Since launch, the amount of genuinely new content they’ve added has been tiny. You could probably count it all on your fingers. For most of them, Darktide feels less like a creative project and more like just another job. They keep reworking and recycling the same ideas over and over, constantly walking back their own design direction while also shutting down interesting builds and playstyles that players discover themselves. Forget new missions or meaningful story content — at this point they can’t even be bothered to add new cosmetics regularly anymore. Every Thursday I just see previously released skins rotating back into the store. I can’t even say “shut up and take my money” to them anymore. As for the new mode, honestly, it just feels like something they made so it looks like they’re still working and releasing content. I don’t think they actually care whether players are interested in it, or whether it brings new players into Darktide. At this point I’m starting to wonder if they even realize that the core gameplay loop was already highly replayable to begin with. This is supposed to be a PvE horde game, yet the classes keep getting homogenized in the name of “subtle balance,” losing more and more of their original identity. Honestly, it feels like the enemies have more gameplay variety than the players do. I’d bet money that the new class coming on June 23 will, after three months, play fundamentally no differently from every other class in the game: mostly melee combat, occasionally pulling out a ranged weapon to deal with specials, and that’s it.
If you disagree with my take, feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments. I’d genuinely like to discuss all kinds of Darktide gameplay details with other players. You can be as blunt or aggressive as you want — I don’t mind. Even if your comment isn’t directly related to my main point, I’ll still try to pick out anything interesting or useful from it and respond seriously.
class homogeneity, in my opinion, comes more from the fact that damage is clearly the primary balance factor between everything and you can just take every meaningful talent in the game in a straight line. Every class build is nearly identical aside from like 5 points in every talent tree, for example.
There’s the obvious meme of “dlc class is just x class but better”, which mostly exists because classes just share so much of the same talent tree, but honestly even if you bring in semantics around this stuff the game, at the very most, is just 3 builds per class, which is completely determined by your ability. And most abilities are identical in function.
So much for glass cannon, 20% TDR and 2% Toughness per sec on top of Psyker’s very generous, easily accessible Toughness regen Talents is the epitome of class homogenization…
Different classes do feel different at first because their skills provide different bonuses and push them toward different specialties. The weapons they use, their personalities and voice lines, and even the role they occupy within the team all contribute to that feeling. What I’m trying to say, though, is that after enough playtime, you start realizing that the optimal solution against most enemy types becomes almost identical across every class. In the end, nearly everything revolves around melee combat. Just imagine how difficult the game would become if a class completely stopped using melee during a fight. Meanwhile, enemy mechanics are allowed to be far more varied: all kinds of crowd control, disruption mechanics, and some modifiers can even spawn Daemonhosts. Sometimes it honestly feels like enemy design is more experimental than player design.
What I want to see are classes that completely break away from the current player combat framework. For example:
dual melee weapons with no ranged weapon at all,
dual ranged weapons with no melee weapon,
abilities that manipulate enemies into killing each other,
or even a class with no dodge or stamina system, surviving purely through nonstop aggression and constant killing.
I want more unconventional combat identities and more experimental playstyles overall. Also, I appreciate that you didn’t immediately bring up Psyker or Veteran Volley Fire builds just to dismiss my argument or treat me like I’m stupid. But honestly, you don’t need to change your opinion. Discussions about class design will always be subjective. I’m still glad you shared a different perspective.
Execs thought that player decline was because of the core game instead of the restricted player choice, gacha rng retention systems, poor quality of life updates and overall lack of communication.
So having dismissed the game which drew in huge numbers they keep trying to capture player interest with watered down, half baked other game modes.
Yeah, I think part of the issue could also be related to the engine itself or server limitations. They’re trying to keep developing a relatively niche game on an old engine from a studio that already collapsed, so it’s not surprising that the developers seem less and less invested in it over time. Maybe what we’re seeing now is the negative result of limited design creativity combined with an unclear long-term direction for the game. I’ve also seen people on the forums argue that the reason they care so much about balance is because they place an extremely high priority on teamwork. If one player uses a more selfish playstyle and wipes out most of the enemies alone, the rest of the team loses their sense of participation during the match. But personally, the thing that keeps me playing isn’t the feeling of teamwork accomplishment. It’s the raw satisfaction of endless slaughter, combined with the atmosphere created by the environments, sound design, music, and battlefield chaos. And honestly, if enemies die too quickly or there aren’t enough of them, giving feedback to Fatshark about enemy density seems like a much healthier solution than accusing high-level builds or skilled gameplay of being “cheese” or “basically cheating.” To me, players using strong builds and mastering the game’s mechanics is just a natural part of a PvE game.
