there is never an excuse for a game launching with missing content or in a buggy state. especially with 2 betas. i love vermintide, its one of my favorite games. however the way this game launched is inexcusable.
unless you want to continue having battlefield 2042 and fallout 76 be the standard for game launches then we need to hold developers to a standard where this is unacceptable
I admit I was and am enough of a no-life to have invested a lot of time in the tide games, thankfully only in hundreds of hours per game, but I’m also have masochistic needs and enjoy challenges, so making builds against the core gameplay AND bad design is still up my alley, but I always hated the way FS handled their stuff because of declining playerbases and design so tedious and taxing and time consuming outside of the actual matches that was too much even for me and often made me decide not to play after I launched just because going through all that stuff felt more like shoveling KFC-fed dogs dung from one pen to another just to get to the painful stuff.
Sadly it’s been deteriorating with each title, with the company clearly checking what they can get away with, lots of broken promises and the game made much better pretty much only thanks to modders and whoever had the brilliant idea to put in Chaos Wastes(probably a rogue-lite fan), which I can only guess was a total fluke.
I bought VT early access(regular edition) only to get my hours in, because I sadly know, the playerbase will keep dropping, with small surges on meaningless updates with bad design and new (and old) bugs, and well, this is another roll of the dice if they figure out a scheme for players and enthusiasts to do work for them(How’s our beta test going everyone?Can’t wait for full crafting on release,right? I bet it will come with a ton of changes, balance, QOL and bug fixes!Probably a map or two!) or do the minimum player and gameplay oriented development and make a mode players can repeat, with a lot of variety(probably just an ubermash of every map conditions, like random blackouts-if they can manage to code it- Omnissiah shrines to bless weapons and increase weapons stats for the match, with a basic weapon from all available picked at the start, you know, simple things like that, that a non-developer no life nobody could fart out during a rant on a forum, it would be enough I think) or it will dwindle down to low hundreds and will get a surge of a couple to a dozen K every half a year or so, quickly going back down to the low hundreds within a couple weeks after the super-duper Emprah’s ceramic throne weapon pack DLC turns out to have an OP Holy plunger that crashes the game for the entire party and the useless Dagger Mark LXIX with a 420 angle special attack that looks cool and deals 2 damage.
So tl;dr FS doing illogical stuff, games getting worse, microtransactions and game currency bad, future of the game is a roll of the dice with the best outcome being players getting a finished product.
Nearly choked on my khorneflakes reading this 
Oh, and I admit I’m also part of the problem. I should not have bought it and instead wait another year or two hoping something will lift it up from the dead, or even get surprised and hear good things after a few months. Alas, I know I won’t hear good things.
I feel guilty for trying to enjoy the artistic value of the game, however neutered it got. Thankfully I’m a fan of gore and fantasy violence as well and it’s almost therapeutic to me. The soundtrack…well, we know all the good things, not much of them.
I’m mostly ashamed of giving them release and pre order first wave sells, it’s like participating in this whole mess, actively funding it. Disgusting.
Nothing to be ashamed of. I usually don’t preorder but I did Darktide, I saw it was an FPS and a 40k, so there’s that. Also, Dan Abnett… but I think his talents are wasted here and can’t really save this game, it’s ObeseTuna’s ultimate decision in the end in which direction this game goes, not so much theirs but their newlyfound “overlords”.
Few other developers messed up in a similar fashion, launched their games in a sorry state but made up for it with free dlcs and what not.
If Tuna decides to charge for dlcs and classes, they’re gonna have a bad time given how poorly the game launched, practically missing everything they promised.
But it did launch with a proper narrative/highly different characters that really made you want to experience everything in multitude of combinations.
(Admittedly, playing the pyro with the beam was at one point quite ridiciluously OP, but…)
Well, we are down to 51% positive recent reviews, around this time tomorrow i think we will be at 49%, inching ever closer to going from mixed reviews to actually going into negative.
Even if they were “pushed”, they still decided to make the deal with Tencent, so it’s either acceptance or incompetence in knowing who you’re dealing with when you closed a deal - this is business, not the (real only when convenient for business) world of flowers and rainbows where no one is political, everyone is united by the appreciation of fine art and clean, harmless fun, no one would ever hurt a fly and saying (notice how I didn’t mention doing)mean or untrue things is a thing of the past
All covered with a thick layer of “we’re doing this fun thing together, it’s our journey, so stay at the Willimus Von Ka factorium of Holy oil covered Obscura and other wonders, enjoy the ride, and don’t forget to visit the gift shop every once in a while! We sometimes offer small cups of free used coffe machine water by it!”
Fair enough, I was allowed to have a glimmer of hope that they would actually do the rational thing and expand on a finished product they already had, since they kept most elements anyway. Also the false advertising (“We have Dan Abnett on payroll - but we have barely any actual content he wrote” Also, I really hope he didn’t approve the dramatic traitor reveal as “The Inquisitor turns his gun to some guy or woman, never Ogryn, just a rando never introduced in the plot and the person starts running and gets shot from a cool this and that pattern heavy revolver BOOM PLOT REVEALS ITSELF AND THEN TWIST!- NOTHING COMES OF IT EXCEPT FOR A REJECT GETTING ACCEPTED INTO THE RANKS OF THE INQUISITION THE END.”
This seems to be a fairly typical practice. You can see the same with Creative Assembly’s Total War games and with Bethesda’s Skyrim and Fallouts.
Meh
I liked Vermintide. I love Vermintide 2. Darktide has been a much better launch and is auch better game than Vermintide 2 was at this point in it’s life cycle.
I think there’s far more good than bad in the game currently and im having a great time with it. I fully expect it to get better with time just like Vermintide has. I’m quite optimistic.
