The "Depth" of Darktide

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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And my point in that regards is that you’re focused on the skill floor, I’m looking at the skill ceiling. If you disagree on which truly matters that’s fine, but you’re acting like the higher skill ceiling doesn’t exist at all. (Or in this case, referring to it as fluff)

If there wasn’t a higher skill ceiling in general you wouldn’t have people able to carry extremely hard, solo/duo these sorts of games, etc.

Part of why I brought up myself as an example is that even though I obviously don’t think the overall basics are particularly complex while having personal experience of trying to maximize individual ability, many skills also translate over, particularly if you’re used to other subsets of games. EG: Somebody who has played FPS games and Souls likes will have an initial leg up over somebody who only plays FPS games who will have a leg up over somebody who only plays RTS’s.

The part that’s obnoxious is that you’re pretending that the ability to play better and improve simply doesn’t exist. Again, if you disagree on how much it matters, fine, agree to disagree, but overall the various aspects do objectively exist.

Like I said above, the part that’s irking me is the dismissive attitude like the fact that the skill floor is the only potential thing that matters. Speaking objectively, there’s more to it to improve at than just purely clearing levels. How much that matters to someone might be subjective but you (general you) certainly can’t just act like there’s no additional depth or ability to improve at the game after the initial competence, it’s just being intellectually dishonest at that point.

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I have and its not that deep imho.

Agree.

It’s Not shallow, but there are Combat systems, strategic and mechanical wise much deeper.

Chivalry2 combat for example is, and not because of PvP, it has also a bot mode with only 4 players each side, so still PvP and the Bots are dumb, but you can easily see the combat is more complex and deeper from a mechanical pov fighting these bots.

Also agree, but read above.

When i said not so deep i didnt mean shallow or Bad, just i know some deeper systems, strategical and mechanical wise.

Combat in DT is fun, thats all it needs.
I like it how it is no matter the depth.

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Bubbles, we’re talking about depth.
“A multiplayer game is deep if it is still strategically interesting to play after expert players have studied and practiced it for years, decades, or centuries.”

All your responses on individual skill elements can be addressed by asking you if there’s a gap in skill between

  • a 6-year-old who’s never played a FPS
  • you, who played V2
  • a hypothetical best player who dodges, pushes, performs every attack perfectly, aims perfectly, etc

If there’s a gap, that’s depth! It involves study/practice to master that skill element to be one step closer to that hypothetical best player.

So instead of asking if aiming skill increases depth, you should first ask if you think there’s any difference in this skill between the newbie and expert. Well is that 6-year-old going to out-aim a professional esports FPS player? Does the professional esports player land every shot flawlessly? They don’t. So there’s even room for improvement for them, and that’s depth too

Depth isn’t complexity. Depth is depth. Complexity can enable depth (in fact a certain amount of complexity is required to create a deeper game), but they’re definitely not the same thing. For example would describe Chess’ controls as “complex”? You wouldn’t. Yet it’s deep because of all the possible interactions of each piece at any given game state. So when you bring up “complexity”, it’s off topic.

Depth is still depth if you don’t explore it. So your comment about no pushing doesn’t mean there’s no depth to that mechanic. It just means you weirdly don’t push. Another example being that I didn’t explore Smash Bros’ depth much because it wasn’t my preferred flavor of fighting game, yet it inarguably had depth due to the way the different game mechanics worked (and if you’re unaware of any of that depth you can look up technical guides on all the mechanics involved to mastering Smash Bros).

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Consider two statements:

  • game X is deep
  • game X is perfect, shouldn’t change, shouldn’t be patched, and shouldn’t get new content

Are they they same statement?

If you understand they aren’t the same, then your response seems entirely dishonest.

If you don’t understand the difference, we can work through that too. (Or you could just go back and read the definition of depth, “a multiplayer game is deep if it is still strategically interesting to play after expert players have studied and practiced it for years, decades, or centuries.” and realize that has absolutely nothing to do with whether a game needs changes or not.)

