In a day and age where public opinion hard to actually follow with multiple groups of people on different forums, influencers influencing and everybody having the right of opinion on what should or could be added to the game, what do you want added? No wrong answers.
So I thought to myself, why not directly ask? Yes. It’s on a forum on a page for a game where you need to register to be able to post and reply, so it’s not the full on masses of people, but enough people to be heard.
(I do understand that these are simply wishes, Fatshark devs are in the end, Blessed servants of the machine god and emperor. They cannot simply add everything and anything they want. But hey, fun nonetheless to do some wishful thinking? Is it not?)
I can start with some things I have heard, and can relate to:
Weapons: Psyker staffs, how come there’s no new ones? Ogryn weapons? Arbites, hive scum and now skitarii releasing with many cool weapons being skipped? Veteran, the weapons-specialist having minimal amount of specialist weapons? And oh so many more. The 40k universe is massive when it comes to weaponry.
Story/Missions: With the abrupt (and in my opinion quite bad end) to the Dark Communion mission where you simply get a few voice lines and cut to black, it would be a delight to partake in missions with a narrative design. Or simply more missions. As cool as the new gamemodes being added are like Havoc, Expiditions and Mortis trials; They simply do not scratch that itch.
Cosmetics: Props to the team actually adding earnable cosmetics through penances but the armoury exchange remains untouched and new cosmetics being drip-fed through tedious long or difficult challenges and penances feel hardly satisfying at all. I myself can admit to buying a couple of items at the commodore’s vestures, but when most cool items are paid for with real money, it can leave a bit of sour taste in one’s mouth.
Balancing: Let’s face the truth, balancing a game is hard. When the meta is everchanging and the demands and needs of the playerbase shifts with it, it can be hard to find a good middlepoint where it can be seen as “Good Enough”. Some weapons go unloved by many and some might be lost in the flow of reworks that shifts through the immaterium into our game. But, balancing is a necessity for a good experience, not just for the top players that find the meta and min-max their builds but also for the newer or less experienced players that try to climb their ranks through the warband. Speaking only for myself, as someone who is not an influencer nor hold any sway over the devs, I feel powerless in the tides that change how I could play the game. A hard fulfilled wish from me would be more of an open dialogue for players to influence how the game is balanced. Like open streams where we would be allowed to submit questions about what the devs thoughts are, more direct responses on the forums or simply surveys where we could answer a simple 1-5/1-10 question on what we feel is powerful or not.
Let me hear your opinions, remember to be respectful. The devs are the not archenemy, they are our ally in the face of a much greater evil.
to me personally most important are new weapons. i want to play more of my favorite class but i already played every build with every weapon a bunch so now i want more stuff. i’m sure this goes for most people. new classes are cool but they’re not my favorite class (at least not so far). this probably includes reworks of old weapons that arent so great.
after that, new enemies because that is the second biggest addition to gameplay that actually introduces new gameplay scenarios that can be added after weapons.
missions are right behind that, because while they do have the potential to add new gameplay and scenarios and objectives we havent seen yet, and it’s just generally cool to see more of the setting, it does get kinda boring quick again if there’s no new weapons or enemies.
chaos wastes i would also love, but at this point telling fatshark “please make chaos wastes” seems to enter their ears as “please design yet another gamemode nobody asked for” so it’s kind of conflicting.
balance is in a bit of a special spot because they seem to be continuously breaking it while also working towards fixing it so i guess i just hope the game doesn’t turn into warframe
First, I want new weapons for the existing classes. Not that concerned about what they are or what class, though my preference would be an Ogryn “Fists” weapon. Preferably something very similar to what’s shown here:
Second, I want new maps for the core adventure game mode. Don’t really have any specific desires or goals in this regard though. More stuff like No Man’s Land would be baller as hell, but so would more stuff in Gloriana’s tileset, or maybe an adventure mode using the Expeditions tileset/aesthetic, etc. Anything would be good, just more and more varied full maps for the core game.
Third, I want new enemies. The dream would be to add a genestealer enemy faction akin to the way Beastmen were added to VT2, but I would perfectly happily settle for fleshing out the existing faction(s) and especially getting the enemies we logically should have but don’t. For example, adding a dreg mauler, ogryn rager, or dreg trapper (literally just a VT2 hookrat with a texture update), etc. That would do a lot to refresh the texture of the play experience.
Finally, and most importantly IMO, I want some dedicated time and attention from the devs toward QOL fixes and improving the balance situation. Rein in the ludicrous player power outliers so I can play auric with a competent psyker or scum or PBB ogryn on the team and actually interact with at least a certain minimum number of live enemies by the end of the mission. Fix the weird bugs and quirky nonsense that have been in the game since launch, like coherency regen being disabled by dead enemies in their death animation. Clean up and standardize tooltips and language with proper keywords, and add an in-game glossary for at least basic game mechanics for those interested to learn how the game operates without needing to consult the oracles. Etc, etc.
