I love this outline! For me, the biggest core problems I see with Darktide are:
No account wide currencies. This was such a simple feature in V2 and it gave me the incentive to play the game, take a break, come back and try a new character without having to start from zero.
No map selection screen. This was another simple feature in V2 that made the game amazing! You could target farm achievements, enjoy the campaign at your leisure, or just quickplay a random mission for fun.
No pre/post game social interaction. ANOTHER amazing aspect of V2 was getting to talk to your team before and after a match. You could just wait in the keep until a full team joined. You could finish a match, take a âbathroom break,â and then comeback to the same team ready to go again. The social wheel in V2 was also simpler and more convenient than just pinging a location. Also, please give me the option to zoom into 3rd person and bob my head up and down really quick lol
No fixed locations for grimoires/tomes. I loved looking for books in V2. It was a fun way of increasing the difficulty without actually increasing the difficulty. For example⌠Legend + All books = Cata Easy Mode. I would like to see fixed locations for all grimoires/tomes OR the addition of a green aura for grimoires and a red aura for tomes. This way searching for books is easier and you can avoid leaving your party to look for a book that isnât there.
No dedicated story/lore/characters. My solution to this problem is⌠give us unlockable voice packs. Let everyone create their own characters, but give us hand curated dialogues to help immerse us into the universe. Maybe each quarter we get 1 new playable class AND 1 new voice pack. These voice packs can be purchased for $$$ and equipped at the barber. I would love to buy a drunken cowboy voice pack, a snobby rich elite voice pack, a comedic old man voice pack, etc.
Itâs not just that things are missing. A lot of these action items are âDarktide is missing this and that and this other thing!â Thatâs valid but we should also address some of the core game design problems in that everything surrounding the core gameplay is a casino. Itâs predatory and exploitative game design intended to psychologically manipulate the playerbase.
Fatshark has to speak on those issues too. I know other folks have brought them up but I wanna enphasize them because we really canât let Fatshark get away with not addressing or talking around those points.
On seeing the thread title my gut feel was âthatâs a bit arrogantâ.
However, on reading it, I agree with every point raised. Itâs a great summary of key points Iâd want looking at too. Shows I was wrong in my presumption ! Nice post.
Speaking about the âEditing all aspects of character after creationâ part:
iirc, on the modding discord a FS dev confirmed that this is actually on their to-do list, but it currently has a low priority/keeps getting bumped down due to other more important things or fixes that need to be taken care of first.
In VT2 the reskins at least had unique models for each reskin that matched the flair of the character. Bardin got elaborate dwarf things. Kruber got run of the mill soldierâs gear. Victor got slightly better looking witch hunter stuff.
Here its literally the same autogun, but I canât use it on all 3 characters that can use it, despite all 3 characters being able to use it. It is 100% the worst aspect of the game, but they wonât comment on it. The resources are also extremely annoying, like if the entire game is grinding why do I have to grind as certain characters to have resources on them at all? Come on.
My additions would be:
Official modding support implementation, just to keep tabs on it
Global blessing tracker so that people would not have to use a Google Drive sheet
More character responces/interactions based on charactersâ origin, defining action, etc. Should be no reason a character who grew up on Pavane not to be cosistently disgusted by going to the Torrent or being glad to see the sun again.
Edit: A lot more crisp and clear melee weakpoint hit/kill indication, similar to Crosshair customization mod in V2 Also at least an explanation as to why Ogryn melee weapons have torso prioritisation. As a V2 Witch Hunter Captain enjoyer, Iâd very much like to have a reliable weakspot-hitting weapon for all classes (I know Powermaul exists, but 1 weapon with a slappy special would be very appreciated)
But if say give another 6 months, thatâs really the limit of turning things around. 1 Year should be more than enough. We know itâs unlikely 1 or 2 months.
With their summer holiday, it would realistically be 4 months left after that until year end.
But after 1 year there is no way anyone can justify need more time.
Re-designate some maps so we have at least 2-3 maps for each mission type.
Currently some has 5 maps while Investigation and Repair have 1. There are mission type completion Penances to balance out.
Achievement progress trackers that actually inform you what you have left to do, i.e. the mission type completion ones. Also any use for the achievement points, I heard somewhere that they intended to have some cosmetics redeemable with it, but I canât find anything, it might have been on discord.
The headshot thing makes no sense with the knife balance, but Iâve also seen it acknowledged as a bug so who even knows if they meant it. Another ogryn head-hit capable weapon worth considering would be shovel. It has some nice breakpoints without thrust because of it, and the punch also works on chaos spawn which to me makes it easily the most carry capable ogryn melee atm.
The community has literally been begging for Fatshark to have at least an honest conversation about these issues, and 6 months later they still refuse to even discuss it while repeating their slogan of âwE hEaR yOuâ. They arenât discussing it internally, the final decision was already made months ago. I imagine they are waiting for the console port before officially telling their community to suck it.
Nice post.