play to have fun. You do not have to grind to obtain the necessary weapons to progress or even carry. You just play and advance. You either play in zen gaming mode to relax or adrenaline gaming mode for some action. There is literally no need to grind here, so I find it quite strange that people feel forced to grind. Sounds a bit compulsive.

1 Like

Absolute opposite mate.
I “finished” VT2 quite fast, whatever that means, and I stayed and played hours upon hours upon hours more because I could vary classes, talents and weapons at will.
Here, 4 classes is still just enough variety.
Talents are way less impactful on your playstyle than what I would have liked, and than it was on certain classes in VT2. To be honest, playing Psyker with no talents at all feels very similar to playing Psyker with 6 talents - they should be much more impactful and define a very specific playstyle (example for Psyker : there could have been one branch focusing on BB, one on staves and one on melee).
And finally, weapons, the bigger offender. I cannot get the weapon I want whenever I want it.
I cannot get the traits I want whenever I want them.
I cannot get the properties I want whenever I want them.
I cannot get the stats I want whenever I want them.
And I agree I should not be able to do that on the get-go, but again, if I’m going to invest time into the game, there should be a point at which I can do that simply to be able to keep playing the game without being bored of always doing the same things.
In Vermintide, I have thousands of dusts, meaning I can craft and reroll weapons without worrying about ever lacking any.
In DT as it stands, all of the points above are true regardless of time invested, because the shop is based on hourly randomness and not on playing, and the crafting system is needlessly and arbitrarily constraining.
As I’ve said, one could log in, check the shop and log off without playing.
It is not engaging, it is not rewarding, it is not dependant on your investment in time and effort.
It has to change if FS want people to continue to play the game, and if they want players to buy their overpriced cosmetics on the long run.

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But that the point isnt it!
Min/ Max

Its not like you win Cataclysm cause you have all Reds Gear/ Weapons. Its cause you have skill
AND ARE
Specialised for a specific Role. You hit Breakpoints but you cant hit em all.
You cant do that here. Most people didnt even notice that most Perks/ Blessings do not even work entirely still. You should have less hits on enemies, but tis always the same doesnt matter. Feats dont work sometimes aswell… still

The Grind IS BORING and is a FULLTIME JOB. Not Boring per ce, the game in its Fundamental is super nice, but its Sucks all the life outta you XD. You cant really Farm Weekly on all CHaracters. Unless you have a Week of time ready to play unmolested and are really up for it. 25 Games alone with all the Artificial slow donw in Most Missions we have right now is crazy Man. Its only gonna be more crazy with more Characters. I like to play different Classes whatever Mood im in. Sure i have mĂ˝ Main but still. Need to level em all Bud.
Unlike V2 not possible to get anything out of it if you go to work like normal being.

In V2 with the same Amount of time i have invested in so far. like 400hrs + i would have had easily all reds on weapons and Gear.
in V2 i have like 1300hrs and have practically all Weapons in Reds. Sold so many aswell to make other builds and have my Fav ones red, so…
Here impossiblke even with 4 Classes…
If we get shared Gear it would help, but even then its still not as fast as V2.

I dont Understand why the Devs are so afaid that anyone will leave this Game, lol.
We all waited Years for a 40k Game like this and they bloody cank it with stupid stuff, demanded by Sharholders and FS CEO(probably) and Games Workshop who only see Pound Signs in their Eyes.
If the games Good, People will flock there no problemo and leave their Money there aswell. But if you force it and treat Fans like their bloody stupid then you have what we have here.
KNEESHOT WITH UR OWN HANDS!

THis is a Coop Game not a MMo Crap. If i wanna play MMo i play MMo. If i want Grind beyond Reason i got play Warframe!

V2 was better in any way when it come to gear and Weapons Upgrades.
Only thing that is better is the New Blessings which are actually pretty cool and diverse for the most part if they work at one point.
Not only Switft Slaying and Scrounger or whatever. Its like 3-4 Blessing u use in V2 and the rest doesnt even matter since totally weak or useless.

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And Damnation is not nearly as hard as Cata is. Sure Cata almost (not always) required a meta to follow, but what was most important was skills. The issue I had with Cata overall was that there was no real reward to spending time playing it. But the gear was never the most important requirement for Cata which is why when I see people complaining about “perfect” items, what’s wrong with that? I’ve had “perfect” items in V2 since a few weeks after release, sure it helped for clears but it didn’t make me stop playing the game because the gameplay was fun. Here items feel unnecessary to pursue, my rating right now is around 480 for my weapons and my group has already cleared all damnation levels, so why even keep going and try getting items when it’s clearly not needed? There’s no reason at all to keep playing, this game has almost no replayability, it’s not even close to V1.

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