I think it’s time for me to step back from Darktide for a bit. It’s about the only video game I’ve played over the last year, and I clocked up abut 560 hours.
Darktide is an amazing game in many respects, but there are some gameplay issues - as well as the development and community engagement side of things - that remain really frustrating. Time to take a break from playing.
As an aside, I’ve been with Fatshark games for a while (VT1), and I wanted to leave some feedback for Fatshark to consider. Hopefully they read this and/or it can be passed along constructively 
@FatsharkCatfish
Fatshark - please understand that you have an incredible opportunity in your hands. The core gameplay for Darktide (combat mechanics, mission pacing, AI director, environments, 40k-vibe, etc.) is all amazing and is what your players love about the game. Your die-hard players, i.e the players poised to keep spreading the word about this game to their friends, love the challenge and skillful gameplay. This is the game’s bread and butter. And I’d say you got the hardest part right. Good job!
On the other hand, there are some major things holding the game back from taking off. These are tricky and interrelated.
I’ll share a personal story to make the game’s challenges as clear and relatable as I can. Bear in mind, this post is going to be long.
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Me and two of my friends have stuck with DT on and off since the October 2022 beta. We have another dozen or so close friends that keep saying “how’s the game now? Is it ready for us to check out?” Be aware that people proactively waiting a year or more before buying a game because of how rough launches are these days. It’s also worth pointing out that these friends are all VT2 vets.
Come fall 2023 with the xbox release and class tree re-work we said, “yes, finally the game feels close to where it should’ve been at launch - there’s more missions, performance/stability is better, there are MODS that vastly improve the QoL.” But…
… while a few of them jumped into the game, all of them have abandoned it in short order. One got about 35 hours in. The other 3-4 all lasted less than 10 hours. Why? Why did this happen?
Here’s the crux of the issue as we discussed the game as a group:
Trying to get friends to play together when one set has top level gear and gets their kicks from playing Auric Damnation, and the other set is staring up a seemingly endless grind to get on par with everyone else, is a recipe for disaster.
What do I do? I can either play with my friends at a lower difficulty level (boring myself in the process) while they level up to 30 and hopefully get some decent gear on the way to being competitive. Or I can just tell them to spend 30 hours hacking it out on their own until they are ready to play with the big boys. What a terrible proposition for an entertainment choice.
Essentially, getting to the fun, challenging gameplay is gated behind an overly long and grindy item progression arc.
This is a massive, massive barrier to getting friends, family, and others to pick up this game so you can all have a good time playing together. Some of my friends played professional counter-strike back in the day (pre-source). They are really good FPS players, quick to learn, etc. They are VT2 vets as mentioned. But in regards to Darktide they say “why should I have to grind for 30+ hours just to get geared up to a point where I can be competitive in performance with the rest of the team?” This isn’t an MMO they say. Why is it like this?
Let’s dig into what is driving these reactions, and in turn how it is driving people away:
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Not surprisingly, much of this comes down to the item progression system and the layers of RNG employed.
It’s frustrating to be be told (or be the one telling your friends) that “hey, you struggled back there because weapon X really doesn’t work well unless you get blessing A & B on it and have the right base damage stat. Maybe you can try weapon Y? Do you have one of those? No? Hmm, okay well I guess you’ll have to grind for 10 more hours with weapon Z and maaaaybe you’ll get lucky and find a good Weapon X to use. Oh… you still haven’t found that blessing?” Queue the suggestions: maybe you should use the browser extension to check Melk’s shop everyday and see if that blessing pops up, or if a good green/white item is in the armory. Seriously - this is what it comes down to.
This is such a turn off. It’s aggravating in the extreme. It’s aggravating to new players trying to level up to hang with their peers on higher difficulty (where the fun is). It’s aggravating for veteran players when they want to spice up their gameplay and try a new weapon combo and they can’t because the layers of RNG said “no, not today.”
Fatshark, this RNG-grind is NOT the only way to keep players interested and engaged in the game. Yes, it probably works to some extent - but it drives many others away at the same time. Moreover, the game is missing opportunities to drive engagement and retention in OTHER ways that would be much less frustrating for old and new players alike.
I don’t expect it to be feasible (or desirable) to completely change the item progression system, but you can ADD in ways to let players PREDICTABLY be able to get a desired reward X for putting in Y hours of time.
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Add a crafting option to remove locks (even if just temporarily) so when players DO get a good base stat item, they can at least tinker with it and put whatever they want on it, even if it costs them resources, and don’t risk “bricking” the item (which is yet another massive turn off).
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Add some way for players to spend Melk coins (and/or other currency) to directly purchase blessings. It can even be a lot (5,000+ for a level 4 blessing).
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Add in a crafting option to let players pay resources to fully re-roll or manually re-allocate stats while staying at the same base rating.
All the above requires resources, which requires grind, BUT they would provide a way to mitigate the RNG and give players something tangible to work towards and make measurable progress. By the time a player hits level 30, they’d probably have a handful of decent base state weapons and enough accumulated resources that they could “craft” a few good weapons to start to playing with.
Fixing crafting, using the above or the countless other ideas, would be single biggest thing you could do for this game. So many steam reviews linger on as not recommended because of this issue - make no mention of the silent majority of players NOT recommending the game to friends and family for the same reason.
Regarding alternatives to RNG item progression for driving player engagement and retention, I’ll offer up a few thoughts:
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Add in a Prestige currency for leveling up beyond level 30. Say each level grants you 10. This currency can be used to upgrade items to RED level (say for 100 prestige), which have locks permanently removed and stats that can be freely assigned (or something).
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Want to drive players to play: let them convert prestige currency to Aquilas. 400 prestige points (40 level ups beyond 30), gets you 400 Aquilla’s. You’ll have to play a lot to buy big stuff, but it will entice more players to buy smaller Aquilla packs to make up the difference. Can still have some cosmetics that can’t be purchased with prestige currency if needed.
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Add in seasonal penances tied to a set of unlockable cosmetics for that season. So every 3-4 months there is a new set of penances that gives you a new cosmetic set and weapon skins for each class completing them all. Maybe a few variations depending on difficulty level. If players miss seasonal content, make it available through a prestige shop.
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To support the above expansion of penances, add more secondary objectives and mid-mission tasks to the game, and have these clearly tie into the normal post-mission rewards. This will help vary up gameplay, even on older maps, and keep things fresh. Bonus points for tying sub-objectives to a seasonal theme/narrative.
The above are suggestions of the things that would help. If the RNG item grind is toned down, the fun gameplay becomes more accessible, and more people will spend more time playing and grinding for the icing on the cake (i.e. seasonal stuff, cosmetics) than leaving in frustration.
Thanks for listening - I hope someone, somewhere reads this and takes it to heart.