Was watching SkillUp’s latest news weekly thing on youtube and he unexpectedly brought up the addition of crossplay for Darktide, and how that was going to be important for the xbox release and that “fingers crossed the xbox release coincides with a big content update and systems overhaul”
First of all, lol, I didn’t realise any big content creators still held a candle for Darktide, but more importantly, it made me wonder how much content and how much of an overhaul would be required for a “successful soft relaunch”?
Would a new biome and 3 new maps cut it?
Would 1 or 2 new classes added cut it?
Is the addition of a new game mode like Chaos Wastes a necessity for success at this point?
Is a new enemy faction a necessity for success?
Is fatshark capable of producing a lot of content at the same time as slowly fixing the game as they have been?
How much of an overhaul of the hub are we looking at?
Are red rarity weapons a necessity?
Is this a go big or go home situation? the average player count has become pretty dire.
All of this is wishful thinking, Fatshark has shown their blatant unwillingness to work on this game. Not only are they not providing any meaningful content 7 months in, there isn’t even an Xbox date, not are they willing to listen to the community at all.
An actual Darktide release (and not the open beta we are all playing) would include both easy essential remodeling (account wide resources, red weapons, no crafting locks etc etc,) but also actual content like at least a new subclass for every archetype. One every year isn’t gonna cut it.
When this is done they can actually focus on the (hard) new content like brand new archetypes, new biomes, new enemy types, new story extension etc.
Also they need to slash their ridiculous cosmetics prices at least in half. A pack with half assed cosmetics that clip shouldn’t cost a third of the damn game.
But as I’ve said that’s just wishful thinking, Fatshark has shown their face for 7 months now. A lazy and incompetent game developer.
Let’s not get ourselves too excited here. This is Fatshark we’re talking about. Hoping for a ‘soft-relaunch’ in which they put their butts into gear, add content, address community feedback, add new mods, and so on; is expecting too much from this developer.
Remember: expect nothing and you’ll never be disappointed.
Xbox version will probably hit xbox game pass. It will be like Rainbow Six Extraction (4 maps only) where people who are subscribed to gamepass will find it interesting to play, then realise not much maps but otherwise not warrant full purchase.
The cross play in this regards only means Steam and MS Store players. Still same platform. More like “cross digital PC store”
Unlikely to be cross platform between PC and Xbox. No indication so far there will be, so best to assume that will be the case. As a big thing like that would of been announced if that was happening.
No playstation release anytime soon thanks to Microsoft timed exclusive. So huge playerbase missed out.
It took 2 years for VT2 to reach in good state. Don’t think people will wait 1 year for DT considering last 7 months it really only has been 2 more maps with reused graphical assets.
At least with Steam you can see player count stats. Just will never know stats for console. Well if console players face high wait times for match making, that’s an indication right there. We’ll see what console players post on forums later in year.
Its been go big or go home since 3 months ago. They failed to go big. Now they’re on vacation. If they’re going to ‘relaunch’ or whatever it’ll be coincident with the xbox release but they better have some really solid content for us by that point.
Maps have proven to not be retention generators. I love the 2 new maps but the playerbase saw them, played them, and left. Classes are what is needed. 2 of them by end of year is absolutely minimum. 4 would be great to drop coincident with the xbox release.
chaos wastes would have been amazing and it really should have just been chaos wastes the game completely ditching the whole mission board thing. But its not a requirement for success. Just eliminating the mission board modifier selection issues is all that is required.
new enemy faction isn’t needed IMO but adding more enemy types is always a great idea. Enemies should always be added in pairs I think. That way the combinatrix of them showing up together or alone adds a lot more depth to the new gameplay experience than just 1 new enemy which will get optimized out of the experience immediately.
is fatshark capable of producting al ot of content at the same time as slowly fixing the game? No.
The hub should be accepted as a failed idea and hub hotkeys should be formally implemented. Spend no more time on this boondoggle for at least another year or two. Then revisit it.
Master Crafted weapons could be cool but definitely aren’t required.
I’ve covered this in detail in the past but I’m not supposed to post here anymore because its a waste of time so I should probably listen to myself on that one lmao. They have all our feedback. They just have to act. Whenever they choose to act… however many two more weeks that takes.
I can soft confirm that there will be crossplay between PC and Xbox, the game was designed for it unlike VT2, but idk if it will be there on the xbox launch day.
They wouldn’t have announced it because they seem leery of announcing anything right now, pretty sure they delayed the cross-store-play from being announced at Skulls, despite not including a release date, due to a policy of extreme caution that has been put in place.
Tide games kind of suck ass at player retention, not gonna lie. It’s amazing that Darktide has done as well as it has despite lacking classes which add a ton of replayability.
