What is with the trend today of waving away negative criticism from a community by calling it ‘review bombing’ as if none of the negative reviews are legit
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Calling it review bombing implies some kind of coordinated attempt to drive a game’s metrics down, usually for something that exists outside of the game itself, which as far as I can tell isn’t happening. What is your evidence for this? Can people not be individually dissatisfied with the state of the game and are recommending and reviewing it accordingly?
Weird that you seem so intent on framing the negative reaction to Darktide as unfair or overblown when anyone who has played a horde shooter before can tell the game is lacking in a lot of key aspects.
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The only thing that was coordinated was Fatshark releasing the game when it wasn’t complete.
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The Mental Gymnastics in this post waken me up faster than coffe since my brain almost overloaded trying to mimick process that made you come to such conclusions.
So you are saying that over 50% of reviewers on Steam (which are "small vermintide players likeminded people) went into coordinated effort to review bomb this awesome flawless game that is Darktide becasue they hated the fact that that there is new game from their favourite Tide series?
Tin Foil Hat much?
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Even if it was the case that people “review bombed” it because it “wasn’t like Vermintide”, this would still be a very good reason for a negative review. It was reasonable to expect for the game to be very similar to the two Fantasy Tide-Games in the sense that it would take the established formula and add to it. It is baffling to me how anyone would see this as anything other than a reasonable and, frankly, necessary expectation, considering the fact they called the game DarkTIDE.
VT2 is far from a perfect game, but what was there was good enough in gameplay, atmosphere, story-telling and balancing that people put up with its quirkiness and some of the more questionable design-choices (and, to be perfectly blunt, Fatshark’s antics both in regards to their game as their overall business strategies). I guess FS was wholely unaware of how thin the line was they were walking with this.
People were not playing VT 1 and 2 BECAUSE of Fatshark, they played it despite Fatshark.
The game will fail to keep the attention of casual and “hardcore” players alike. For hardcore players, the grind is too frustrating and there is, for the forseeable future, too little endgame progression, content and variety to keep you entertained long enough to spend money on Aquilas, which seems to be their overall business strategy.
For casual players, the game is simply too hard, not enough is explained, there is no story to engage them in, and casuals won’t buy more than a handful of cosmetics before dumping the game.
They REALLY thought this is going to be the next big thing since Ninja Turtles, didn’t they? Like, the Overwatch of 4-Player-Co-Op games, folks would be streaming that sh!t left and right, making videos about all those “kewl new cosmetics” for their millions of twitch and youtube-subs and the free Twitch-cosmetics.
The WH40K-IP is what keeps this game from completely falling behind. But it will only get them so far, simply because the use of the IP is too obscure in many regards (a game not focusing on Orks and SM is going to suffer, since these are the most recognizable entities within the IP), Ogryns are basically the only thing that is “exotic” - and there is no story!
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This is only my opinion but… Darktide is a great game and that’s why people are raging here, cause it is a great game.
A boring game, a bad game, an uninterresting game… you don’t follow it and don’t expect anything from the devs. I have bought such game, either I asked a refund, or I could not and then I uninstalled it and… end of the story.
In my opinion, this game will be a serious excellent game. The problem is that, if they succeed to kill their player base, it could actually fail badly and not be this great game. In fact, without players, you cannot play this game. Bots are so stupid that you can’t rely on them.
I said it and say it again, there should be no comparison with VT2. Or, Darktide is largely inspired of it regaring enemies, missions etc. But the darktide gameplay is not focused on melee but a combination between distance and melee weapons.
I did not like VT2, I love darktide.
Problem, in my opinion, is that all these bad reviews could be a serious problem to see the game encountering its public. Let’s add, bad reviews are perfectly understandables when someone don’t think the game deserves a thumb up
There should be no comparison? Dude, Darktide is like 2/3 to 75% Vermintide 2, except with less content. It’s not ‘inspired’ by it, it straight up uses a ton of it for its core gameplay in terms of enemies and whatnot.
See: this post.
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lol what? The devs have said themselves that Darktide is the third game in the “-Tide” series. DT’s gameplay and mechanics are intended to be a direct progression of the gameplay and mechanics from VT1&2, of course comparison is valid.
You contradict yourself here. Bad reviews are fine when people wouldn’t recommend the game, but they’re also bad because bad reviews negatively effect the perception of the game? Yeah, that’s how bad reviews work.
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Blockquote The game will fail to keep the attention of casual and “hardcore” players alike. For hardcore players, the grind is too frustrating and there is, for the forseeable future, too little endgame progression, content and variety to keep you entertained long enough to spend money on Aquilas, which seems to be their overall business strategy.
not sure how fatshark strategy was to get you to spend aquilas when there were barely any cosmetics in the shop at launch, and for the first month.