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So you think there’s some difference between the chance of succeeding in Damnation between a 6-year old with no FPS experience and an esports pro with 2000+ hours V2/DT experience, but “not that much”? Because the purpose of those ~10 things was mostly to get people to realize that’s definitely not the full list: the full list of things creating a game’s depth includes every conceivable way of optimizing how you play that game. That list would then describe the gap between the newbie and the best conceivable expert, and clearly Darktide is deep based on that.

Again, the deepest spot in the ocean (35k feet deep) doesn’t mean 10k feet isn’t deep. So if you’re just comparing it against the deepest games you’ve ever played, that’s not what we’re talking about here.

We also aren’t talking about personal tastes: Smash Bros is inarguably a deep fighting game, even though I don’t like it very much. (One can be objective in recognizing the amount of skill required to be an expert in a game without enjoying the game.) So if you like “dodging” doesn’t really factor into it.

Have you played the 'Tide series longer than a year total? Maybe you haven’t, I don’t remember seeing comments like that from you. But many have, and those players continue to get better! Well they’re playing against AI (bots; PVE). So depth is absolutely possible with non-human opponents, humans are just slightly better at being very dynamic opponents that change how scenarios unfold.

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just as an example, the game clearly has some aim assist and some guns have bullets big like 2 mobs, what makes it so easy to headshot, no matter ranged or melee.
Your statement is not wrong, but the skill needed to do a headshot in DT is not comparable to do a headshot in other games that need way more precision, have no aim assist or bullets of the size of 2 heads.

and about the dodging meta i have to say i dint like it and find it odd tbh.
The knife playstyle with heavy dodging is just not my thing.
Is it depth really? I dont know to be honest.
I’m biased here because i dont like it.

“a multiplayer game is deep if it is still strategically interesting to play after expert players have studied and practiced it for years, decades, or centuries.”

i really dont see this applys to DT or any tide game.
Sure it takes some skill and you can improve your skill playing it over some hundreds of hours, but "after expert players have studied and practiced it for years, decades or centuries"
sorry bot no :smiley:
This requires PVP and real human enemies and cannot be done with PVE only and bots imho.
What Bot in what game challenges you for “years, decades or centuries”.
I mean i’m not a Dark Souls player, but afaik even this genre can’t do that.

i agree on that.
DT has depth, but is not that deep is my compromise

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Your definition of depth not The. This is just some guys opinion. An opinion you happen to agree with. If this game remains as it is it wont be a live service game which is what its supposed to be. What it was sold as.

LSG (live service games) or GaaS (games as a service) are video games designed to keep people engaged as long as possible by frequently adding new content and updates

As things stand its a simple and repetitive game with limited option’s for players across the board. That coupled with a small pool of linear level’s and a shallow crafting system (when its implemented) leaves it lacking in every conceivable way that might constitute depth. Having a difficulty curve does not constitute depth in a game.

Fifa street fighter2 dark tide are simple games you can pick it up and play it and you’ve seen everything the game has to offer within a few hours you can ramp up the difficulty and challenge yourself get better at the game but its still basically the same game as you played in those first few hours.

They could add more depth to the game by increasing the map pool adding more global conditions finishing the weapons adding more skills and making those things actually change the way your character plays but being as we are months in and nothing has changed I’m starting to think that will either never happen or happen so slowly I will have moved on before it does.

If you guys are happy and think there is depth to this game that’s great but I don’t and I’m not alone in that opinion.

They must have thought it would be enough if they released it like this… maybe they plan to add more levels to explore and mobs to fight behind a paywall later who knows.

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Why are you posting in a thread about game depth?

  • You clearly want to talk about the game’s content releases (live service). That’s not depth.
  • You’re clearly disappointed with unfinished features. That’s not depth.
  • You’ve clearly ignored all attempts to explain to you what depth is, so you don’t even seem interested in actual depth.
  • When given concrete examples of things making the game deeper you’ve essentially ignored them, so you definitely don’t seem interested in depth.

Do you just bomb every thread you see and reply negatively no matter how off topic it is?