Some of you should just chill out, try to get some perspective, and just enjoy playing games a little.
“Something doesn’t bother me, therefore it shouldn’t bother anyone else” approach. Actually, I do owe you an explanation.
So you walk by this burger food truck, with flashy lights, and clowns and music and with posters promoting"Classic Burgers you know and love with a dark roasted spin, crispy buns, prime meat from two generations of Rattcow breeding, with four types of crisp salad with customizable vegetable and seasoning mix, delivered in 50 colors and with 40 “printed” patterns on BOTH sides of the bun(because we treat the two cut parts of the bun as two buns, so they both deserve a pattern to make them each its special heaven in your mouth (with a barely visible half baked pikachu or something “painted” in less roasted parts of the bun.), delivered by seasoned chefs, under the guidance and supervision of star cook Gordon Ramsay!" Only 60 bucks!
*****ASSOCIATED WITH INPUT_WILDLY_POPULAR_BRAND so many of us know and love and get inspired by every day - SUPPORT HONEST FOOD TRUCK BUSINESSES *****
It’s the grand opening, they’ve taken all orders, pretty efficiently - Ultra Deluxe gold nostalgia burger with magic sprinkle sauce, oriental baby carrots with crispy calf bites and blue onions is coming, and you get a -let me spare you the graphic,longer comparative description - halfbaked non-burger with meat being the only good part - people give theirs a try, start complaining, and you stand up and shout “Yo, chill out people, touch some grass or something, I came here to enjoy the meat and I enjoy it,so you enjoy it too. They’ll get better if you keep coming”
And they took that entire working foundation and threw it in the trash for some online “Games as a Service” scam.
We have been there, both V1 and V2 were at the better state at their respective launches. V2 had far more content than Darktide and better designed game systems. Better doesn’t mean great, but they were superior to the present solutions in Darktide.
It kind of makes sense when the company founders said they didn’t like the crafting system the designers came up - maybe it gave us too much freedom - and wanted the team to rework it from the ground up.
I played and liked Vermintide 1, I played a lot et liked a lot Vermintide 2 and it’s the same for Darktide.
I’m guilty because i’m I am one of the cosmetic buyers (and I pre-ordered the game).
I can understand criticisms but its intensity and violence :
core gameplay is good. not perfect, but it’s a question of balance, of fine-tuning : some mechanism need an up or a nerf, same thing for weapons. We need better bots, better missions selection, a real system of rewards, especially after level 30. Weapons seller need a rework and same thing for crafting…
But nothing of these point block the game.
The previous update and fix show developers efforts to fix the game regarding performance and stability.
So, yes, I’m not satisfied to have this game, in release, with this state : crafting not complete, bot not efficient, retention time system with clock (mission, weapons, …). But I don’t see a catastrophic failure on the core of this game…
They added microtansaction ? yes, but it’s cosmetic only.
They added this part before to fix other problem. Maybe different team. I’m not an expert, but it’s easier to create a new skin than rework totally crafting.
I am annoyed by the bad image that this game is taking, because I am afraid that it plays in its future. Currently, I advise my friends to wait 3-6 months before to try it. But I think that with time. If the developers take the time to do it right, Darktide can be as fun to play as VT2
It’s not that Fat Shark “can’t” improve the game in ways you mentioned (crafting, mission select, rewards, etc). Rather it’s that I think they “won’t” because improving those aspects of the game runs counter to their design intent.
If their design intent is to use mobile game tactics for player engagement to generate microtransaction sales, then these problems the community has identified repeatedly are actually working exactly as intended.
At this point, the only way to force a change, given that for most us here FS already has our money, is to just stop playing entirely until things change (aka boycott playing it). Every time you boot the game up for a quick mission or to check out the shop refresh, you’re playing into their justification for why these systems are working.
If their goal is to manipulate players in a way that boosts their player retention and engagement numbers, stop giving it to them. Seriously, if there was a month long boycott on playing I bet it would force a response.
Personally, I’ve decided to shelve the game for the time being until something is actually implemented that addresses the community concerns.
Actually, not playing only saves server resources for FatShark, but not buying cosmetics would be a financial loss.
I don’t want to tell anyone what to do with their money, but it should be clear to everyone that buying skins is not only an investment in the future of the game (no matter how optimistic you may be), but also a legitimization of the practices that are already in the game, or rather the state in which this game was released… If you are satisfied with all these circumstances, ok. But any purchase will only lead to such release concepts becoming the rule rather than the exception in the future. Why should a developer invest money to create a finished game that people are happy to support, when even half-baked games in more or less beta status become a lucrative source of revenue due to gullible optimism. 
I agree and understand people’s frustration with the game and the gaming industry. It’s very hard to get a ‘complete game’ nowadays. If anything just play Darktide for a little while then stop and come back to it. FS will work out the kinks and mishaps.
I have to say it is very surprising to me of how far FS missed the mark on this. Given they already have a good template and structure from V2. I felt like they just had to copy and paste from that game to Darktide. Maybe FS wanted to try something different or maybe they were pushed by their backers to release the game. Regardless, it is what it is. It is best to let the devs work on the game over-time and come back to it.
@Mike_Rotch see, your analogy is wrong. What we have here is a steak joint that makes the best steaks in the world. Some of the sides are a bit mediocre and could use some seasoning, the salad bar is missing tomatoes and blue cheese dressing, and they charge extra if you want to eat off the fancy china, but GOTDAYUM that’s some really good steak. It’ll be nice when they finish the salad bar. The owner also has a track record of taking his restaurants from 3 to 5 stars over time and has a real passion for his work.
I’m just saying if you quit obsessing over the stale croutons you might actually be able to truly enjoy the world class steak. Now quit bothering me I’ve got food to eat. 
You’re a climate change denialist as well I presume?