This is more of a general overall thought and gameplay analysis thread that I’ll describe as the”working as intended” features for lack of a better term and why they feel awful. This mostly includes stuff that is described as a norm for darktide but is alien in almost any other game.
Mission and modifier selection
This is probably the easiest one to point too. I’m almost any 4 player co-op based game you can choose exactly what map you want to play at any time. Unless you are doing something special like a roguelike game mode you can just load a mission up and go ham. Not in. Darktide tho.
Instead we have RNG maps, RNG difficulty and RNG modifiers. That is unless a new map drops, then the new map HAS to take up several of the slots because otherwise people would miss the new content.
This is odd for several reasons. For starters it can be very hard to build familiarity with maps such as in other coop games when the game just doesn’t give them too you. I still don’t know Ascension Riser that well since I’ve maybe played it a handful of times since coming back. Oh boy do I know toxin refinery in the hour glass and I’ve grown to loath that map. Second it can make it hard to get the kind of game you want, this feels universal. More casual players get stuck with high end modifiers, more pro players get stuck with low end ones, people get stuck doing vent purge or lights out who hate it and those that want to try it on some maps can’t find it.
Story and Narrator choice
I feel this very much is another thing that falls in line with the above. Along with randomized missions we have randomized narrators. Trying to find a through line of the plot in Darktide can be difficult at the best of times but it gets more convoluted when everything you learn is through either 1 time cutscenes you can’t reply, random vox chatter, or a character talking at you while a mission is happening. While it does feel like there is sone attempt at division between high and low trust missions (Lower hives like the Torrent being for newer rejects while hour glass I guess being mid level and stuff like Throneside or Carnival being on the higher end) it’s hard to really figure out a proper timeline of events.
It also feels like a lot of who gets assigned to what assignments feels very random. I could see it if day Morrow was overseeing strikes mixed with Zola who has knowledge of the hive or having Hadron overseeing a repair but it’s very haphazard as it stands. I guess it’s partially an attempt at variety but as it stands or makes the plot and roles of various characters hard to follow. Like Mesozi overseeing a mission where she had to be directly on call for an extraction? Cool. Her on call for a mission where she doesn’t seem to drop you off or pick you up? Why?
Blessings limited by weapon type
I know I’m flying close to the sun for this becoming a crafting thread but this is mostly just a general head scratcher about blessings overall.
I don’t get why literal same blessings are locked off to specific weapons when they do exactly the same thing. I also don’t get why some are weapon unique when they could apply to others. I guess the easy answer is padding but we already have 4 levels of bleeding for that. I can understand in cases where you can’t exactly apply las gun specific stuff to say a regular ballistic weapon (though fire ammo on crit would be cool) but I have no idea why Focused Channeling is specific to the 1 type of staff or Run and Gun needs to be on uniquely earned on every class of weapon.
It feels like they are trying to both get you to experiment but punishing you for doing so at the same time. Anyway flying close to the sun of a crafting thread over.
The Morningstar
Oh the Morningstar, perfect example of an ocean wide but 2 inches deep. We load into the morning star as our first hub area. We need to go back every time we do crafting, modify inventory, or do anything with our character. We can’t really interact with NPCs but they are kind of just going through their cycles of random stuff and vox chatter until you talk to them at a shop. You see other people running around but you can’t exactly interact with them beyond a basic gesture or the game chat. Many want either an expansion of the Morningstar or to scrap it altogether in favour of just a menu. In general people agree that it feels like a lot is missing.
The connection: a lack of control or direction
All these systems and features have a general connection of lack of player control or agency. While this can work well in some stories and games it tends to work against Darktide’s main goal of providing a fun 40k L4D like experience. It feels like this runs counter to a lot of what those games are about, grab your friends, pick a mission, and go. It doesn’t fit neatly into that box which brings me to my next theory.
Darktide: An attempt at 40k MMO design
So let me go over the support for this. We have unique characters with a background that doesn’t super matter beyond our class. The Morningstar is our initial Hub area, our starter If you will. The reason we only get small pieces of the story is because, well, I’m an mmo setting this would be essentially only 1 part of a 20 part puzzle. You need something that is big enough to accommodate 50-100 players but us readable enough so everyone can find the shop. The blessing system makes no sense inthe context of the pittance of blessings we have now but in a system with potentially hundreds to find? Then it’s that much more of a thing to keep hunting for. The map is your random dungeons to level and get gear in between your main story arc stuff. They are like this with the assumption of hundreds or even thousands of people running an hour. These NPCs are not major or interactive because you’ll be in the next zone in a few hours or a day or two. A lot if the dumb design decisions in the context of a Coop shooter make 0 sense but for a MMO make perfect sense.
so what happened?
My honest guess was due to the amount of scrapping work, reshuffling ideas, and delays the Darktide that was on paper was not the game we got. Somewhere along the development line it became clear that the time, effort, and money required to do something as ambitious as a 40k mmo would be out of the question. In addition traditional MMOs are on their way out and live service us in. I think there was a hard pivot towards this model late into development after a publisher (maybe Tencent ) got wind of the original design intent and pushed them from purely coop focused to re-adopting some of the original cut MMOs ideas. It also helps contextualize why this the grind feels like it does. We have an MMO’s hub world literally invading a coop shooter.
conclusion
Feel free to “Sources Cited: Crack” me in the replies but it’s something I feel like is plausible to at least some degree. I mostly got to thinking about it after looking at stuff such as Inquisitor Martyr, Rogue Trader, and the cancelled Dark Millennium game https://youtu.be/kczEQElHhFY?si=t3dXBgzsR8JL9uV3