Would there be a reason to keep the universally hated old item system for 2 years?
Would there be a reason to keep the balance as it is for 2 years?
Iam not saying you are wrong, it would probably be stupid to port the game over.
But at this point Iam really out of ideas, to why DT is lagging behind all its competition when it comes to patch cadence, and requested features (such as basic f-cking map select, modifier select, etc)
I found a hell of a lot of replayability in VT2 mainly not from the additional maps, but from the weapons and character options being well-balanced enough that trying new builds was an exploration.
I feel like I have more agency in VT2. There are fewer choices within each career, and many of those choices are non-choices, but the careers are quite distinct, and the weapons are, for the most part, both balanced against each other and distinctly different. The choices to be made are impactful.
DT has a more choices, but a hell of a lot of them are between clearly-better weapons or talents and clearly-worse ones. And the differences aren’t as distinct. It’s not as interesting, there isn’t as much replayability.
So, while I’m all for new stuff, a lot of life could be breathed into the game by balancing the existing stuff.
You’re not. Though, rather than “slow down combat,” it might be better to say, “make combat more tactical.” Of course, charging forward while sliding on your butt is a tactic … but I think most will get the gist.
I’m only playing solo and had a great time collecting, fighting NPCs, doing the story, crafting, exploring shipwrecks, and building a nice looking base with the limited decorations we had in closed beta.
Deep Desert PVP and guild stuff are not my something that interest me.
I streamed some gameplay on Discord for buddies.
Had lots of fun!
Aside from Dune, Greedfall 2 (which is still in early EA) is going to be a smash hit if they only improve the combat.
I love how good Spyders are getting at making games.
Every new game they’ve done has resulted in significant progress (I still hope for a Technomancer 2).
I believe DRG: Rogue Core will be released this year as well.
I’ve been playing the EA (got an invite), and while it’s really basic right now, it’s going to be pretty awesome.
The biggest challenge right now, as you mentioned, is finding the time to play everything!
Lucky one… I feel jealous.
This one seems fun. The idea to progress and to play with different weapons every missions is something I will like, for sure.
I requested access… I wait 
As I said, I may take it…
I want a house on Arrakis…
But, I am not sure what class to pick. Sure, not the melee one.
You may feel that VT2 is balanced and that kept you playing unlike Darktide, but Vermintide 2 had and has the exact same player retention issues that Darktide has.
VT2 even had a free to keep weekend where a 100k people jumped on… the player count fell off even harder than Darktide, the Tide game formula just seems to have terrible player retention and it’s not clear why that is, but evidently balance is not a big part of it.
HD2 tier 10 is boring af with a pre-made team, you would never say that about DT havoc 40 games.
Woah, slow down there cowboy! First they’ve gotta reduce team banter, turn the trapper nets into homing-missiles capable of warp traversal, and maybe further reduce sound cues for good measure. 
I sure hope FatShark never has to conduct triage at a hospital or direct traffic at a busted stoplight.
How about an insignia and $2.50 of funny money?
That would still be an improvement over some event rewards. Aim lower.
In their defense, Arrowhead also doesn’t seem to be able to stop the Stingray engine from taking a dump when there are too many audio clips playing at once.
Only real solution seems to be an entire game rebalance to reduce the need for special spam. Unless they somehow update their defunct engine and finally fix audio issues.
Oh no, Badwin. We’re gonna get the ultimate prize, something we’ve all been salivating over for years now:
Ordo Dockets and a frame.
And you better like it.
But…we’re actually getting an insignia and $2.50 in funny money…the in-game event is live!
Oh word? Still starting my day at work. Neato.
Oh! Oh dang! I’m at work, wasn’t aware.
Having attempted to get many people more into Darktide, some of which are fans of VT2, others of which are fans of 40K in general, and others still that are just interested in this type of gameplay, here’s my take on retention:
#1 - The game just presents players with an avalanche of noise and none of it makes sense on first impression.
What do I mean by this:
There’s no clear story line or sequence to the missions to on-board players new to the world. You get thrown into a random mission selector system with mission goals that are opaque and confusing. E.g. infiltrate the mechanical blad-de-blah 456 and turn on/off the cogitator matrix counter-control array 4145 to realign the positioning dilator - like, it’s all just incomprehensible gibberish and only a die hard 40k fan will stand a chance of being captured by it. I had one player, during the mission, ask how to shut up the communication messages that play all mission long because it was just more noise and didn’t make any sense to them anyway. Red flag!
If someone is coming into the game without a care for 40k per se, the mechanical progression system, particularly around items, is just a confusing mess. There are so many terms and ways for weapon stats to interact, and frequently terms/concepts are left completely unexplained or undefined and/or don’t “actually” work the way someone assumes them to work. This leads to immediate frustration and disenfranchisement. Technically the crafting update helps with the progression itself, but it still hinges on players needing to understand the system and terms to engage with it in a meaningful way. Plus it’s just a lot of UI menus to jump through to manage it all. What casual player wants to spend their time managing all of that? Moreover, a new casual player is NOT going to scrounge up information on the internet just to understand the basics of play.
Right off the bat, on both a mechanical and experiential level, there are barriers to entry.
#2 - Player’s aren’t encouraged to, nor properly on-boarded to succeed at, taking on more interesting and challenging difficulties.