Not sure why so low of rating. I’d imagine because there is a lack of story and lore, and the game ALMOST seems unfinished. it doesn’t seem like we have THAT many maps/missions yet. The devs also seem to have held back on releasing some content, that I am not sure if it is time-gated or progression based… connected to the lore of the game world and/or characters??? The psyker literally had a shotgun in beta, and now doesn’t have one. Also, my psyker just unlocked lazer pistol again, which was available in the beta already.
no complaints, just saying, looks like we don’t have anywhere near all the content planned for this game, and that is part of the plan to build the game world over time.
I would like to see more chat and videos pertaining to the dark-tide world and missions. it would be neat to know how our missions are going to effect lore in the game world of dark-tide. I can see a lot of people not quite getting into darktide when there isn’t much about the world/lore of warhammer 40k, and the loot/stat systems are not completely implemented/finished yet. plus, there are not really a ton of different missions/maps yet. vermintide 2, even with just the base game, has like 20 missions, and we have 10 or so rn in darktide. but again, that might be a plan for the progression of the game/world. I am very happy with darktide as of now. the map environments are pretty cool and different.
the “hardcore” players of this game are pretty much just enjoying high difficulty missions and trying to min max curios/perks/stats as the new stats/perks/gun variants and even entire new gun types are released. i generally see new weapons/perks appear on weapons in the gun shop
also seeing the real money shop get new items is pretty exciting, there is a decent selection/amount when the game has only been out for a couple months.
it would be nice to see some free cosmetics like skin patterns get sprinkled in here and there though.
I think a cool idea might be even to attach skin sets to a mission type at some point. like what if every time you do a mission completion, you get a recolor for a random weapon type of your class. and once you unlock all the ones of your class, it can unlock them for classes you don’t have.
then these missions could show up here and there, and you can unlock some cool cheap skins or whatever.
free skins might sound anti-fatshark, but if they have issues of player retention, maybe some missions with free skins is exactly what they need for player retention and to get more new people attracted to the game
i’d also REALLY like to see a game type like expeditions in darktide. what if there was chain missions or something with a greater reward, and even skins/small amount of aquilas as a reward??? even if aquilas was limited to a certain amount you can earn per week from expeditions, could be really cool.
can dev’s introduce tracking of our experience past level 30??? vermintide 2 nailed doing level 30 (+x) or whatever based on your total exp would also be interesting if these over-levels could be factored into some type of progression system, or even some achievements with some cosmetics tied. borders or badge even would be cool.
Not sure why so low of rating.
-No communication.
-No response to any common criticism of the game. One exception being the added Aquilas amount you can buy.
-EVERY SYSTEM IN THE GAME DISRESPECTS YOUR TIME WORSE THAN FREEMIUM GAMES. I KNOW BECAUSE I HAVE PLAYED SEVERAL FREEMIUM KOREAN MMOS AND IT IS MUCH WORSE IN DARKTIDE.
-No end of game scoreboard or if you think its toxic to have a public score board(wow what a world, how dare I wonder what the stats are of the other players in my current active game and compare myselves to them) then no private scoreboard only you the player can view about yourself at the end of game.
-Only 4 classes, when they had advertised others in trailers.
-unfinished items
-unfinished upgrade progression system (hadron)
-lack of maps
-bugged game modes where a normal map is super duper high intensity gunner elite special spam times 50
-bugged animation on some weapons that make them flip out
-generally all the wierd game breaking bugs
-crashes still happen
-all weapons, money, materials, etc where shared between characters on the same account in CBT, but arbitrarily restricted in full release.
-All the promises listed in this reddit thread. I don’t think they ever once told us that these would not make it in the main game, they only said they would be in the game. They did not even apologize for it, or attempt to correct the record.
Just acknowledging it, and saying whether somthing is scrapped, or if they plan to introduce it later.
LITERALLY ANY DIRECT ADDRESS OF SOME OF THE MOST COMMON CRITISMS AND FUTURE PLANS FOR THE GAME WOULD BE VERY NICE. LIKE WHAT IS COMING IN THE NEXT MONTH?
WHAT ARE THE LONG TERM PLANS FOR THE GAME? WHAT DO YOU HOPE TO BRING IN THE NEXT YEAR? JUST BASIC COMMUNICATION, LIKE EVERY LIVE SERVICE GAME THAT HAS EVER EXISTED.
lol, sorry for the caps, its just so basic. Just basic communication, please 
For my epic dork cred, I am around 290 hours, though this is likely because I leave the game open to check for shop rotations, so I have left the game open all night many times. I have fully geared lvl30 of every current class. I only play T5 and to a lesser extent, T4 difficulties. I like the core game loop, I dislike the scummy practices, all the unfinished bits of the game, and how much this game disrespects your time.
