Space Marine 2 made me appreciate Darktide even more

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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huh, for me it was quite the opposite.

finally some proper epic, testosterone fueled action with dudes getting stuff done and asses kicked.

that banner planting scene was epic and worthy of fist of the north star “grow chest hair from watching”

its what we sorely missed for years now, good old “dude stuff”, kick ass and chew bubble gum (you know the rest) and sales numbers seem to agree.

there are tons of cadian female soldiers in sm2, dying and getting chomped up like all the rest, which fits the battle at hand perfectly.

the commander isnt out of place either, like in the first game it fits the bill so no gripe with having the position female.
one could argue the first one was hot, the second could scare a tyranid into retreat but thats another discussion :smile:

they´re just not put into power armor and given their mary sue moments and that gets rewarded by its audience.

oh i love em, the more schwarzenegger, stallone, norris, the better.

the older i get, the more i miss the 80s :sweat_smile:

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There’s absolutely plenty of space to complain about dialogue, writing, and volume of characters in games, especially 40k titles, but the impression given in the earlier post was very much just down to “keep the lasses to a minimum”, as no other aspects of the characters or dialogue or facets of the game were mentioned.

Like, Hallowette’s dialogue can be annoying, I won’t argue that, but that character would be just as annoying as a Harold.

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funny since i´m one of the few who seem to like the obnoxious banter from her, fits the cutthroat attitude character.

zola´s fine for me as well, all physical traits are suitable for the stuff she does ingame.

masozi though is plain off. every damn time she´s on its like a caricature of:

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so i don´t care whats inside the pants until it´s there to check off points a specific list.

and the way you have to look long and hard for pure male entertainment without any shitty political correctness pisses me off to no end really.

like i like aliens, lara croft etc but do i need to “identify” myself with that character to enjoy the movie ?

hell nah, i like to watch ´em tiddies not wear ´em.

likewise i have a hard time imagining a female fan wanting to put markus rühl into a wig to “feel represented” when she´s enjoying watching muscle men.

maybe i enjoy the stuff because it ISNT limited like me in real life in the first place, weakening it down kills off any appeal for me.

one quote i remember which fits quite well come to think of it from a female streamer when having a discussion about physical difference between men and women : “we are weaker, not lesser”
and i think it nails it.

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65

Oh, I’m way more of a Tarantino, (og)starwars/LoTR kinda guy, but some of the old Schwarz movies does have special place in my heart.

Honestly it being Harold would be breath of fresh air. I’m so over the “lol I’m so quirky and can do whatever I want and put everyone down, I can’t do nothing wrong” type female characters.

Having the same character as a man would be a parody in and of it self which would actually make it interesting for like an hour or two. Then again you might be right and it could just turn out as some cringe millennial writing.

BTW I feel like DT has less of a problem with this than other games. Apart from Hallowette, Mazori (who I hate the most), and the new cringe central guy, others are at most just bad/uninteresting they don’t feel actively cringe, forced diversity hires or take you out of the experience.

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I also have a feeling taht releasing 1 map 2 guns even with somewhat regularity will not help. They rly shoud drop a huge update, with tones of content so youtubers and other media will farm on that and so attract more players as a result.

#13 patch was that thing, but they failed to ride the hype wave. So they should start again almost.

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The atmosphere or the grand set pieces?

Tbh I think SM2 looks great but DT on max settings feels so much grittier and grimdark and more authentic and somehow less “gamey”.

As for females - that is a bizarre thing to latch on to tbh. I’m working my way through the HH books and currently on #12 . There have been loads of women in the stories. Many of them strong characters.

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Don’t worry, that’s just me being me; the stereotype of English people being rather understated about things runs deep within me. The problem is I do not, never have, and most likely never will like Ultramarines, and as for Primaris? I really do not care for them at all. Loved the tutorial as Deathwatch, loathed the whole Rubicon Primaris thing.

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then excuse this humble tourist making his way down the rabbit hole with baldermort and scholars lore as his virgil leading ever downwards :smile:

so far i’m enjoying everything 40k ( up until the “recent retcons” ) and got a ton of content to dive into still undiscovered and new to me :yum:

if anything i dont like: unlike being able to soothe my tinnitus and help me fall asleep listening to lovecraft audiobooks, 40k lore keeps me awake all night for i dont want to miss one second :muscle:

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Actually I think it’d be exactly the people who don’t know anything about 40k, and that SM2 happen to be their first 40k game ever. There’s a chance that after playing SM2 they’d want to play more games in 40k universe, one that’s hopefully not a direct analog to the tabletop game and one that at least have some shooting mechanics, then naturally they would find Darktide being literally the only one of such games that’s not already 5+ years old at this point lol

And literally every other game in 40k universe that isn’t a complete disaster, are games that are either CRPG game or turn based strategy games, both fairly niche genre in terms of video games, and the average SM2 player is not going to want to try to get into them after playing SM2, and would much prefer an FPS game instead, like Darktide kinda is

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well then lets hope the wasteland all around funnels them in the darktide direction :+1:

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Well theres yer problem right there :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

In a game all about Ultramarines Im not surprised a smurf hater will hate a smurfmarine game.

