What is Fatshark doing?! This is their third "tide" title. Why does it feel like their first?

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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I’m trying to understand why Darktide, the third game to end in “tide”, hasn’t brought with it all the improvements and mechanics that made Vermintide 2 so great.

What are the things that make Vermintide 2 great that are missing in Darktide’s release?

  • a fully functional crafting system
  • an end of round scoreboard
  • rolling for a box of loot at the end of every mission and rewarding the player
  • a cash shop that doesn’t include FOMO timers
  • a cash shop that doesn’t use misleading premium currency bundles to disguise the value of items and plainly listing the cost of an item in your country’s currency
  • appropriately priced items that felt like they provided the player value and looked cool at the same time
  • more maps
  • more classes
  • weapons that were featured in promotional media actually available for use by the players
  • no RNG mechanics for getting the melee or ranged weapon you really want
  • a story that isn’t 2 centimeters deep

Why isn’t all this stuff in Darktide? Is it because Tencent bought a 36% controlling share of Fatshark and is now calling the shots?

I can’t see any other reason for it.

What’s even more baffling are some of the responses by one of their community managers, Hedge.

When asked about the lack of crafting weapons, Hedge said there are no plans to add the ability to craft weapons, and added:

Crafting weapons doesn’t really fit the theme of the setting

Right. So instead, we get to buy random weapons from the armory, and sometimes are given a random weapon or item at the end of a mission. If you’re a psyker, good luck with RNG to actually get a force staff or sword to pop in the shop.

When asked about why the game isn’t considered Early Access because of all the missing features and issues, Hedge said:

Because it’s not Early Access, what I’m saying is it’s impossible to say 100% “This game is truly complete and nothing more needs to be done”. If you’ve ever made something substantial and complex, you’ll know what I mean

Does Hedge realize how condescending he is? I assume not because he has a track record of quotes similar to this where shade is thrown on the customer.

When asked about why the cash shop uses premium currency (Aquilas) and doesn’t just plainly list items in your country’s currency like Vermintide 2 did, Hedge said:

We’re not silent on the Aquilas, you’re honestly the first person I’ve seen to ask about it (we are hoping to add a “buy what you need” feature, it’s just immeasurably complex so isn’t gonna happen over night)

Immeasurably complex? It exists RIGHT NOW in Vermintide 2! I mean…seriously?

Fatshark…can you guys please just un-F**K yourselves and make better decisions, please?

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It is their first.
As life service game.

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Lets hope its their last.

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It’s their first w40k game. Vermintide was a totally different animal for the weapons.

Or should have been. Darktide is chock full of conpromises trying to make it more like vermintide, and they fail because Darktide is a high tech game, (w40k lore about tech to one side, if you have full auto, you have a whole 'nother animal.)

Darktide needs to fully embrace the high tech world.

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Funny, considering most of the weapon move sets were copypasta from VT2!

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The sad truth.
Always online shenanigans, no way to play solo or with friends privately, indiscriminately predatory premium cashshop…
Fatshark didn’t do their duty in checking out that a huge majority of Live Services™ die fast.

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Too many of the weapons are boring basic weapons like a sword or an axe, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with a sword except it’s 40k, we want 40k magic weapons and the only ones we got are nerfed to make the normals seem better. Even the powersword, which is currently really good, need constant micromanagement at the added cost of having no special move.

And I imagine since it’s good it’ll get the bad treatment good stuff usually does.

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Just don’t play it then.

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Who are we? I quite like axes, knives and swords. We’re not playing space Marines, we’re convicts and rejects, we’re not supposed to have power swords.

Like you said, this is 40k, it’s grimdark, were expendable meat sent to the grinder.

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Agree with your post, but there are a few corrections and personal points I’d like to make

Getting the weapon you wanted wasn’t an issue. However a flaw in the the logic of item’s power levels dropping for a player based on their highest discovered one would make it so you would still craft items that were within 10 points of 300.
Not a catastrophic issue, but still added a little bit of randomness.

Vermintide 2’s main backbone was it’s maps and new enemies. Otherwise a lot of it was content carried over from the first game.
A massive portion of Darktide is brand new so it’s safe to assume that this would’ve taken a chunk out of development .

Not really as predatory of a tactic, but VT2’s store does have weekly specials. Obviously a billion times better than what we have for Darktide.

I don’t feel like fatshark has ever been able to get a good balance between quality and quantity with the tide games when it comes to separate classes until patches (and sadly dlc) that come out months to years later. A lot of what I can say about careers is similar to my point on maps. It also feels like the gear was a big focus in making different play styles similar to the first vermintide, but we really can’t access this unless you get lucky with rng with the state the game released in.
It’s very disappointing we didn’t get atleast one alt career to shake up our options of play. Even more feats would be welcome just to give us options.

