This is actually something of a bugbear I have, the Cadian 8th have been there, shot that. They were there when Abaddon slammed a Blackstone Fortress into their world. They have seen Astartes who are very much not avenging angels, and killed them. That soldiers of this particular regiment would just drop to their knees in stunned reverence in the mere presence of a random Space Marine feels…hamfisted.
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They’re still brought up and trained to dogmatically venerate the Emperor’s angels. That’s just the Imperial Cult talking. Which means it’s Lorgar’s fault.
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Yup. Entirely.
I genuinely am confused by this comment.
SM2 has more gameplay modes. The PvP js just a middle competency arena shooter with bad melee. But it has inferior gameplay to darktide by two city, traffic jammed, miles. The combat is a direct feel and complexity downgrade to Darktide with numerous unfair events and control imput ignore-sinks.
I just really genuinely want to know where you derived your opinion from here. What difficulty level do you play in DT and SM2 PvE?
Also almost all the weaponry in SM2 is a direct downgrade in feel, ttk and sound effects compared to Darktide.
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DT only Auric or Maelstrom. SM2, Ruthless
I just find that right now, SM2 has more interesting things going on than DT. I can play DT on autopilot, but that may be just because I have so many hours in the tide games. I don’t see any difference between reacting to the “whoosh” sound in DT vs the circles in SM2. Ranged combat in SM2 is so much better than DT that it’s impossible to even compare. The ranged enemy AI in DT is incredibly unpleasant and all the microstuns are an abomination of game design.
There are very few weapons in DT that aren’t completely broken and just not fun. Scroll through a couple of threads in this forum and you’ll see. Sounds effects? Yeah, many of the effects are better in Darktide, not all.
I knew exactly what to expect with SM2 gameplay because I played a LOT of WWZ. In my opinion, the team delivered.
My point: if you want to keep enjoying Darktide, please go right ahead. Darktide will NOT die, FatShark will continue to support the game. But Darktide will also never grow from this niche community we have, FS already missed the boat on that, it’s 2 years later and so 2 years too late.
SM2 will go down the same path all PvE coop games go down, it will lose most of its initial playerbase and we’ll see where it lands compared to DT for eminent gameplay.
There’s nothing wrong with enjoy one or both of these games. I’m just baffled why people seem to feel the need to put SM2 down to justify playing DT.
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Aye, definitely have to agree here. This game had so much potential, and still does, but the time for that to shine has come and gone. Darktide launched years early in a painfully underbaked state with some inexplicably terrible placeholder mechanics and systems. With Patch 13 and the Class overhaul in Q4 2023, we saw a ton of renewed interest and a huge spike in players, but then that momentum wasn’t maintained. The biggest issues still facing the game at that point got pushed off to nearly Q4 2024 and went unrecognized for months, lots of dev effort went into bizarrely low priority stuff (e.g. pennances, green variant bombers), HD2’s release pulled off most of the remaining Patch 13 player surplus, and the release cadence for most of 2024 just didn’t keep anything going. The chance to really turn things around came…and went.
Darktide definitely won’t die and disappear, and being honest the last few months with more consistent and greater quality developer communications have been great, but the chance for this title to live up to its full potential has almost certainly passed.
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It’s a damn shame tbh.
Darktide sold a lot on a really big promise among 40k fans and is now a good enough game, but releasing in a blatantly unfinished state just meant it was never going to really recover to anything like launch day.
There were so many chances that were ruined due to developer stubbornness or just a complete lack of ability to turn a situation around quickly. So much time spent iterating very slightly on horrifically bad systems rather than just admitting to the players that they’d f*cked up and making something good.
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We found a nice middle ground in this thread.
None of us want Darktide to die, we all want the game to succeed. I hope nothing but the best in Darktide’s future.
I agree with you Molonious and it was well said: the interest is there, but the cadence and momentum aren’t.
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From a sound design I can agree, the punchy-ness FS has delivered with 'tides is top notch. On the contrary, the Glory kills are extremely satisfying in SM2. The only-thing better/on-par with the kill animations is Doom and Gears of War.
Agree. SM2 roadmap is refreshing to see. No microtransactions and a plan for a year of development.
I just wish FS would be honest and transparent with their process. Look at Creative Assembly, the community is all in after they shook off the shackles of mediocracy. I’m very happy Relic has been transparent with their plans and no scum tactics at launch with back-peddling delays for 2 years like Fatshark.
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I think after the big DT patch it will be interesting to see what happens with the game and if somehow they can get on an upward trend of attracting new players.
Payday 2 clawed its way back from the dead and slowly but surely increased their player base overtime. DRF started slow and built up.