Classes or random map pathing/random map chunk generation all would have helped with player retention, but we somehow ended up with none of these things…
I’m hoping for plague bearers like what was hinted at a while back, but if they came with other nurgle units like drones, plague toads, and nurglings that would be a big plus.
In an ideal world we would get a fully fleshed out hub with a bar, minigames, private rooms etc etc. it’s amazing how much of a step backwards the hub is from VT2’s hub.
The bar is pretty low at this point. We can’t even get the core system changes that the game desperately needs. Hell, we can’t even get real honest and consistent communication from FS. I would love to see even a fraction of the community ideas put in place, but let’s not suck on the hopium too much; at least until FS shows they actually care enough to actually start producing real tangible results.
Don’t let it get too personal, bro. Just focus on the quality of your posts and engaging with your fellow bros. Who cares if our suggestions get ignored or whatever, as long as you’re having fun discussing things with your fellow bros then that’s all that matters.
I love reading your comments but you’re right posting here for us is sadly a waste of time, ive been thinking about what i want to see improved from FS but we all know if i were to make a post like that i’m just screaming into the void again
I agree with the rest of your post but let me ask a serious series of questions:
Why?
Who is this for?
What value is there in this?
You boot up darktide after a long day of work. do you:
A. go play a mission and kill heretics in the best part of the game (the game itself)
B. play a digital cardgame with some random digital strangers who 90% chance don’t even speak the whole time.
It is my view that this is one of those ideas that sounds super cool on paper, that would fill the game with “life” and “energy” and “drive engagment” and makes absolutely no sense when you realize what it really would be like. People come to games like this for the gameplay and spectacle. They don’t come to this to pretend to be at a space bar.
That is very kind of you to say. Thanks.
Yup. We’ve provided our feedback. We’re waiting on them to act. Its almost certain its going to be at least 2 months before we see anything significant at all. No sense for us to be outproducing their development team’s capacity. I try not to be too negative in general. Development takes time. But boy some things have been left to fester for far too long. Bad prioritization of key feedback problems.
Well they aren’t gonna speak before things are certain. And FS is slow. Nothing new about that.
If there is a soft relaunch, I would say it would be around the time that Xbox comes out and would for a realistic outset contain either the 1st class. Or a new sector outright.
And possibly new weapons like the Signal update.
I share everyone’s general level of pessimism, but I’d love to see a relaunch. So I’ll cut to the chase, here is what my vision would be for a relaunch:
Core gameplay systems and QoL
Moderate revamp to crafting and progression. Remove locks, have shared resources across characters. Add ability to combine blessings and more reliably get higher tier blessings.
Incorporate many QoL mods into the base game - like hub hot keys, mission sorting, numeric UI, etc.
Add Ordo Docket weapon skins for the different weapon models that are currently missing
Have ability to change character height and voice, etc.
Content and Reworks
Rework mission selection system entirely to allow us to pick modifiers and difficulty/intensity levels. Give bonuses for quick play.
Rework secondary objectives. Give each mission some type of collectible special pickup (books, relics to carry etc.) and add other secondary objectives. Make these actually worthwhile to pursue.
Rework emperors gift and mission reward system. Add ways to take on challenges mid-game for greater rewards chances. Maybe challenges give you more options at the end of mission of what reward you claim (eg pick 1 of X options).
Rework demonhost to be more easy to kill and provide a bonus for killing it.
1 full New sub-class for each archetype
1 full new archetype with two sub-classes
New map/environment with 3 missions
Add customizable crew quarters to the Hub. Strike team members could get access to each others quarters
Add a bar area to the Hub where players can interact
Add character NPCs to the hub area that share lore and information based on your rank and recently completed missions.
Add a special “story campaign” option to the missions, where it queues up missions sequentially and adds more narrative and story element to the missions. Competing a whole set of missions would grant some fun bonus rewards (maybe even Aquilas?)
Add more modifiers to the missions ala Chaos Wastes.
ADD ACTUAL SEASONAL CONTENT - like special seasonal currencies that are used to purchase cosmetics tied to that season.
The above is a lot - but it would breathe a lot of life and character into the game I feel, create some additional loops to keep people playing, establish more of a narrative story that can be built on, etc.
Why have a bar in a team based PvE game based around teamwork and potentially finding a team to play regularly with?
Same reason that these kinds of things are in Monster Hunter and DRG. It’s good for those who like roleplay/thematics, can provide interesting stat buffs for the next mission, and most importantly gives something to do while that one teammate pisses around in the forge trying to craft sh*t for way too long
The positive social aspect is part of the draw of PvE over PvP and singleplayer games imo, building on that is good.
This could actually do it, a relaunch that is super successful and breathes new life into the game making it “reborn”. Only thing I would add is new enemy types as that would be a big draw for people to come back and play as the old can get stale, the hinted at plague bearers plus one or two more would probably be enough, maybe that alternative tox-pogryn monstrosity that was spotted in the files.
