Quick thoughts on Rolling Steel

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
1

I’ll keep this brief since I’m busy.

I like:

  • Strict time limit
  • Simple and linear design
  • The environment; the train flying through the hive looks awesome
  • Varied traincar layouts
  • The dreg captain

I don’t like:

  • Not knowing exactly how long we have left
  • The minigame; it isn’t fun to want to play this high-octane mission and then have to sit idle for half a minute
  • Lack of walls in the Dreg Captain fight making it way too easy to get ledged
  • Dukane; she doesn’t seem particularly interesting at the moment
  • Doing the exact same minigame three times in a row
  • The loss cutscene; it’s underwhelming. I thought we’d see an aerial view of a section of the hive city blowing up and spreading plague everywhere, not a train moving into a black tunnel and then some explosions
  • The players; y’all suck at doing anything remotely more complicated than killing enemies. DEFEND ME, DAMNIT

Overall review: fun mission, when it works. Unfortunately, pubbies do not help it work

3 Likes
2

Kinda why I’ve given up on the level for now. It’s too challenging with randoms. I have enough trouble getting teammates to do objectives on normal levels let alone on a strict high intensity timed mission.

1 Like
3

One should be regular servo skull, one should be this new one and one should be similar what we have at the Phage Tree.

or staying alive, I have several squads dying before reaching the first event, and I was like…WHAT…ARE YOU…DOING…

Suddenly at the end it switches to a normal timer tho, because reasons!

I want her outfit. In the shop, mind you filthy slaneesh scum.

2 Likes
4

It’s a pity because I love the design and everything else with it, but the minigame added is awful!

1 Like
5

OK, didn’t wanna leave this as only comment- I love the level. It’s intense and reminds me a little of the barges from v1. I love there’s a level for 10 min period for higher diffs. The soundtrack is brilliant as ever and once you get the hang of the minigame with however sensitive you have your keys, it’s easily doable. I had a lil trouble visually with the velocity curve outside the centre- hard when ye see up to 5 moving balls with trail blurs lol. But Overall I think they did a fantastic job on this level. Just keep moving- run- and there is a strat to it if your team has at least 3 good players.

2 Likes
6

My two big issues:

1: The minigame sucks bad, and people being bad at it or not wanting to do it and taking too long for someone to get on it sinks runs in and of itself.

2: It’s possible to get set back so far early on that there’s no way to finish and it can be painfully obvious.

My suggestions:

1: Rework the minigame to be less fidgety and less of a determinant of mission success on its own. If the design team wants to amp up pressure by taking someone out of the fight for a bit, find a less annoying and fun-sucking way of it.

2:

A: Set the timer to be short and add time as stages are completed. If the team has fails early, then fail out the mission early so the team isn’t spending several more minutes going through the motions where it’s clear there’s no point.

OR

B: add a recovery mechanism somewhere to recover additional time. If the team mucks up early and you don’t want to fail the mission early and want them to complete the run, there needs to be some way to actually feasibly recover.

1 Like
7

B. I would say add an emergency brake mechanism that slows the train shortly but recovers after a short period of slow down followed with a line of dialogue that the cultists cut the emergency brake line cabling.

8

To me personally, it’s not my cup of tea.
I don’t like timed objectives in my game. But the setting is cool.

2 Likes