The "i stilll have fun playing and got over the issues" post trying to help the game, the community and FS to develop

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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Please if you want to criticise the game and complain again, do not and just leave this post.
I’ve heard you and i respect your opinion, i respect you are disappointed, but this topic is about how to help the game, the community and FS getting out of it’s backlash and going further.

Thank you very much, it’s apreciated!!!

I’m still playing and have fun.
I want the game to proceed and develop and therefore made this post.

I’m thinking about to give a positive review on steam - have not reviewed it until - to help the game not becoming dead and FS to have a chance to finish and rework some parts of it and help the community of active players to enjoy the game further.

Are there players here still playing and wanting the game to develop and succeed?
If so, what do you think is the most important things FS need to do now to help the game rise again?

mine are:

  1. communicate a roadmap about completing crafting and reworking rng mechanics.
  2. complete and rework crafting and rng mechanics and give players more freedom and power to buy and craft the weapons they want asap.
  3. finish console version and add crossplay

Communication of a roadmap of completing and reworking the RNG aspects of the weapons shop, the weekly contracts and crafting is more important than aynthing else.
A console release should be postponed if possible, because to release the game in this state and with its actual perception and reputation wont help anyone. Nor Fatshark neither the active playing community.

What do you think?

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I think most people here want the game to do well and develop. Unfortunately the negativity generated by the flop launch of Darktide has built quite the tidal wave of anger. And with each day that there’s no communication or progress being shown to the player base, that anger is increased. It’s a lot like starting a fire and pouring fuel on it until even the Fire fighters are thinking they may need to let it burn itself out.

It’s a good thing that players like you are around and trying to keep a stiff upper lip. Hopefully responses will be thought out and respectful, but be prepared for some to be pissed when they respond.

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Console releases are conteactually agreed with microsoft and require a much stricted vetting process. It wont be stopped or postponed.

Fatshark got completely boned over the roadmap for VT2, they wont do it again.

I think to recover it needs a monstrously massive patch or a fast and nimble series of patches to tackle;

Terrible character progression grind. Make materials cross character, or weapons cross character or triple xp or something.

Remove rng from in game free shop. Let me purchase all weapons at lowest level, increasing their power with dockets until its up to 380.

Allow reblessing of both traits on weapons. I want to tailor my build please.

Sire melk need to have reworked pennances to reward teamplay.

Toughness, coherency and toughness-regain needs a rework.

Ranged enemies need to be scaled better, or stunlocking needs addressing, or both.

Classes need meaningful feats to allow different builds to work.

Allow me to pick the mission at my chosen difficulty. Maybe even choose my modifier.

Monsters need far more interesting play. Nurgle beast is simply a bullet sponge.

Gameplay needs reworking to reward innovation. Currently at heresy+ its a game of stand-in-a-doorway and shoot. Run through room, repeat.

Demonhost needs some reward for killing it.

Stop stupid weapon reload animations every time i swap to ranged.

Enemy flamers and fire needs a rethink of the threat level.

Grimoires are pointless and do not reward enough for carrying one.

Auspexes need to detect scriptures and grimoires.

Servers need addressing. They cannot handle the load at damnation, and it results in ghost shots, missed blocks and enemies living after i pump 200 rounds into them.

A huge weapon balance patch.

Thats all i got for now.

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im still playing daily, drop in and out as i fancy doing a run ive already gone through the 300 hour mark . i think the core game loop is actually great. its got one majour flaw to me and thats the pacing and end of mission tempo. long point short if you play left for dead no mercy rooftop finale and how that game does the end of mission crescendo then compare it to DT … yeah
but that is my one complaint about the in mission experience.

im not blind to the missing systems the half arsed systems and the plain bad ones its just none of that removes the fun from the core loop for me.

communication is the main sticking point , i know the games suffered a late in dev pivot i know its been pushed out half done, and im fairly sure over the holidays break some fairly large direction changes appear to have happened and its going to be 6 months or more till this games close to done.

but its been over a month now and nothing… each day the expectation ratchets up , they need to get out infront of this.

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Well i can agree only on very few points like remove or at minimum reduce RNG and level weapons to 380 and have more power and freedom crafting your weapons.
But your post reads like you want a completely different game more or less.
It would be too much to answer every point and why i disagree with most of it.

But anyway thanks for the input.

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Being “negative” or “critical” of the game does not prevent the devs from working on the game. Rather, I’d wager it helps them, more than anything else ; when people start being less critical, then it means they’re doing something right. Besides, there was plenty of good and bad feedback during the betas, and they hardly listened to anything we said.
Furthermore, our feedback makes it through to the devs filtered by the CMs. It’s not like we send them hate mail or anything.

Also, it’s difficult to point out the positive things, when VT2 is objectively of much higher quality on all points except graphical fidelity (and even then, DT chugs like crazy without DLSS on any machine except a NASA supercomputer).

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These are the things stopping me playing. Theres just too many frustration triggers for me personally to ignore although there are some in my friends group who are having a blast . Maybe though you’re right and the game isnt for me, or the countless thousands who’ve dropped it like a hot brick.

I have a feeling many peoples experiences might align with mine, and as a business veture its surely in everyones interests to address the frustrations that affect the most people.

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Well the actual reputation and reviews for sure impact future decisions.
I see the problems also, but they weigh less to me versus the fun i have playing, else i wouldn’t have played that much.
And i still have fun after 430 hours played. So i want the game, the active playing community and FS go further and not die because of the backlash.

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Agreed on all of those points, and have been repeating the same since the closed beta test.

Absolutely - I’m here with you. Vermintide 2 is one of my favorites games and I’d love for Darktide to get to that level.

