This game has potential but

I have all 4 character types on level 30 now and had also a reasonable amount of time refining each class.
Below are my personal impressions of the issues and problems the game still has.

So this game has potential but here is what is wrong with it (in my opinion):

Visual:

  • Glitching environments (overlapping geometry that then flashes quickly).
  • Blood and other on top textures do not move with the environment and stay in place while for example an elevator or an enemy shield moves away from it.
  • Missing textures that allow you to see through to the void.
  • Shadows and lights being extremely blocky in some areas.
  • Markers colors differ from player colors.
  • Player colors are always different even if you are in a strike team.
  • During beta progress bars were orange on whiteish background. Now its white on white for some unknown reason which makes it incredibly difficult to distinguish in the fast-paced battles.
  • Flamethrowers are cool and all but burned enemies that are still alive turn almost completely black making it nearly impossible to detect them in the generally dark environment.
  • Flamethrowers are also so crazy overloaded in effects that you are unable to see any enemy whatsoever.
  • Some maps have wide areas with changing paths where you are often not given a marker to where you need to go, others have markers that are no longer valid that do not disappear and are therefore misleading.
  • Power out or fog maps are a nightmare to play not because of the nightmarish atmosphere but because if you do not have a reasonably bright flashlight by default and in quickplay missions you are not able to equip a weapon with a flashlight because well it is quickplay and you will be thrown in a random mission. Also, you may not even have a weapon with reasonable stats that even has a flashlight option in the first place. Or your class does not even have a weapon with a flashlight at all.

Environmental:

  • Pickups stuck in the wall or ground.
  • Pickups that cannot be collected from their boxes, it’s also possible that there is a crate in a box you may swap with a scripture but are the not able to pick up the scripture anymore.
  • Fences or other partially blocking objects can often not be shot through but not always.
  • You can easily fall off the map at many places since fences have unexplained/unexpected gaps at the most random places for no reason.
  • Jumping over obstacles works rarely as expected and you get stuck easily.
  • Sometimes you fall off a ledge and you hang waiting for recovery while there is perfectly fine floor beneath you where you could drop to, eventually just taking some fall damage, but you fall to your death if nobody safes you in time.
  • Medicate station batteries can fall through the floor when thrown instead of being carried in one go to the station.

Weapons/Items:

  • Weapon stats are unclear and illogical, nothing explains them. (no the testing area does not really help - Enemies do not move or attack)
  • Damage numbers on weapons are misleading and you cannot rely on anything. (again: no the testing area does not really help - Enemies do not move or attack)
  • Weapon variety is okayish but you barely find anything that really suits your needs.
  • Items (equipment such as weapons) are in general extremely rare compared to the other games (Vermintide 1 + 2) where you got item boxes at the end of each match, here you must hope you even get one item at the end.
  • You can get + X% experience perc, while nice this becomes useless once you have reached level 30 as you no longer keep leveling. If you want that to be useful again you must replace this perc which blocks the replacement of the other percs.
  • Items do not carry in between characters, while it may make sense for weapons (it really doesn’t except maybe ranged ogrin and psyker weapons) it doesn’t make sense for artifacts.
  • Weapon spray is unpredictable and way too random, being consistent is therefore impossible.
  • No weapon or class has a good zoom option, and yes not even the sharpshooter has that. What is the point of such a class if you can’t really make use of such a simple thing?
  • Weapon stopping/stun power is extremely low and barely any weapon type has a somewhat reasonable force for that.
  • Ammo consumption is not explained anywhere, some weapons use multiple “bullets” per shot some others don’t. This makes the ammo count useless and unpredictable.
  • Ammo amount varies within the same weapon class, does not really make sense and is an unnecessary variable.
  • Item stat progression is extremely poor.
  • No dual wield weapons.

Gameplay:

  • Medicrate and Ammocrates are not highlighted enough when dropped. (more visual)
  • Medicrate and Ammocrates are often not dropped when intended to. The character shrugs it around but doesn’t drop it.
  • Switching weapons is often glitched and does not react when a button is pressed.
  • Switching weapons is very slow and should be much faster.
  • You take damage at times even though you have full defense, and you are not able to make sense of it.
  • Defense system is not very clearly explained and sometimes an enemy can down you in one hit while you have full defense, health and endurance.
  • Sharpshooter ranged weapons are not guaranteed to have a scope, while this may make sense for a shotgun or similar this seems illogical for this class.