This one’s a bit more cheeky and opinionated; but would you really call the Skittergate plot deeper than 2 centimetres :smirk: They fail to explain how Kruber was initiated into a knightly order despite having been captured at the “end” of the first game and why he turns back into a merc once he reaches the keep :smirk: :smirk: :smirk:
Darktide is setting up a bit more with Mentions of a sister hive city that fell to chaos, whether Rannick + Grendal are totally trustworthy and the implication of how deep down Tertium really goes

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VT2 was penned as one and they used typical boardroom terms used to entice stockholders such as a claim of a ten year life span of support.

Dreadful conclusion, please think a little more critically.

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eh, if you like clunking guys with a shovel and not a chainsword, go for it. Think you ought to set your sights a little higher, but okay. I’m just leveling my zealot and I’m kind of bitter over the lack of options I didn’t play to death in vt1 and vt2, and which are decently enacted. So far the only thing I can find on the whole class is the two handed chainsword, and it’s… okay… I guess.

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If they copypaste the Bret sword moveset onto a shovel, I might play only that shovel for the rest of my life!

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Form does not make depth.

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I’ll continue playing because the gameplay is actually fun. None of my criticism is about the gameplay.

If you don’t like criticism aimed at making the game better, you shouldn’t have clicked on this thread.

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It is for me. I rolled a psyker and after I unlocked the ability to use a force weapon, none appeared in the shop. I waited the 50ish minutes to refresh, and none was in the next batch either.

That’s crap. In Vermintide 2 I could immediately craft a weapon I had access to.

It absolutely is. It’s a digital item, taking up a few MB of space. The illusion it will disappear stresses players to buy. That’s the entire tactic of FOMO.

Yes. Each mission was towards the eventual goal of ending the invasion. I felt like I was part of the story, and it unfolded in sequential chapters and Acts that made sense from a storytelling perspective.

What’s the story in Darktide?

(Click “summary” for spoilers…sort of)

Summary

You’re a prisoner, but we’ll give you a chance. You suck though. More worthless then dirt.
A few thousand slain heretics later
Yep, you’re an asset. But you’re still a piece of trash. Keep trying.
Another ten thousand heretics purged
Nope. Still trash. Keep going.
More heretics slain
Are you even trying?
More
Come back when you’re actually done something.

…seriously. This is weak storytelling.

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i mean you could add to this I’m going to add to this uh we had idk 3 classes Each across 5 characters the inventory was always accountwide the watermarking system was apparent obvious after time spent and made sense although it made you use undesirable weapons at times u could still use base weapons they just didn’t have effects and they lacked dmg because of how power worked they had meaningful QOL like having outlines of team members on all the time so when your friend drops down next to you your not going to backstep off a cliff or unload on them while filling your pants oh and on skins I mean we’re talking about a company that was like oh hey we had these skins made it was supposed to be for X we just gave them to everyone who bought X for the heck of it thanks for playing I’m sure there are other vermintide 2 QOL that’s missing to

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Those first two quotes were in regard to Vermintide 2, not how it is now in Darktide. So again I agree with you.

The missions in darktide also have a purpose in curbing the Chaos incursion of Tertium you’re given debriefing on what’s going on whether it’s you hunting down a mutation of a disease or Assassinating a target. Ultimately Darktide lacks a conclusion as it wishes to keep the narrative of this conflict going compared to Vermintide 2 where they eventually settled on a new plot where our heroes started to show signs of doubt and fatigue (sans our lad Goober of course) which leads to them seeking audience with gods and getting a new career.
I do agree not having a slightly more structured narrative to your missions does suck, but vt2’s missions per chapter were barely strung together compared to something like L4D. Getting to beat up a key player who’s gotten annoyed at you is definitely something that’s sorely missed from dt so having a clear defined antagonist is something vt2 has over it.

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There’s so many systems that were made in a vacuum from each other it feels. It’s like they made departments for each system but didn’t have them communicate between other departments and then on the final week tried to string them together.

The mission selection screen, crafting, Emperor gifts, weeklies, the ‘story’, and the weapon shop all feel separate from each other. You can’t look at your currencies and see that you’re low on Plasteel and decide to do lower tiered missions with half books so you don’t get whites but get green and blues at a faster rate than you’d be able to get purples from the award from the mission. You can’t see that you’re low on cash and just decided to speedrun the highest level mission you can without books to just earn money.

You can’t highlight a mission for Scripts or Grims and see if you might need it for Melks. Without Melk’s, there’d really be no reason to look for scripts and grims. Crafting seems only there to pad out those gigantic levels scurrying for measly amounts of scrap. They don’t want you to get it any other way because then no one would search those maps.

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I feel like this is a casualty of design choice rather than omission.

We get gold (which scales by difficulty/success) after every mission in Darktide, which we can use to buy items.
In V2, we don’t get gold, we get a chest (which scales by difficulty and objectives with some rng).
Renald luck from V2 being treat as emperors gift in Darktide where we do get a random item (to salvage)

I suspect this was a change with the intent of just giving us money to go buy an item we want, with the RNG being in the shop offerings, not in the chest opening.

But, player perception is that both of these things somehow just feel worse and less rewarding, even when we’re used to V2 chests giving salvage fodder 99% of the time.

Not defending this, it missed the mark, just explaining how I feel it got to where we’re at with it.