However - if we don’t pressure Fatshark and continue to push for improvements, they will without a doubt sit back and think that that everything fine and improvements will never come. Its about holding Fatshark accountable. I strive to be constructive in my criticisms and spell out the issues and how it could be better. It’s up to Fatshark to act on that.

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Major improvements :

  • Complete Hadron crafting system, allowing us to keep extracted blessing and perks in a library
  • Map selection rework: let players choose the difficulty on 5-6 different maps on map selection screen
  • Communication : Quarterly roadmaps announced with patches every quarter. Communication about community survey results.

Important improvements :

  • More player-friendly RnG in Armory shop.
  • Armory shop proposes at least one weapon of each type per rotation.
  • Additional subclasses with dedicated talent trees released quarterly. I would suggest not to charge for it at this moment.
  • Servers lag spikes improvement.

Secondary improvements:

  • Shortcuts between mourningstar hub shops
  • Training mode in psykhanium for better practice
  • Instant character change possible in mission preparation screen, and icons showing loadout of other players below their models
  • Increased stability (of the game)
  • Additonal penances, ideally with cosmetic rewards
  • Improve Sir Melk’s equipment selection and rework of some contracts (secondary objectives)
  • Experience after level 30 is noted somewhere (lvl 30 +65) and gives additional reward (one weapon each additional level)
  • Fine-tuning of minimum distance required for ennemy shooters to engage in melee at higher difficulty (would improve pacing and shorten duration of damnation and / or high intensity play sessions)
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What I’d love to see is that when you level up after level 30, you gain a special token that you can apply towards improving the base rating of a weapon and increasing a given stat. That would be cool.

Your list is great, totally agree. It’s the same things the community has been asking for since before release.

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If the Meatgrinder had an “arena” mode where you could try out your gear and feats on a mob that was actively attacking you, that would be excellent.

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1 to 3 types of 1 to 8 ennemies each, with AI turned “on” would be useful, with a quick-restart button. Including monsters and poxbusters options.

Best way to learn timings and weapons.

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That’s why we criticise the game, becasue we want it to succeed. You think why Vermintide 2 did succeed in the end? We were merciless on state of that game, on their design choices, on pushing for approved mods that fixed most QoL issues that game had and more. The problem is Fatshark who is just always ignoring us, thinking that they know better. I still remember when we were telling them that releasing Wind of Magic as seperate mode behind paywall is bad idea. Well, WoM failed, who would have guessed. When FS released “Stagger” system it was community that discovered and reported to Fatshark that whole system doesn’t work at all. FS had to admit that as data was straight from code. It took them 1 year to fix stagger system all thanks to dedicated fanbase.

So yeah, we want Darktide to succeed. But that will happen only if FS finally will put their pride deep in pocket and start listening to feedback and rework their game based on that faster than 1-2 years after all playerbase is gone.

And roadmap is bad idea. In 9/10 game studios roadmap is never kept as deadlines and projects are constantly moving and being pushed further away etc.

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I understand that, i critized the game aka the rng mechanics and not finished crafting also, but then i realized, well that’s it for now, but the core gameplay still is very good and fun, at least to me and i think to many others too.

Imho the ongoing critizising doenst help that much, we need more constructivity, more posititvity also. And i think some are already in a form of negativity bias about the game or FS as a developer.
I can understand this also if some of you already went through that process for Vermintide 1 and 2. That doesnt mean the critics are gone, but i think FS has heared them, know them and also knows they need to react.
Afaik DT is their crowd puller now, at least they want it to be the game that they focus on developing, building a large community and sell cosmetics, future and seasonal content for.
And i doubt they can scrap these plans easily, but need to react, need to do something as they have for sure invested a lot. Not only time and money, but also lifeblood and dedication.
The fact they are searching for employees to me is a sign to expand and not they lost lots of developers and employees. Sure some employees allways leave after a milestone like a release had happened, but the staff stays and need to be expanded to make the profect thrive.

This post is not about to forget about the viable critics, but to give everyone the opportunity to make more or less concret suggestions and to tell FS, we are still here, we like to play, we have fun with the core game, please do this, do that, change this, tell us that in a constructive and positive way.

In my experience this will be far more helpfull for us all. We all know FS needs to deliver and the ball is on their side.
I’m still willing to support the game, i have hopes and maybe i’m naive because i dont know exactly what the story was when VT 1 or 2 launched and had similar problems and rough starts.

All good things go by three. Time to complain is over (for me), the players that have partially overcome the issues and are still playing should start to be more constructive and help FS to develop, to recreate some mechanics and FS will hopefully listen and react this time.

That said, this thread has already some good suggestions, some are more concrete than mine, but i wanted to gather some ideas and wants of people who are active here. Like the surveys also do.
FS has metrics of their game for sure, that help them also to balance, fix and improve the games systems.

I for myself agree with some of their more unpopular decisions and can see why they did that.
Random Maps and conditions for example is something i see people dont like that much, but i understand this and are okay with it when i think about longevity and casual, beginner friendliness of the game.
I also understand having no score board with personal stats and support that.

Other ideas and suggestions made i want for myself.
I will maybe create some topics that we can discuss these controversies in detail, but later, when there are maybe some more posts made in this thread.

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They had plenty of that during both betas where we worked our asses off to find every single thing that was not working, was problematic, badly designed or will cause problems, including everything that on release indeed was broken/horribly designed included RNG store, Plague Hound horrible AI, issues with weapons, blessings, talents, maps and many more.

If they want very constructive feedback with screenshots/videos etc. they can go back to betas feedback and get it.

But obviously they just ignored 90% of that.

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i completely understand if some have lost patience and hope, but then it is the best to take a step back and let others try further and come back in some month or a year.