I really want to love the game, however there seems to be serious management and leadership issue. I do not know, I can only guess, based on how DT and VT1-2 all had very fun, different, interesting, and fun gameplay loops. I can tell there must be many talented people at the company, which is why it is so sad and frustrating to see both VT and DT suffering consistent similar issues.
Not saying the following is the case, just that it would be said if it were the case: The scariest thought is that the game was already more complete, or actually completed, but they are slowly dripfeeding in features, parts of features, an mission, an new game modifier, etc, etc, to slowly keep stringing us along.
I do not think that is totally the case, only except for the upgrade shop, because that one is clearly being rolled out slow, though unclear if due to scummy practices, actually unfinished, or both.
Sad, because the core game is super fun.
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I understand what you mean. However I have read so many times that “in VT we had this”, “Devs should have done it like in VT”, “VT was better on this thing” etc.
But, in my opinion, Darktide is not VT, and it a total different gamne.
I did not like VT2, I tried to play it… I tried again and again… But I had to give up.
Darktide, I love it. I had not to force me… I want to play it more and more…
But, off course, I rage cause there are parts of the game that are not finished (crafting mainly).
If they could finish what they planned for the game and fix the bugs they can move to the console port. Even if I don’t see how a FPS can succeed on a console…
The games are objectifiably more similar than different, down to using not only the same mechanics, but almost carbon-copies of classes, animations, and weapons.
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Yup, it’s way more simillar than different, I don’t know how anyone can argue that considering they reused tons of assets on the same engine.
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Yep, I recall a fair amount of this (having played the beta, and putting hundreds of hours into the game in the first several months), but reading that really brought it all back.
Given how much FS touted the expansion of their staff since then, your would think these issues would have been worked out, lessons learned, etc…
Instead we are in (as you said) an eerily similar situation.
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Well, I did. And I was sold on DT as being the third game in the series. And yet I fail to feel any of the main elements that made VTs such pleasure for me, and the ones that I can glance are hidden by the antiplayer design decisions, such as the store system (and no, I’m not talking about cosmetics at all).
And when I discount that, I can see primarily poverty of content in the gameplay - e.g. the entire DT feels more like a DLC for VT2, and not the CWs DLC at that - and worst kind of tedious micromanagement outside it. So OK, if you are happy with what there is, be, but bear in mind that majority of the comparisons with VTs are here to point out why some of us are not enjoying DT. And these comparisons predominate because we played those games, they are the common ground.
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I think we should get a celebratory cosmetic item if the game hits below 40%. Maybe some kind of clown-wig, or a propeller-hat, something like that.
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I really don’t know why people keep bringing up those games as success stories. NMS sent me through an unrecoverable crash cycle the last time I tried playing it and cp77 still glitches out on basic things constantly and still isn’t how it was ‘advertised’ before launch. I have a feeling that darktide is going to reach into similar territory if their next couple patches don’t address player feedback yet again.
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CP77 just has a general engine issue honestly, the engine was not built with the game they wanted to make in mind… It’s the same issue Bethesda games are running into. They need to experiment with new engines and see what works for what they want to do.
They’re supposed to have switched completely over to unreal engine for their future full titles.
The way “hacking” worked vs. how it was shown in trailers was the biggest let-down in CP - and the game not only has engine problems, they did so many things wrong to please their investors, especially when it comes to the story. The first part feels like it had taken the hatchet to it. You literally do two missions with your “supposedly best buddy in the world” before he dies, and the rest is a video-montage. How am I supposed to feel bad about Jackie’s death if he dies after about half an hour and I know nothing about him.
And while I like Keanu Reeves, he’s the biggest misscast for Johnny Silverhand. If you have the old rulebooks for Cyberpunk, he is basically David Bowie (from his musical style and his aesthetics) and much, MUCH more angry and rebellious. They nailed about every other established character, especially Smasher, Rogue and Alt Cunningham (though she looks a little too “filthy” in the game. Alt, in the universe, was known to spend alot of her eddies on cosmetic surgery and was always depicted as absolutely stunningly hot), though the way they demoted Spider Murphy to nothing more than a footnote in a flashback mission and the COMPLETE lack of Morgan Blackhand is borderline criminal, considering they established Smasher as one of the big baddies. The enmity between Morgan and Adam Smasher is legendary in the lore. I mean, they heavily hint towards the - cannonically correct - fact that it was indeed Morgan who saved Johnny in one of the flashbacks from Smasher, which leads me to believe that around 80% of the originally intended story got scrapped in favour of just strong-arming Keanu in and devote 95% of all story dialogue to him berating you.
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