If someone started a thread “this game has Ogryns” would you ignore their definition of Ogryn, ignore the evidence proving the game has Ogryns, and disagree with everything while bringing up completely unrelated things (live service, unfinished features, etc)?

How can you possibly think that’s a mature way to act?

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So first off I would like to say please do not assume any underlying intention, attribute malice, or take insult to my posts (or most other posts for that matter). Please take what I say at face value and if you feel like I’m being offensive, it’s most likely that you’re assuming we’re talking about the same exact thing when we likely aren’t.

That being said, in regards to “gaming skill” this game has some depth. The amount of depth to it is very subjective. I for one, feel that this game is on the shallower side.

Subjective Opinion: Is there a difference between the “poor” “average” “good” and “great” players of this game? Yes.

Subjective Opinion: Is this difference easily noticeable? Not really

  • 90%+ of my matches have been PUGs, the remaining 10% were me and a buddy in PUGs. From my experience (ergo in my opinion) individual player skill means next to nothing, and what matters the most is being on the same page as your teammates.
  • Can people Solo and duo Damnation? Yes. Does that indicate a high level of skill? Sure I guess. I’ve never actually watched those videos. Can I solo/duo Damnation? I don’t know, probably not. I’ve never bothered to try because that’s not where I find enjoyment
  • In my experience “carrying” was mainly the team taking care of the John Q Rambo who Leeroy Jenkins their way into an absolute mess.

Subjective Opinion: A higher level of depth has been negated by server-client desyncs, broken feats/blessings, and unsorted weapons that require constant modifications and re-balancing

Subjective Opinion: The mood of the Game Manager AI can effectively negate the skill ceiling. I’ve seen too many team wipes where the Game Manager AI spawned the right enemies in the right places, giving players no ability to do anything. Whether it’s mutants throwing players into pox bursters, the endless mutant train that you can’t dodge, triple sniper insta-spawns while the fan is already hit, or the spawn shooting gallery with a ton of gunners and reapers when you’re trying to sneak past a Daemonhost.

These are all my opinions. I respect your opinions that this game has depth. And I understand that I will not change those opinions. I’m glad that we narrowed the field of depth down to this discussion of player skill.

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I think this is the "solution to the question how one defines depth of a game.
People have different criteria.
Depth of a game has no official definition.
And when some Game Wiki would try to do we would have the same debate of what depth of a game is and how to measure and compare it to other games.
The closest we could maybe get to is, is DT a depth Game compared to other games of the genre like L4D 1+2, VT 1+2, CoD Zombies, Deep Rock Galactic, World War Z, Payday 1+2 etc… etc…

I cannot answer that, havent played any of them because they are not WH40k Games :hugs:

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(post deleted by author)

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Why call that subjective? We largely define “bad aim skill” as missing shots, which is an objective result. So objectively there are players that will aim better than others.

We’re talking about depth, which is the skill gap between good and bad players. So it doesn’t matter if the difference is noticed or not. Basically you’re talking about perception of depth, rather than whether the depth actually exists. I’m talking about the depth actually existing.

Sometimes it’s obvious when a mistake is a made. I pulled a Host with Brain Burst the other day and it was decisively the thing that wiped the group; in part because I (unskillfully) believed I could pull it back away from the entire team and minimize deaths to it, when I shouldn’t instead rushed forward to die as quickly as possible. Either way, it was obvious I wiped the run.

Sometimes it’s far less obvious, where each player is making a bunch of micro-mistakes causing them to take bits of chip damage throughout the run, and all of those mistakes added up to the wipe when a little extra pressure was experienced later in the match and everyone with their ~25 HP got downed all at once. It didn’t “feel” like any individual’s fault, and maybe blame was distributed equally (or maybe that really good player took damage picking up a downed person earlier, or trying to push a Burster that got shot by a sloppy teammate). But whether these players are aware of it or not, the quality of their decisions (their skill) is what caused their group to wipe.

Bubbles. Buddy. We’re talking about a game. All the skills in a game are gaming skill.