Yeah, the game technically does have forms of utility outside of raw damage. Psyker lightning builds, Ogryn brittle debuffs, crowd control tools, things like that. But the problem is that none of them feel truly impactful enough to fundamentally turn a bad situation around, especially compared to simply killing enemies faster. On top of that, these utility-focused playstyles usually come with major limitations or tradeoffs. Personally, I think if someone sacrifices part of their own offensive potential to play a support-oriented role, then the overall comfort and stability of the team during the mission should noticeably improve compared to just stacking more damage dealers. The problem is that in normal matchmaking, you never really know whether your teammates can actually output enough damage or not. Because of that uncertainty, support-oriented roles end up feeling increasingly invisible or undervalued in Darktide. In the end, damage is still the most reliable solution to almost every problem the game throws at you.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the whole design intent of Tide games to be “Melee and Ranged” not “Melee or Ranged”?
Vermintide was definitely more 80:20 for Melee:Ranged, and Darktide was supposed to be closer to 60:40, but the nature of the game design is that you use both your primary and secondary regardless of which is melee or which is ranged. Again, correct me if I’m wrong
CC is incredibly useful in havoc, being able to make space on a dime not only gives you breathing room for backliner classes to commit to damage than having to reposition but also to make plays when you otherwise couldn’t. An Arbities being the team’s vanguard with castigator, break the line or simply a bullrush can make a word of a difference when you’re trying to dive gunners or simply push back a crusher patrol.
The thing is, it’s only in havoc when CC only shines within havoc itself- since everything trickling downwards in to the normal mission board can not only be beatable without any form of CC since the average player is so buff that a single hivescum/zealot or even just can frankly just solo most of Auric Maelstrom with little issue. It’s only when Havoc’s enemy numbers become so large that focusing on damage can only get you so far when the proverbial clock of you running of space/time/special spam wave until you inevitably make a mistake.
Or you could just play psyker and ignore that. That’s cool too.
You’re not wrong. From a design philosophy perspective, I understand why they approach the game this way. But I also think a game’s design philosophy should serve the game itself. Specific gameplay situations require adaptation and evolution, not rigidly sticking to an idea while compromising the actual gameplay experience just to preserve that philosophy. In Vermintide, most enemies were melee-focused. But in Darktide, even basic trash mobs can use ranged weapons, and at higher difficulties their damage can sometimes feel even more threatening than specials. There’s a reason why Psyker dome shields and Veteran smoke grenades have such absurdly high pick rates in Havoc 40. It’s simply because that combination is the easiest and most effective answer to the overwhelming amount of ranged pressure in the game. Honestly, the frustration of getting instantly deleted by a random shooter somewhere off-screen feels far worse than just getting smashed to death by a melee enemy. Sorry, I ended up rambling a bit. What I’m really trying to say is that when Darktide differs this much from Vermintide in terms of enemy density, ranged pressure, and overall combat pacing, I think blindly following the same old philosophy without adjusting it is a mistake.
agree with a lot of the other things you’re saying, but these are melee games, hybrid at best. the melee focus is what sets the game apart from other games in a major way
But full range should not allow the user to essentially solo the Game, having a full ranged build should turn enemies into a threat once they get close, but currently they aren’t
I like using Helbore Exec Stance and Dual Autopistols Hivescum for this comparison
The reason why Helbore Exec Stance is not seen as a problem it’s because of the following reasons:
1- It takes aim. It is important to constantly hit headshots to reach breakpoints in the higher diffs
2- Veteran doesn’t get easy mobility or get off me tools with this build. Unlike Hive Scum, vet doesn’t have Jittery, Nimble, and such that would allow them to escape the moment enemies get into melee range. The closest thing is running Combat Blade
3- Slow Firerate, especially when charging Surgical. This makes this build extremely good against elites, specials and even monstrosities, but Bad against hordes. You need to either deal with them on melee, or have a good position to make the horde not attack you
Hivescum on the other hand, takes no aim since automatic weapons, you essentially shoot everything during Desperado, and has so much mobility that you can essentially never be engaged in melee unless you need ammo
Not the passion but the manpower, as they are most likely working on something else for a while now.
But the fact that they didn’t abandon VT2 either is a huge plus.
Maybe you could make a case that passion went into the pseudo proc-gen mapping system. I say maybe because, in the end, it really didn’t result in any perceived variety, but perhaps it will be more apparent on the allegedly forthcoming tilesets. Also, perhaps under the hood, the code to make it work required passion to pull off.
But there is zero passion in the other parts of expedition. Perhaps the devs had it and it was squashed by management like we suspect happens regularly in their offices. But you can only barely convince me that anyone who’s ever played a video game, let alone Darktide, thought through 90% of the decisions they made with that game mode.
i think whoever decided that a) expeditions should be made and b) decided how it should work messed up hard and sabotaged the entire thing. i can imagine the artists, map devs, environment devs, and others to be very passionate about the game. but they were tasked with making something that floats, and all they were given is lead
in the end it just circles around to the known fact that fatshark has a management problem
