Runting about the state of Darktide

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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It’s been brewing in me for so long that it’s time to let it out. This is the first time in my life I’m writing something on a forum + English is not my native language, so thank you for your patience.
I love this game. I’ve been playing games all my life, and I’ve never left any reviews for any game in my life, so that’s saying something.

It pains me to look at the state of Darktide today. This game has all the potential to become one of the best horde shooters, as well as one of the best warhammer games (the best is Rogue trader, sorry), but so many factors hinder it that it hurts to look at it. It’s like a caterpillar in a cocoon, about to become a butterfly, but for one reason or another it just stayed in the cocoon. Next are a few items, sorted by importance in descending order, that the Fatshark should consider and do something about if they want this game to flourish.

1.Performance and connection.
You can make the coolest idea come true, come up with mind-blowing levels, enemy designs, skill effects, and so on, but it’s not worth a damn if you don’t optimize the whole thing. Read the Fatshark forum, read the discussions in steam, and even in the in-game chat. People complain about performance. From the very launch of the game to the present day. This is crazy. I have a gaming laptop, 4070, 16 GB of RAM, fps jumps like it’s stung in the ass, with dlss and frame generation enabled. No one will care about your new class on December 2nd if people see 30 frames in the game. Look at the Helldivers 2.

The connection is not lagging behind here either. Drop outs, lags, crashes during missions, etc. Some people literally can’t log into the game because of some server errors (taken from discussions in steam). I understand that this is a multiplayer game and it is impossible to bring it to perfection, someone will always have lags, crashes, and so on, but at least significantly reduce these cases, please, Fatshark.

  1. Content.
    I have a strong feeling that in less than two years of support, Arrowhead and Saber interactive in a year of support have made much more content for their games than Fatshark has done in three years of support. Not a single new card in a YEAR??? One new enemy in a year? And then it’s a long-range version of a dude with a shotgun… A whole new operation will be released on December 2nd!!! It will probably take a whole 8 minutes to complete! I’m not even sure if the new class will be released on December 2nd. I really hope that I’m wrong, and on December 2nd, a new class will be released, and the operation will be comparable to a new mission, and a new enemy faction will be introduced in this operation. Honestly, I would like it so much, but I understand that the probability of this tends to zero.

By the way, what is this thing about two classes with a difference of 4-5 months? Call me a conspiracy theory fan, but I’m more than sure that adding arbitrators is entirely GW’s initiative. The addition of arbitrators completely destroys the original concept of 4 nonames, some misfits that were beaten off their heads, which no one cared about. If the new class is a hive gangster (Mr. E’s arguments are too strong, sorry), then this fits much better into the original idea + plus it fits into the current lore. Most likely, this new class was originally supposed to be the first new class.

So about content. Please, Fatshark, give us some new content. New weapons for each class, new enemies, new bosses, new enemy faction, NEW MAPS!!! Seriously, I strongly believe that I can run through each mission presented in the game BLINDLY. I would gladly exchange the new class for 4-5 new maps. Give us the end game content. Something for which you could stay in this game for hundreds of hours. Prestige levels, so that each subsequent level after 30 adds a tiny part of your stats, or somehow improves your existing talents. Give us the opportunity to grind resources in order to increase the characteristics of weapons higher 80%. Give us a bunch of new cosmetics, which you will be given only after killing a boss or clearing a particular map 20 times (a terrible idea, you don’t have to do it specifically, but I hope the direction of thought is clear). In a multiplayer game with live-service mode, this game is stunningly empty and has nothing to do. I spent almost 857 hours in this game, mostly just because of the incredible core gameplay. I’ll spend the same amount of time or more if I see that there is life in this game. How many people left thinking it was a dead game, I don’t even want to think about it.

Separately, I want to write about the fact that the idea of trust levels instead of standard levels is very cool, but it is absolutely not implemented in the game. You can do a lot of different things with this idea. For example, until we reach level 30 of trust, we cannot choose missions on our own, but when we reach level 30, the maximum, we earned some degree of trust and respect, and therefore we are allowed to choose missions on our own. Or, as you level up, you can refresh your weapons in the store yourself, rather than waiting an hour. Or open access to some special relics that give a bonus to the characteristics. Or if you increase your trust level, you will have access to audio recordings that you have posted on YouTube or you will have access to some piece of lore that you did not know before. or some special modifications to the missions, some special interactions with NPCs. ANYTHING AT ALL.

  1. Social interaction.
    I’ve been marveling at this for as long as this game has existed. A cooperative game where you constantly interact with other people, but there is no interaction whatsoever. We have an emotion wheel, but I don’t remember ever using it. And why can they only be used in the hub? And why is the hub so hollow and empty? Give us each a private cabin so that we can decorate it to our liking.

Better yet, make something like a canteen/tavern where all the operatives could gather, sit, eat, drink, and play cards. To chat. Where basically all social interactions would take place. You literally have this location shown in this trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fi87A9EK37o. Give us the opportunity to clean weapons in this tavern, and that it gives some small percentage of the stats. Please, Fatshark, a tavern would be a stunning addition. In Deep rock galactic, you can drink, dance, play mini-games, and do all sorts of mini-things in the hub. Yes, they are not important for gameplay (except for beer), but they add a lot of immersiveness.

I’m sorry that by the end everything had descended into some kind of chaotic stream of thoughts (please don’t shoot). All I want is for the game to finally take on some kind of stable content development flow at the beginning of the 4th year of the game. To make the game thoughtfully and thoroughly reward you for your dedication and the hours allotted in it, and not just give you a title for a million enemies (by the way, how do you score a million, isn’t that unrealistic??? In 857 hours, I only scored 430 k). We can point fingers at Tencent and GW all we want, but at the end of the day, it’s your game, Fatshark, and your reputation, your money is on the line. I love this game and I want only the best for it. As well as the developers (I’m watching you, Fatshark).
Thanks for your attention!