Even if it’s a social deduction game (Town of Salem, Space Station 13) where the skill is overwhelming the same exact skill you’d use in real-life deception, the moment it’s part of a game it’s part of that game’s depth.

Most of that seems wrong:

  • Clearly if lag causes someone to take a hit or some other failure, that’s not player skill driving the outcome. So it isn’t depth.
  • It can drive depth. For example players in Planetside 2 learn to use your delayed position data to their advantage; meaning if I have 400ms ping to the server, and I pop around a corner to shoot you, I have 400ms shooting you before I ever appear on your screen (that said, usually you have an extra 400ms on the tail end of the fight where you can keep shooting me even though I already killed you on my screen; but in most shooters both players would see each other near-simultaneously, which would allow the more skilled player to eliminate even a very laggy player (because if a player’s latency is bad enough then a lot of both-players-die scenarios can happen)
  • Broken feats/blessings are the environment you’re making choices in. So by default they don’t necessarily impact a game’s overall depth.
  • But yes, if they were all equally balanced in distinct situations then the game would be much deeper
  • The more dangerous situation is things like if there’s one super dominant strategy that trivializes a lot of encounters; that’s the sort of thing that removes depth from a game.
  • Unsorted weapons? I assume you mean unbalanced? So then same basic response as before where “super dominant weapons” can definitely reduce depth but that navigating the game’s environment (making good choices when some very bad choices exist) is all part of the skill involved.

Wording’s a bit weird, but I mostly agree.

But also that’s just part of the environment where your skills are being tested.

  • a skilled player will have enemies spawned directly on top of them and push/dodge their way out and live.
  • heck, last few times I’ve taken the elevator where enemies always spawn on you, I just immediately engaged them with the heaviest weapons I could throw at that place where I knew they’d spawn! And players who do things like this will enjoy far more success than others.

Depth is depth regardless of whether those deep moments should be removed from the game. That stupid elevator-with-2-exits where you always get enemies spawning on you should be fixed! It’s adding depth, but it’s detracting from fun overall, and so they should fix the spawn system to feel fair.

Another example of depth that’s not very fun is to go back to those good weapons/blessings and point out that the source of weapons/blessings is entirely random and it’s definitely unsatisfying to want a certain weapon type with certain blessings and have no meaningful way to steer towards that except “just keep watchin the RNG shops”. You’re still making a weapon choice based on whatever sub-optimal options the shop did provide you, so there’s still depth, but it’d be more enjoyable if crafting was finished.

The fact that all these types of skill can be listed, and that they all have an influence on whether the team succeeds or not is what proves it isn’t subjective opinion. The game objectively has depth, as proven by the lists of skills involved. The fact that the list is longer than many similar PVE games is why it’s reasonable to say it’s deeper than many of those other games.

It’s weird to me that you admit the game has depth (“Is there a difference between the “poor” “average” “good” and “great” players of this game? Yes.”) while weirdly trying to imply it’s just subjective opinion that it has depth.

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This. I don’t know maybe there is a real depth in DT. But I’m a basement dwelling boomer so i’ve seen some games in my life. Like common, standart input - moving and aiming can’t be counted as depth. You can say game is hard and demand some skills and training. But depth comes with hidden nuances that don’t make your expirience frustrating if you don’t know them, but make it awesome if you know them.

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I mean things like learning timers, getting better at target priority, knowing your exact breakpoints, getting better at various attack chains for optimization, knowing the enemy’s armor type on various parts, knowing to headshot that tox flamer coming at the team when you see a psyker start brain bursting it so it gets stumbled and then finished by the brain burst so your psyker gets the warp charge at no risk, knowing how to dodge a plague ogryn so you can still help shoot enemies while it’s focusing you, etc. I’d classify as adding more depth to the game. None of that is 100% necessary but you’re going to be a lot better at the game for doing so.

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I’ve removed the madness interwoven in the thread, now please keep this on topic or it’ll be either locked up (sadge) or off topic posters given a time out.

