So I know it’s a general conversation that people want to be able to pick they want to play - which I agree with 100%. Doesn’t that sound mildly ridiculous to have to say? But here we are. Fatshark increased the number of available missions at once as a way to help with this, which is also their way of acknowledging this request. However, I feel like it’s just not enough.
My friends and I have gotten back to the game after a few months break because we wanted to try some of the new conditions. But, guess what? They haven’t shown up, so we can’t play them. This isn’t fun and is frustrating. We just want to try them and the game is telling us “no”. So, guess what? Now we’re not that interested in playing anymore and will probably take another break, or just stop altogether if this doesn’t get fixed. I mean hell, one of my friends still hasn’t played the basic lights out condition at all because they never were able to get on when those were happening. This content being kept away from the players doesn’t feel like it’s fair to them for a game they paid for.
But let’s assume the argument against being able to pick whatever we want to play, is that if you can pick whatever conditions you want, on top of map choice and difficulty, that then the matchmaking would be sparce and be more difficult. Or, alternatively, it can suck to hit quickplay and be dropped into some dude’s absolutely insane level creation. Both of these points I can understand. So how about a compromise?
I feel that if I’m in a private group of friends, and we make the lobby private, then we should be able to pick whatever we want. I feel like we should be able to select the map, select the difficulty, and apply as many of the conditions as we want. This won’t interfere with the quickplay pool and the problems associated with that, and then the bonus is that people get to play what they want - increasing player retention and enjoyment.
If a concern is that then too many people are going to do private lobbies with custom modifiers instead of the maps on the board, increase the materials given on the map board and have them considered as special OPS missions.
I would be interested to hear other player’s thoughts about this. If enough interest and conversation is generated on this topic or others like it, hopefully fatshark can see that activity and have it marked as a point of interest to work on at some point.
I think the other issue is server resources. They “host” the maps and conditions on a server and people choosing their own maps and conditions probably is a lot of technical lift and more expensive for them since they are doing dedicated servers instead of P2P… which is why personally I would have stuck with P2P for a game like this and avoided the 40k loading screens and connectivity errors.
You’re probably right - that seems like the most plausible reason why this hasn’t been something that was implemented properly in the first place or fixed yet.
But something has to be changed. Last night was the 2nd night in a row where we asked someone to check if any of the lights out/vent purge modifiers were on. The answer was no, so we played something else. I can’t imagine we’re the only ones out there - there are many threads on this forum that complain about this too. If fatshark is going to want to sell us DLC for this game or whatnot, then the only way my friends and I are paying is if we want to…you know, play the game. Which right now seems to only happen on a random timer when we’re not available. That’s not cool.
^This helps you with checking and not needing to login
But yeah I agree… for my group it’s more the RNG and grind that stops us. Especially curios. A system where perfect items are practically impermissible is scummy (in a game like this where gear has a lot more weight than other games).
Shamelessly link what I think needs to happen with maps though:
I hate that this is actually a thing that people feel is necessary. The devs should also hate that.
Yeah the gear RNG is annoying to me too. I posted it in another thread but the fact that it’s RNG whether you get a good weapon in the first place with useable stats on top of RNG for it to be a great weapon with the correct perks/blessings is just too much. I just don’t understand how we got to this point from VT2 is just baffling to me. It’s like they took all the feedback (inc. the winds of magic weapon crafting, the one part that literally everyone liked), both good and bad, and then built a crafting system around the list of things people didn’t like.
Like…why? What happened here? What’s worse is how people have been providing a very strong uniform voice in feedback that they don’t like certain things (locking of perks/blessings) for literal months now and that’s just not being listened to.
Yeah I have to say they probably need to vary them a little.
The latest one, the special mission with ungodly amounts of specials is ok… but honestly its built more for Veterans and Psychers who are strong against those, so it isn’t as much fun for others. I went through several, but the numbers of elites even in the High Intensity was way down. The one I went through today I counted a whopping 5 Crushers through the whole thing and they were pretty spread out, not the gang piles of them that come at you in hordes of Crushers, Bulworks, Ragers, and Maulers. I’ve half wanted to drop down to Heresy that doesn’t seem to have many of them just to go have fun again.
So like…it feels a lose/lose no matter what they do outside of just letting players choose. They could offer a couple conditions at all times for a full day and then alternate so everyone has the opportunity to play them no matter what time of day they are available for. But problem with that, ofc, is that if a condition comes up that you don’t like, then you’re stuck with that for the day and are even more limited because there’s only so many options.
So okay, you cycle them for short durations like what they have now. From what I’ve seen, lights out shows up once in a while, but only for a couple hours. Are we expected to drop everything we’re doing (like…our jobs) just to rush to catch a couple missions while it’s active? I don’t understand what the design intent™ is here. “Drop everything you’re doing to play, otherwise you’re going to miss out on content that you, in theory, paid for!”
oh…okay, cool.
For sure, but that’s why they’re probably so late and reluctant to do private games. They want to provide incentives to use server resources and connect with other strike teams (especially with the state bots are in).
@Schuetzenhaus couldn’t agree with you more. It is baffling. I don’t know if it’s because to make Dedicated servers profitable long term they needed to go with a super grindy and MTX solution to afford it, if tencent is involved or forcing certain directions and designs on them, or just not believing or understanding what good player retention tactics are. It’s obvious they crunched and pushed the game out to hit those Christmas/holiday sales (never good to release a buggy game and then go on vacation. Should have either delayed release or cancelled vacation)
I just want to love this game like I loved VT2. With all the updates it feels like we’re getting closer - I enjoyed the game more recently than at launch. But there’s just some underlying design issues that they just seem super reluctant to let go of for…what feels like no reason. Outside of that it’ll probably take a lot of work. But like, there’s overwhelming, unanimous feedback about it.
They shot themselves in the foot so bad with this release and the decisions they’ve made to get here. At this point they have to choose whether to fix systems that the vast majority don’t like, or, work on new content to keep this whole “live service” trainwreck going. Ignoring one to work on the other is going to cause a stink no matter what they do. I took several months break, probably going to do the same thing again. See how this is going in a few months and see if they actually spent the effort to fix the core issues. If all I do is sit here and sigh that Vermintide did it better, I probably should just go and play that instead
It can suck to press quickplay and get dropped into a low intensity, or should I say snore intensely, mission. I CANNOT USE QUICKPLAY BECAUSE I HATE LOW INT.
Yeah I still play VT2 with my core group, they all stopped Darktide for similar reasons. I think games are going away from “live service models” but game development takes time and trends come and go faster than games can be developed.
There are some staunch defenders of some of the systems, saying they need 10,000 hours to grind otherwise they lose interest and gameplay isn’t enough to hold their interest and etc, but they are a vast minority.
I am more interested in what goes on in Fatshark studio at this point than I am Darktide itself