The lower difficulties, even for relatively newer / less capable FPS players are a snooze fest. But in order to be even remotely effective at higher difficulties, there are a lot of things one needs to learn and master. There are many things that are great about the combat system (and why anyone is still playing this game), but almost none of it is presented to the player in a way where they can naturally become aware of and learn these things. The game experience oscillates between way too easy and punishingly difficult for new players, making it a hard sell.
#3 - Lack of visual diversity in the map pool coupled with a lack of diversity in gameplay situations, leads to a monotonous experience.
From a new player’s perspective, 20% of the levels are the desert ones, and then everything else looks the same. A 40k fan can look past this easily, but someone coming from VT2 where levels are so distinctive and different from each other makes the experience with DT a let down in comparison. Reusing parts of a given map unfortunately compounds the problem. The Deja Vu effect it creates burns players out on the map pool even faster than it otherwise might if it was just re-using the “tile set” in totally different spaces.
The game would’ve benefited from a DRG style procedural generation system that used more randomized elements in combination with more frequent, uniquely distinct, set pieces for each mission. I will say, I think the missions have been getting better in terms of uniqueness more recently.
#4 - The cosmetic system undermines engagement.
I had new players, not even really liking the game that much, but immediately wanting to buy more premium cosmetics - only to realize the rotating shop meant they couldn’t browse or get excited about things to purchase. What a miserable system. Add to this that the non-premium cosmetic shop is pretty bad (and hasn’t been updated in basically forever), and that there’s no way to slowly earn premium currency. The game kneecaps one of it’s main potential sources of driving retention and engagement right out of the gate.
#5 - Slow pace of development.
Even if Darktide manages to grab people’s attention for a spell, the relatively slow pace of development and content releases, the infrequency with which balance adjustments are made, etc. causes people to get bored with and lose interest in the title. Other games in a similar space offer more substantive, regular updates. It’s not always about the big heavy content updates either - but just welcomed improvements to balance, quality of life, etc. that demonstrates that the developer cares and is listening.
This goes a long way to keep up people’s positive thoughts and impression about the game (and thus be more likely to recommend it). Even if you can look past #1-4, #5 means that many people (even my self with 800-ish hours) are hesitant to recommend the game. My recommendation always come with the caveat that the developer is slow, doesn’t communicate well, and pushes out updates that are often out-of-touch with what the community and the game really needs.
Taking all of these together, Darktide’s retention problems shouldn’t be surprising. Sure, it’s a “niche” game, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be wildly popular - especially given the 40k IP attached to the game. DRG and Hell Divers both have their own non-mainstreamed IPs and have been significantly more successful at growing a player base overtime.
I have a fairly diverse gaming group. Casuals, hardcore gamers, PvP gamers. None of them have been sucked in by the Tide formula for as long as I have.
Ultimately, I believe it’s because the games require an intense amount of uninterrupted concentration to play, there are no breaks, losses are quite punishing, and there’s just not enough to hook most players between the low-end difficulty (where you can just swing willy nilly and can make plenty of mistakes and it’s just kinda dull) and higher difficulties (wherever along the skill spectrum they have to really lock and learn things and play well).
Tide games feel a lot like bullet hell games to me. There’s just so much going on for far too long for most people imo.
I agree with all you wrote - but I also wonder how/why DRG, HD2, Payday 2, L4D and other games in the space have managed to build such a strong player base overtime when the same sorts of issues are in play.
Maybe DT just ratchets everything up too high? The missions are a little too long, the margin for error too tight, the enemy intensity just a little too much. Perhaps?
There is a lack of forgivingness in DT that is on point with respect to the 40K IP, but maybe doesn’t make for the best player retention tactic.
I don’t rightly know! Payday 2, I haven’t really played. DRG feels like it has more fun (digging) and funny stuff (just the whole vibe really) going on, and definitely feels like a more casual experience. L4D was a phenomenon, had massive mods and PvP, and has shorter levels but I don’t know if any of those things are really why it’s still so popular. HD2 has solo-farmable currency, has some humor baked in, has proc gen’d levels and 3 factions to fight against, but again, I don’t know if any of those things are why it’s more popular.
Tide games are brutal and dark and pretty humorless…more like L4D than the other 2. I think that’s likely a small part of the situation.
But it might just be that the combat system doesn’t click with everyone! I really don’t know.
i guess all other things being equal, the bottom line is that the other games are all more approachable than Darktide 2. More humor / less serious tone, more easily understood mechanics, less intense experience, easier on-boarding process. Darktide is the only one that seems to treat it’s players like Rejects, however apt that is given the setting.
Good balance is likely not going to be appreciated until somebody has quite a few hours in. Balance is about retention over the long term.
So, even if balancing is not a big part, it’s part of it, and balancing should be cheaper and easier than adding new weapons, maps, enemies, or classes.
My guess for the “big” issue with DT retention is the poor on-boarding: Mezmorki’s point 2, and I’d also include point 1 in on-boarding. I, at least, have never encountered another game so intent on hiding the good bits.
So we have a game that, early on, presents as having a low skill-ceiling, but is really for players who want a high skill-floor. With a FOMO shop and scrambled maps!
Perhaps the key question isn’t, “Why aren’t more people staying?” but rather, “Why did any of us stick around?” (Are we stupid?)
Lack of content, no side progression systems, no player agency, disasterous release every time, bad technical state, crashes, dc’s, 1 code line bugs stay unfixed for half a year. Simplistic balance changes take 1 year, so no fresh meta. Tones of hidden stats, bad tutorial and lack of explanations.
Was like that since V1.
Also just bad design decisions like Orthus Offensive has no replaybility value.