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All this knowledges come from repetative actions that takes only one variable form you - time. And let’s be honest it doesn’t take a lot, few runs, few encounters with specials too understand “ok i did this wrong, this was a mistake, it was a bad position, my dodge was short i need to dodge slide next time”. It takes only 5 mins in psykanium to see that maulers helmet goes blue sparkle and his body not. It’s even in tutorial.

I mean kiting is a common thing in games and searching a window for an atack/action too. It’s a common thing even in life - people will go cricles/backwards if there is a wild animal infront. V2 actually got more depth, for example you can force rat ogre to perform an overhead atack constantly with “step forward-dodge back” loop, it takes both skill and time to learn such thing even exist. I rarely see someone doing it on Cataclysm even.

But they are not hidden mechanics, they are pretty obvious. There is no second bottom that was designed behind. And even things that was designed like combo chains are kinda basic. It probably takes one neuron to work to notice things like you can combine eviscerator heavy and light for hordes clearing and not just spam lbm. There is no hitboxes on enemy atacks in DT as i understand how it works, cause in V2 you can catch a halberd strike that wasn’t aiming to you, probably happend with everyone, and you need to learn it. But in DT i don’t remember something like that, it’s actually reversed. Planty of times i was thinking “damn my dodge was bad, how is this crusher/mauler didn’t turn me into a meat jam”. You can say that DT melee combat is more forgiving, but it also means less to learn, less depth. You also can spam to win a lot, while V2 will punish you for that. Like common, does anyone scared of ragers? No. But when monks are coming for you it still tickles your balls even after thousand of hours. Sure there is some depth in combat, but the thing is DT not an oldschool arena shooter, so almost every component of this game should have a decent level of depth so you can say it about the game as a whole thing.

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DT has this same technique for plague ogryns, doesn’t it? https://youtu.be/bHQJfVuL3Wo

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Depth is the entire skill gap between newbie and expert. So skills being shared between games doesn’t mean those aren’t part of that game’s depth. It does mean they aren’t interesting for you (because you’ve already learned them), but they’re still part of the gap between newbie and experts.

*Also just because we sum up skills by the same name (“aiming skill”) that doesn’t mean there isn’t nuance from game to game. For example in Tribes 1 you jetpacked around at very high speeds, so you might be traveling 100kph down, 300kph east, 10kph north. Well when you fire your Spinfusor (rocket launcher basically), it inherits that momentum, plus 400kph in the direction you’ve shot. Point being “aiming skill” in that game still involved using your mouse to rapidly aim where you wanted, but where you wanted was a very different place in Tribes 1 because you had to account for all those trajectories to shoot the right location and land the midair spinfusor.

Well unlike Tribes, DT doesn’t vary that much from typical shooters, but still has its own nuances. When you go to headshot, it’s still not as reliable as in other games (despite them sizing-up heads in DT compared with V2). When you do land the headshot, the enemy often goes into a fairly brutal stagger animation (more brutal than other games, if they play an animation like that at all), which then makes any follow-up shot trickier than normal. Well it’s all these nuances that create the unique skill depth present in DT.

It’s the same, there just aren’t mid-tier SV equivalents.

  • just like V2 basic enemy attacks can’t hit you that way
  • just like V2 bigger attacks can hit you that way (Monstrosities, Maulers, Crushers; probably Bulwarks I’d guess; I suspect Sniper shots too, certainly teammates can “prime” the sniper to be ready to fire)

SV just happened to be a common mid-tier enemy with a very long reach allowing them to do this sort of thing more often.

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Well ok. This one is a hit to me, tried a few times wasn’t able.

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Seems fair to say that depth is a pretty subjective matter so your opinions might differ from mine.

In my opinion execution skill does not always equal complexity & depth. At the moment there is not enough player choice in dark tide for it to be considered deep in my opinion.

They can fix that and it looks like they might do.
The Future of Warhammer 40k Darktide - YouTube
Video give’s me hope for the future of the game.

More player choice equals more depth for me after reading and arguing with people here though turns out this is a more complicated question than it looks on the surface.

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