@FatsharkStrawHat you asked for someone to help compile a list of quality of life improvements that have bee discussed frequently. I’m not sure if that was ever done or not, but either way, here you go! Hopefully this is helpful. The majority of these ideas have already been implemented as a mod in case you want to see for yourself.
Darktide is missing a range of “Quality of Life” (QoL) features and improvements, as evidenced (among other things) by the vast number of QoL-related mods that exist. While definitions vary, in this discussion Quality of Life refers to game features, mechanics, and/or interface systems that are intended to make game systems:
- Easier and more efficient to navigate and interact with (streamlining)
- More legible and understandable (transparency) in how game systems operate
- Reducing repetitive tasks / stresses (including ergonomics and physical impacts)
- Accessibility features for people with vision, hearing, or other challenges
- Performance enhancements/optimizations
To this end, the lists below compile and rank the priority/importance of desired QoL based on the gameplay system/environment that affect, as follows:
- Combat UI & In-Mission Interface Improvements
- Inventory, Crafting, and Other Interface Improvements
- Expanded Gameplay Features
I’m going to put references to mods that implement a given QoL feature in “quotes”
Combat UI & In-Mission Interface Improvements
High Priority
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Add more specific numerical information to the combat UI (e.g. per the “NumericUI” mod). These features could be disabled by default and users allowed to toggle them on in the options menu. Top of mind includes: (a) % of ammo remaining per teammate (rather than a color-coded symbol), (b) effective dodge counter, (c) seconds timer on Ult meter, (d) toughness + health exact numbers, (e) mission timer, (f) exact peril amounts (not rounded increments).
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Expand options for display + style of player outlines. VT2 has much better options for player outlines, i.e. actually has hard outlines (versus the smudgy shader effect in DT) and the ability for these to be ‘always on’. The mods “Player_Outlines” and “Outline Color” expands these options. Not only general QoL but also important accessibility options.
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Chat Block. When typing in the chat menu (or in-game menus), your character should automatically pull out their melee weapon and enter a block state. This was in VT2 (eventually) and should be here too. See “Chat Block” mod.
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Dedicated key bindings for tag-wheel options. The “Tag Keys” + “ForTheEmperor” mod for example allow you you bind keys specifically to ‘go there’, ‘search there’, ‘Yes’, ‘No’, ‘Need Help/Ammo’, ‘Thank You’ etc. Much better to have an option for dedicated button presses than navigate the social wheel.
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Reduce the need for repetitive button smashing. Again this is an accessibility and comfort QoL need. Mods like “Full Auto” and “Keep Swinging / Keep Dodging” can make the game more ergonomically comfortable and reduce fatigue/strain from playing. Full Auto mod is clever in that it adds a select fire switch for semi-automatic weapons to work as it currently does or allow you to hold the attack button to fire at the weapons normal maximum fire rate.
Moderate Priority
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Additional UI indicators for the following: Coherency indicators, Peril Gauge bars/graphics in addition to just the % peril, crit chance indicator. Also fun stuff like a timer bar for Volley Fire (see the “Volley Fire Timer” mod for example).
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Accurate crosshair spread indication. The “Dynamic Crosshair” mod greatly improves the accuracy of crosshairs and the degree of spread. The default game should operate the same way.
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Allow players to customize their combat HUD layout. The mod “Custom Hud” lets you drag and move HUD elements around. Really nice for optimizing your layout and making key information more centered on the screen.
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Improve Consistent Stim Icons + Icon Colors. Stim’s are confusing enough for people without looking identical half the time. Two mods, “Stims Pickup Icon” and “Recolor Stims” among other things adds consistent colorizing to stims when lying on the ground and in your inventory to make it easier to tell what you’re looking at.
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Deployable equipment (i.e. ammo boxes) should show charges remaining in exact terms. Again, the “Ration Pack” mod does this perfectly well.
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Visual Indicator (notification) for being close to Books/Skulls/Etc. While this could be seen as a cheat, I’d also contend this is an accessibility issue as well. Some people (myself included) have a really hard time hearing the sound effect for being close to books for example. And the option for a notice “when in the area” would be good from an accessibility. See the “Collectable Finder” mod.
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Expand options for controlling/disabling certain screen effects. This is likewise an accessibility feature among other things. There are a lot of screen effects (gore, psychic shield/blocking sparkles, etc.) and it can make for a nauseating experience for soe players. Allow options to selectively disable these (as per the “Clean Force Blocking” and “Disable Screen Effects” mod).