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Good post

Except the “make rejects stronger after X”, that was extremely Bad

But everything else was good

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I can tell you it’s pretty realistic though i don’t remember when I got that “penance”(well, killing enemies anyways) exactly.

but once you cleared damnation back in the day (was before auric maelstrom and all that and way before the requirement was nerfed) reliably on repeat, 1000-1500 kills a match werent unusual so :man_shrugging:

people lag behind badly enough as it is, I wouldnt want them to go roleplay on their way to the airlock.

besides, no emotion is even remotely useful getting combat information across, less so in a moshpit where you can’t even see the full body of your mates.

so, scenic route rp in uprising, “maybe” but try this stuff in auric maelstrom and havoc and people be kickvoting real quick :face_with_tongue:

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I think I got it around 1000-1100h

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You could do it in elevators instead of stim-fapping in a corner.

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I hear ya.

I’ve been screaming for new maps and new biome for 64 years but I get routinely ignored.

People wouldn’t nit pick and grumble anywhere near as much if there was new content and maps to explore.

We need a new biome containing 3 new maps, then another 3 maps from existing biomes (my vote is 1 for hourglass and 2 new maps for glorrianna biome).

This should be the absolute priority for FS right now.

Also all past modifiers are to be placed into permanent rotation. The variety would open up the game so much.

If they did this then people would be too distracted having fun again and getting the penances for all the maps etc.

The forum is a boiling pot of angry voices because we have no new distractions.

A single short operations map is not going to cut it for me personally so it won’t even count. I only played the train one for penances then will never play it again. I just want more normal missions.

A new class will still have to be used on the same maps and modifiers we have played for thousands of hours. New maps will revitalise way more than a new class.

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I think I got mine about 1200 hours but I play ogryn.

If you play psycher you’d probably get it in a few hours lol

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I’m a ogryn main but I do play the other classes aswell

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Put them in another (additional) map slot for all difficulties even.

Or let people make lobbies :ghost:

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It would be cool but I’m going to assume the reason they don’t do this is something more to do with servers and network but who knows.

At the risk of this being quite a controversial take…I actually think the limited options of the missionboard could harmonise really well with the variety of all unlocked modifiers and more maps.

Yes it would be somewhat gacha, but having a huge pool of randomised missions and modifiers would certainly give immense longevity to the board. You’d be playing such different missions each day it would be very refreshing.

If people got to choose exactly the mission and modifier then I have no doubts it would make things feel stale much quicker as they’d gravitate to their favourites instead of dipping into them when they’re on offer.

I think randomisation has it’s place in games. Certainly not to do with player weapons etc but for environmental effects - I think this could work well.

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Thank you for your response! I can understand why people don’t want to see this type of progression, but I strongly believe that it will only benefit the game.

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Thank you for response!
Psyker is my main and I reeeeally like the purgatus staff and still i`m veeery slow with scoring million…
Oh, I can definetely see people doing emotes in havoc. Yeah we will all be dead but at least it`s gonna be fun!

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Connection problems are the most stable thing this game has, in havoc not a game goes without someone getting disconnect or out of memory error.

You wrong about arbitrator destroying idea of misfits, because it was dead long before that, we got ourselfs uber mench combatans, veterans with tons of combat expirience and luck, priests capable of acts of faith, which is very rare in 40k universe, very strong psykers and ogryns who are all boneheads i.e smarter than most their brothers, we never played as regular humans.

And yes we need more enemies, we need more cultist enemies, maybe add demons to them, nurgle got low lvl demons as any other chaos god.

That can also solve weapon balancing problem, where we can have armored scab enemies for who we bring armor bane weapons like DS 4, kraks, relic blade, etc and can have seeding where enemies don’t suffer much from armor bane weapons, but suffer a lot from something like a heavy sword. I also want gunners/ragers spam to end whenever i get cult seeding. That would be lore friendly, demons suffer more from weapons that most mortals fear, chainswords, regular swords, axes, regular guns.

Party finder needs improvement, make it possible to write down what classes are needed for the team, maybe even what builds, prevent non hosts from accepting to the team.

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Thank you for response!
100% agree. I feel most of the complains people are having would be gone if Fatshark could deliver content on the rate Arrowhead does

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Arrowhead is proof people will let you coast off new content for a LONG time before the bill comes due.

Obviously it doesn’t last forever but it does buy you time to fix balance and tech debt stuff. You just have to be smart about how you distribute your workers.

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Exactly.

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Hmm…you just might be onto something…

Look at one of the modern darlings of coop shooters: Deep Rock Galactic.
I never gelled with it, so I’m not 100% current on my knowledge.
But I believe it has half or less the amount of modifiers that DT has in its stable.
Yet no one is complaining about mission variety there.
Sure, the proc-gen maps help, but I seriously doubt it’s carrying all the weight of variety in gameplay since they aren’t that different.

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They could solve this by incentivizing the mission board and quick play with better rewards, but have a “custom game” option that allows players to pick the map and modifiers they want.

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Well, apples to oranges, really. DRG puts a lot of effort into encouraging teamwork and character/loadout balance, too, which aren’t really part of DT’s genre.

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This is what exists already though? We all get more rewards for quickplay. Rewards we already have millions of because there is no content to spend it on, so it’s pointless unless you’re a new player.

Also it doesn’t actually relate to my point, which was about mission variety.

Having all modifiers in permanent rotation would add a huge variety to the existing missionboard.

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