Any of these I’d be pretty happy with, but all of them would be fantastic. And if I had to only choose one, it’d definitely be #4.
They asked recently in an in-game survey about what 3 things I want to see added.
First prio is a new enemy faction. Shield enemies are a nice addition but I’m not sure they introduce a meta shakeup or a ton of replayability.
Second is QOL and bugfixes. An entire patch cycle with, for example, a blessing just straight up not working sucks and makes me not want engage with the game. Being on PC, I’m fortunate to be able to address a number of QOL issues with mods but when I’m playing havoc and the rest of the team are console players and the run ends when there are multiple bosses and bugged ritual and i’m the only one in the lobby with the boss healthbar mod that lets me react to it, it feels bad.
Third I put missions, for two reasons mainly. First, I don’t think the story is really resolved in a meaningful sense. Every time I play Dark Communion I can’t help but laugh at how much of the dialogue is nobody having any clue what is happening and what happened once we’re done. Second is that I would think any folding in of a new enemy faction would probably need some new maps, though it’s certainly possible to not do it this way.
I would have included balancing but it wasn’t a choice in that survey. They do constantly provide balance passes so that’s good but what’s to come is still unsure.
1 billion changes but the most important things pushing me away from this game is that the flow of combat is boring and uninteresting for a tide game, and the ranged combat is a snoozefest in terms of interaction between the player, their resources, and the surrounding enemies. To fix that would mean changing dodge values, maybe removing perfect dodges as a concept, rebalancing block and stamina costs, while slowing the player’s movement and attack speed then increasing value of longer term combos over these very small and linear combos that every weapon seems to have (most weapon’s optimal damage combos are light spam, heavy spam, push attack-l/h repeat, light-heavy repeat, or heavy-light repeat. No one is doing fancy combos as they have no incentive).
The second biggest problem I have is the continuation of just nothing new being made and making old stuff newer. We have 100 swords, and now we have another powered sword. Again. Another plasma gun. Another shock maul. Really interesting weapons here. At least we got another aoe dot pistol added to the game. After the last class got one of those. The snipers are cool. Arc gun is new ig. Neat. Talent tree is just like everyone else’s thrown together talent trees but now a bush. That’s somewhat new.
Make some two-handed weapons with some new skeletons and animations and put some effort into stuff. Big boy boss ogryn even reuses rager animations on his flurry swings. I really don’t care if we have an in-depth skitarii model or anything we won’t really see, but I am not going to play another hour of this game and stare at the exact same animation set I’ve been staring at since this game came out but it’s on a weapon with the word “arc” on it or something. I’m not going to play sword dagger in darktide when I can just play it in vermintide.
I’m glad that my demons have finally freed me and I’m finally able to let go of this game, though. It has been a relief to see this dlc class and finally just go “eh, there’s nothing going on here. I can sit this one out.” Thanks, fatshark.
New weapons, maps, and updates to the campaign story.
Regarding weapons: no more marks!
We need fully new weaponry, and now that Skitarii have their own lineup of canon weapons, it’s time for Veterans to get actual 40k stuff like Helguns, Plasma Pistols, and etc.
Power Sword and Shield for Zealot, Power Glaives and etc.
And by ‘development of campaign story’, I don’t mean obscure lore dumps in Mortis Trial, but a fully fleshed-out campaign like in Vermintide 2.
No more classes and modes.
Time to start working on the base game for Fatshark.
New enemies and new weapons are much more important to me than new missions.
Running a mission once is the same as if you’ve ran it a thousand times. Everything is static and the only thing that changes is the enemies you encounter and what you bring to the mission.
Personally I want them to take some time on the bots, like it would be cool if they weren’t just Veterans or if you could customize your bots with attire you’ve unlocked.
being able to command the bots to pick up ammo-crates/medipaks or stims like in vermintide 2 would be cool as hell also.
i also think that a boss rush mode or boss dungeon would be a cool idea or if we had a new type of Daemonhost. on that note i think you should revert the daemon host soul reaping back to 2 squadmates instead of the now 1.
i want to talk about the expeditions but i dont have my thoughts layed out yet so ill come back for that.
-Enemies
I want to add that I hope we DON’T get a new enemy faction. I don’t want them to spend dev time reinventing the wheel; a new enemy faction will mean they have to re-make basic chaff and common enemies. I really just want them to add new enemies to the existing factions.
I saw in a recent interview with FS that they want to not just completely copy the tabletop and come up with their own ideas. Fine, that’s fine. We don’t have to have Plaguebearers, but I think we could use something that would fill a similar role. A big chungus of HP that pressures players through its resilience. Honestly, I’ve never understood why we didn’t have this from the beginning? It’s such an obvious way to help with balancing, things like Heavy Sword have more of a role if they are more efficient at dealing with big unarmored chunks of HP than heavy anti-armor weapons.