Lower Priority
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Reduce repetitive buying/selling from Brunt. It’s super annoying having to buy dozen’s of weapons from Brunt to find a good base rating one, and then go back and sell it all in your inventory. The mod “Buy Until Rating” lets you auto-sell and buy items above a specified rating level, which is okay. Ideally, when you buy an item the result window would give you the option to keep or sell the item right away. The crafting overall will hopefully further remove the need for this.
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Show player insignias next to player portraits - for yourself AND teammates! Why bother with insignias if no one else ever sees them? These should be added to the UI display. See the “Show Insignias” mod.
Inventory, Crafting, and Other Interface Improvements
High Priority
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Expand Blessing + Talent Descriptions and Add Tooltips. If you aren’t aware, the “Enhanced Description” mod is godsend for understanding this game. It not only provides ACCURATE descriptions of effects (many of the default blessings descriptions are flat out incorrect or misleading still), but also provides tooltip-like explanations of key terms and mechanics. This mod is really incredible. Even color-codes terms. Amazing.
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Display the “True Level” for characters. This was a feature in VT2 and the mod “True Level” adds this functionality to DT. Its weird seeing everyone capped at level 30 when maybe player’s have 100’s of levels on a character.
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Add ability to switch characters without reloading the Mourningstar. Trying to manage multiple characters in a session is a time-wasting effort given you have to constantly back out to the character selection and re-load the Mourningstar. The “Psych Ward” mod lets you ignore the Mourning Star entirely and manage everything from the character select screen. It shouldn’t be this way. In VT2 you could swap characters without reloading the Keep and re-joining a server. Why not here? Please add this.
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Hub Hotkeys for Vendors. Add hotkeys to quickly access the crafting menu, vendor booths, mission terminal, etc. The Mourningstar is a pain to navigate and merely wastes player’s time given the lack of any sort of interactivity with other players. Just let players jump right to the various menus. See “Hub Hotkey Menus” mod.
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Improve Usability of the Talent Tree. Principally, allow players to deselect a node and have it automatically clear everything below it. Additionally, allow players to switch between mutually exclusive nodes without having to remove all dependent talents first. The mod “Talent Tree UX Improvements” does this perfectly. Take a look at it.
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More Loadout Slots + Loadout Naming. Add the ability to have more loadout slots and the ability to type in custom names for loadouts to keep it all straight. See the mods “More Characters and Loadouts” and “Loadout Names” for reference.
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Add an option to jump from your inventory direct to the crafting menu. Being able to navigate your inventory, and then jump to Hadron to modify weapons or extract blessings, is a huge navigability improvement that is needed. See the “Direct to Hadron” mod.
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Add better options for item / inventory sorting. Crucially, there needs to be an option to sort items by type, mark, and BASE rating in a grouped manner. Lo and behold the “Item Sorting” mod adds exactly this option. Total PiTA to manage a big inventory without being able to sort and group items by blessing type in a logical manner.
Moderate Priority
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Improve Post-Mission Screen & Follow-up Options. The post-mission screen is very slow to advance and progress. Additionally, it would be great to have options (like in VT1) for the team to “replay the mission” if they fail direct from the post-mission screen, without having to reload the Mourningstar. Also, to promote more socialization, have players STAY in their strike team by default. They can choose to leave it post-mission or once they return to the hub of course.
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Improve item management in inventory. Allow players to Favorite Items (like in VT2) and give a clearer indication of what items are currently equipped by the active character and used in other loadouts (also like in VT2). More mods to the rescue on this one.
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Improve Blessing Management. Obviously this will change with the crafting update, but at the moment managing blessing library is a total pain. The mod “Blessings of the Omnissiah” adds a nice green/orange dot indicator to all weapon lists to quickly tell what weapons do/don’t have blessings you already know. Likewise, the mod “Reveal Blessings” actually shows all the blessings available when viewing the blessing library, and grays/fades out the ones you don’t have. Obvious stuff.
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Improve the Mission Board and Sort Missions. The mod “Sorted Mission Grid” simply organizes the missions displayed by difficulty and modifier and makes it easier to parse the mission screen. Short of letting players pick and choose missions + modifiers, this a minor improvement to the mission terminal. Ideally, rework the mission terminal to provide more choices or the ability to pick some/all elements of a desired mission.