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What? Tourist? Nonsense. Doesn’t matter how much 40k you do or do not know, you carry right on and don’t mind an old curmudgeon like me!

Oh, I would not say I hate them, that’s a very strong word, but I know you mean it in jest. Over the past 29 years they’ve never piqued my interest. I’ve always been an Imperial Fist and Deathwatch fellow when its come to Space Marines. I played the ruddy Guilliman out of SM1, mind, but a lot of that was playing Last Man Standing as anything but an Ultramarine. I think there’s only one lot I dislike even more than the Ultramarines, and that is Deathguard because, eugh, Nurgle.

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Ha I coulda guessed :smiley: yeah Im using hate very lightly here, I really dont mean it in a bad way :wink:

I do like the smurfs but they are very one dimensional imo. Im gonna hold off on SM2 for a while and I might actually go play some SM1 last stand to tide me over.

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I agree with you, but sm2 still has some good points. The luminance, ammo boxes and weapons.

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Ideally, I think updates to the game would look something like this:

Three “seasons” or Arcs a year, each being about four months long.

Each season starts off with:

  • New map (probably just one per season)
  • New special condition (tied to the season’s theme or whatever) and/or a new enemy type
  • New weapon(s) and balance tweaks (shake up the meta a little)
  • New penances and new earnable cosmetics associated with the map and new weapons/conditions
  • Event Stage 1 (runs for a month or so) - rewards unique cosmetic (picture frame or something) for competing the tasks within it.

Then the season has two stages each a little over a month long which has:

  • Event stage 2 & 3 each rewarding a new cosmetics.
  • Stage 3 introduces some cool finale event - which could be a standalone thing like the Twins battle - which again rewards some cosmetics.

Open up the premium cosmetic shop and each “stage” releases a new set of cosmetics themed around the season.

If they could get up to doing this cadence reliably I think it would really help. You figure last October was the big class update and by end of January people were burning out and there wasn’t much new content in sight. 4-months is about as long as you can stretch it I think. Ideally this compressed down to a 3-month season but that seems unlikely.

If I was doing three seasons a year, I’d go

  • November - February (winter) and hit some wintry themed stuff along the way.

  • March - June - gets through the end of the school year essentially

  • July - October - gets through the summer and fall with some sort of fall themed shenanigans at the end.

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77

The people in these forums have little to no contact with real women or the real world for that matter. Even my wife agrees that the “strong female” trope in modern day entertainment is cringe. Look, I get that video games and adult entertainment are your only ways of ‘interacting’ with women, but in reality, they are not as present in a real Military setting. Even in fantasy its just not believable. See if Russia or China has a 6/10 women to men ratio in their regiments the way Darktide portrays.

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You know how to stop a culture war in video games? Stop injecting modern politics into it. Its literally that simple. That’s why Space Marine 2 stomped out Darktide in sales.

You most definitely have Concord in your steam library.

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New maps and new weapons absolutely don’t help as much as they could when they are kneecapped by the mission selection and itemisation systems, regular or not.

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I have to say, I’m not loving SM2. I feel like it’s balance is way, way off.

There are a ton of guns, and they are all bad. The armor is bad too, the melee loop mostly seems to not work well, the health mechnics are bad…

But it is really, really pretty.

A good example of the bad is I’m replaying on vet. There’s a section with several snipers going to ambush you. Before this you get your choice of about 3 of the 6 scoped bolters in the game. I pick the sniper bolter.

The sniper bolter is so bad it takes 3+ shots to kill a sniper shooting at you, with a low rate of fire. The choices were all bad, but this was the strongest.

So, knowing this is bad, the devolopers put explosive barrels near all the sniper spawn.

5-6 scoped bolters, all so bad that it was thought a good idea to put explosive barrels by the target instead of making any of them good.

As to health, the armor is really, really bad. It does, in theory, refresh on it’s own, but not in practice because you are constantly being hit. So you have to do constant executions to refresh armor, which are often difficult both because they are long and take you out of the moment, but also because your enemies move to a stunned state where they are very damage resistant to wait for your to close, and the occasions you can’t close because of the number of very small ranged enemies is high and the guns as mentioned are mostly not effective.

I have many complains about Darktide, but at it’s base game loop it works well and SM2 largely doesn’t.

I am not recommending against SM2 though, but you might wait for a sale and you might wait for the modders to fix it.

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The campaign doesn’t feel great, especially after you play operations a bit. The weapons in operations feel completely different with their own perks especially when supported by the class perks. Like the Stalker pattern bolter feels much better to use than the sniper with all sorts of bonuses the Sniper class gives.