I think the secret sauce having “new stuff” at a quick enough cadence and also dangling the occasional “timed reward” out there to lure people back in that you’re always encouraging people to pop back in, and then there’s enough new stuff around the corner they’re willing to stick around.
6 months for a new map isn’t going to cut it. They need something every 1-2 months I feel: a new map, some special event / modifier that rewards a unique time limited set of cosmetics, a much better premium shop that puts everything up and rotates stuff that’s on sale (as in a discount).
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Tbh that took several financial failures, their hero shooter getting axed, and consistent and outspoken community fury for years. And honestly I think only the first is what spurred the change.
FS hasn’t had a full on failure like CA did with Pharaoh flopping plus the failed Warhammer DLC. Darktide might’ve bled players like mad but they had their money already, plus whatever they were given for Gamepass, and the steady drip of cosmetics since then.
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Chaos Space Marines?
Totally agree, I all SM2 did was renew my interests in Darktide.
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It made me want to come back to DT, mainly because I found I greatly appreciate the combat flow in DT
But I also found myself wishing DT offered more.
Like you mentioned, SM2 really does a great job nailing the scale and scenescapes. Darktide is one dead rusty hallway after another for me, it never really captured the mind boggling scale of a hive city well.
The general atmosphere of the battle barge hub in SM2 feels better in my opinion, both UI and just general atmosphere.
SM2 paid content model is far superior to DT in everyway… A pretty low bar, but still.
It’s the little details in the world building I wish Darktide incorporated more.
…and here I am just playing Boltgun like we’ve gone back to 1997
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man i wish i could get into that game, everything about it is fun.
even bought the dlc “just in case” and the devs should get rewarded by revenue for making such games.
BUT everytime i fire it up for a couple hours i cant bring myself to finish it cause the pixelart is like a barrier that keeps me from really immerse myself.
for a lack of better explanation "ive been there, 30(00) years ago when all we had were pixels and i would have sacrificed the larger portion of worlds population to the graphics god for better fidelity.
bought a diamond monster to help my matrox mystique play quake 1 gl in 800×600 and 30 fps in 96/97
the first fallout had a cut scene where you leave the vault and i thought to myself: man if i live to see them real graphics i can die a happy man.
so sadly, boltgun isnt for me having “suffered” as an “og”
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In terms of replayability, DT wins.
In terms of immersion and “beauty”, SM 2 wins.
I haven’t played Darktide in months because I’ve got bored of it, stomping highest diff with randoms when they bring the “meta build” (plasma shout vet, knife zealot etc), a new diff or some serious rebalancing is needed it (latter being the less likely), so SM2 was a breath of fresh air for me and I like it, but I must admit that only 6 coop missions is not much.
As for combat, it’s a simple action reaction system in SM2. No more no less.
I’d say if you are a fan of 40k and want to see it “brought to life”, then it’s worth buying now, otherwise wait for update and a bigger sale.
I think the only chance Darktide has to gain another influx of new players is doing something on the scale of the Chaos Wastes release for VT2.
I had a friend that had pretty much lost all interest in VT2 but was reeled back in hard for that mode. And the mode’s release was the biggest spike in players since the game released. The only time it spiked higher afterwards was when it was briefly free to keep.
All that said, I enjoy both games and like DT more overall now but there’s no denying SM2 started off on a much stronger foot.
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They certainly have had hiccups; War(s) of the Roses did well initially but was quickly blasted out of the water by Chivalry, whilst their War of the Vikings game did pretty badly from memory.
I would disagree so much on the immersion, and even on the beauty. They offer two very different forms of the 40k universe, the macro and micro. If you want the macro, of having large vistas showcasing a full-on ground war then Space Marine 2 certainly delivers on that. It does it in a clever way too, prompting such big scenes when you go from being inside a structure to outside, or going from a low-level PoV to climbing up to a high point where such vistas are then laid before you. Its really good and very well done.
Darktide is excellent at the micro, at show casing areas of a Hive City, something we don’t often see in 40k (of course there is also Hired Gun, but I’ve not played it). From the edges of the atmospheric shield to the relative luxury of Throneside, we get to see different parts of a Hive City, and they are full of details. Like the servitors still working in the Archivum, the way they brought the horrifying existance of servitors to life with the medicae servitors, the graffiti, the various tableau you stumble across, the details of habs on Hab Dreyko; there is a lot of detail in Darktide’s maps and all of it embellishes the impression of a Hive City.
I think the difference you might be feeling between them is that we’ve all been through DTs missions so many times over the nearly 2 years since DTs release, whilst SM2 is still very new, so the shine is still there to what it is presenting.
Visually and immersively, I think both games are excellent at showcasing the Imperium and 40k.
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Absolutely everything except every single bit of gameplay and combat. But every imaginable way except that. Oh and the weapons selection, map variety, enemy variety. But everything else 
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