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Improve the social menu / system. The social system does not work very well for promoting…social interaction. Critically, the “recent player list” doesn’t list the name of the character you played with, but rather SteamID/GamerID account names, so you can’t tell who you played with to friend them. The mod “Who Are You” adds options for displaying the gamer’s ID alongside the character name to help with this.
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Allow better customization of character nameplates to include steam/xbox IDs. Being able to see the actual player ID (not just their character name) is helpful for finding friends and making connections - and also potentially knowing who to avoid.
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Remember last selected difficulty. The mission screen should remember whether you last played Auric or Normal missions (see “Prefer Auric Missions” mod) and what difficulty to enter the Psychic test chamber on (see “Psykanium Default Difficulty” mod).
Lower Priority
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Add opinion to tell items directly from Hadron’s screen (see “Barter with Hadron” mod).
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Add mission load screen team information. When loading into a mission and viewing the dropship screen, add the same icons to view weapons + abilities as used on the ready room screen. This would be a great use of time when loading to get a better feel for your teammates’ builds.
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Add better talent tree management options. There are some great mods like “Share Talents” that let you copy + paste talents between characters you see in social menus, the morningstar, etc. Makes it so you can trade/share builds with friends in-game (for example).
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Add text when browsing the cosmetic interface for unlocked items that better describes what specific penance tasks are needed to gain the cosmetic. The mod “How Did I Get That?” does this perfectly well.
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Add Penance sorting options. It would be great to be able to filter the penance screen by completed / incomplete / tracked penances, etc. See the “Archivum Messalina” mod.
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Add an option to switch to first-person mode in the Mourningstar. Forced 3rd person not only breakes immersion, it actually makes it harder to view other player’s cosmetics. The mod “Perspectives” allows you to do this.
Expanded Gameplay Features
This final group of suggestions falls somewhat outside the realm of QoL as they pertain to adding new “features” to the game. But numerous mods have demonstrated their feasibility and their incorporation into the game should be considered.
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Add a Scoreboard. At this point, there’s been a scoreboard mod in use for well over a year. There is relatively little toxicity in the DT community and barely any I’ve noticed that can be attributed to a scoreboard (again, lots of people are using the scoreboard mod already). Toxic people will find a way to be toxic, scoreboard or no scoreboard. Might as well include one to close the loop on player performance and feedback. Ovenproof’s Scoreboard mod is excellent if you’re looking for a better example.
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Add “Live Enemy” Options to the Psykanium. The “Creature Spawner” mod shows how the Psykanium could be so much more than it is. Being able to to spawn groups of enemies of your choosing and having them actually fight you is amazing for being able to test out mechanics and character builds. So much opportunity here.
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Weapon Customization. The “Extended Weapon Customization” mod is proof of concept for how some limited weapon modification could be implemented - even if it’s mostly just tied to cosmetics. Being able to change weapon sights/scopes around add flashlights to certain weapons is an amazing QoL. It’s not only functional it’s a great way to allow players to make their gear feel/look/be more unique and personalized.
Improve the Premium Cosmetic Shop. Broad areas of improvement:
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Remove the rotating shop / FOMO system. We can handle a bigger online storefront. You can rotate stuff that’s “on sale” if you want to drive some sense of rotating sales/wares.
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Improve options for viewing cosmetics both through the cosmetic shop and your inventory. The mod “Show me Premium Cosmetics” let you see all potentially available cosmetics in your inventory (isn’t that great for helping to drive future sales?). The mod “Commodore’s Vestures Improved” lets you view full bundles on your character, see cosmetics on your non-active character, and more. Makes it much easier to get a sense for cosmetics.
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Rework all cosmetics such that each cosmetic provides a “model/mesh” layout and a set of “textures” or materials. Make a proper interface like in the “For the Drip” mod that let’s you apply materials you’ve unlocked to different zones of cosmetics. Darktide is a freaking WARHAMMER 40,000 game - you know the game where people spend $1,000s painting little figures. DT is sitting on an untapped gold mine if players could have detailed control over their look. Guarantee people would buy more premium cosmetics if they have you materials/textures you apply across other models to get a handcrafted, unique look.
Add a Solo Mode & Improve Bots. There are enough players out there that feel strongly about playing solo that the option should be granted. While you’re at it, bots in the game should utilize the equipment cosmetics of the player’s alternate character that is the highest level. VT2 did this. Why can’t DT?
Phew. Surely I’ve missed some key things - please let me know and I can edit this post. Thanks!