Enemies:

  • Elites/Disablers are unreasonably tanky. For example: Dogs should work more like assassins in Vermintide: much easier to stun and longer stun time instead of milliseconds it takes the dog to shake it off and jump into a random direction at lightspeed.
  • Enemies can easily throw you off the map and you die immediately
  • Enemies can shoot you trough tiny gaps or even the floor where you are not able to shoot back at them.
  • Enemies can hide flawless behind cover where as it is most of the time impossible for you to get in cover, sometimes enemies will hit the slightest pixel of you that may be visible. Since this is first person you are not able to see why exactly this may be the case.
  • Enemies generally can spawn out of thin air right in front or behind you. This also goes for enemies (Elites/Disablers) where you are not able to free yourself.
  • Demonhost monster is abysmal in the way it works. If triggered it warps around and landing a hit is unreasonably hard, it deals way too much damage even at lower difficulties. Even though avoidable in most scenarios it can happen that it spawns right in front of you out of nowhere, so you are no longer able to avoid it. It feels like a bad joke that has been left in the game.
  • Walking around a corner may result in a large group of ranged enemies immediately targeting AND shooting you, killing you instantly in the progress, no matter your health, defense and stamina level.
  • Can glitch trough thin walls.
  • Switch between melee and ranged combat of enemies is way too late and you have no real way to defend from ranged damage.
  • spawns are not balanced, they can spawn from any door or hole even if it is right next to you.
  • Spawn points are often also used as shortcuts by the enemy, so if they are far away the teleport directly to a door or spawn near you.

Other:

  • Localization is still having some placeholders every now and then or are still in English. Some are incomplete and do not tell you what they actually do.
  • Game performance is still not great, using the “Optimal” settings suggested by Nvidia leaves you with extreme frame dips quickly as soon as more than 10 enemies are around you.
  • Premium currency shop is even worse than in Vermintide 2, it is an absolute horrible and undefendable decision that was made back then and is now present before even all content of the game is available. Big no go in my opinion, especially since you are not able to unlock it by playing and have to pay if you want it. Taking into consideration that Sienna in Vermintide has not been given her last career option i see the fact of paid currency as a failure to argue that this would help the devs in anything!

As someone who has excessively played Vermintide 1 and 2 i have to come to the conclusion that this game could be fun but in its current state is so badly balanced that all the mentioned issues make it overall a bad release and not really a fun experience.
I get that it is meant to be difficult such as the Vermintide games are also on a higher difficulty but i am very disappointed in the weapon design and the route with stats that has been chosen.
It just does not make even remotely as much fun as Vermintide. The gameplay and actions are too slow.
The games pace must be much faster in terms of weapon and item power, progression of items and weapons should be increased drastically, this may of course change with the remaining crafting options to come.
Every mechanic need to be explained in much greater detail (but then you need more options to have influence on them) as alternative things need to be simplified by a great margin.

I can absolutely understand the mixed rating on Steam as the game feels odd and somewhat off.
The ranged combat makes it so unbalanced and the lack of strategic positioning as well as the lack of good weapons gives it quickly an overwhelming atmosphere and an unfair feeling.
Especially with enemies spawning behind you, so if you are in cover from a large ranged army you may get overwhelmed by a horde from behind but then also the ranged units creep in or even spawn behind or right next to you, so now you are unable to use ranged combat to counter ranged enemies as melee attack will kill you within seconds.
One may argue that this is the same in vermintide but the difference is that ranged combat there was always specialists and no normal units, limiting ranged combat and ranged weapons there are always accurate and much more effective with way more stopping/stun power.

So all in all the game is fun when you can easily slash enemies and are crazy overpowered but in the later stages of the game it completely lacks balance and fairness.

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Did ya accidentally post darktide feedback in the vt2 section?

I embarrassingly got 3/4ths of the way down his post before I realized that lmao.

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Mods will need to move this to the Darktide section. As stated above.

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