This is a serious question.
I am a person that is very easily swallowed by a game and sunks in hundreds or thousands of hours. I get very obsessed about a game really fast.
And I kinda thought Darktide would be a game like that, as VT2 was my last “obsession” if you will.
But I still need something to play for… Cosmetics, frames or a paticular weapon for a build I’d like to try. All of those things are so c*ncerous to obtain in Darktide that it kinda sucks the fun out of the game and destroys my will to play.
I don’t mind grinding for hours if I know that I can get one paticular item by doing so but in Darktide you don’t. In Darktide you just hope for stuff you want to pop up on your screen randomly, either be it in the shops or by the emperors gifts.
I already play heresy and damnation. There is not alot of room for me to improve my own skill, or atleast not as much room, that it would motivate me to play. It would motivate me to try out different builds and weapon/blessing combination… But everyone who plays Darktide knows that that’s kinda impossible or atleast a very RNG based thing to do.
So my question is, to everyone who still plays daily and finds the motivation… What is your motivation? Why do you keep playing? Or are you just really lucky with your item rolls and are praised by RNGsus?
So, it’s my take.
I keep playing Darktide because I like to kill and smash stuff, I like that this game makes me think and it sort of helps me to wake up in a way, also, I like to play with other people and help them out, because I feel pretty confident that I could do it.
And, I really love some of the friendly vibes that some people give while I am playing, like writing something silly in the chat, or wildly switching weapons while looking directly into your soul.
And about helping others on Damnation, it makes me happy to see GGs in the end of the run, because this one match may be someones first, or the person struggled to complete Damnation on High-intensity or some stuff.
So, in conclusion, I play for interaction, and they are everywhere, even if everybody dead silent, it gives a feel as if we are cool as hell, or if somebody really struggles throughout the match I am feeling as if we are helping the newer player to have some fun, I guess.
And can’t say much on the items and weapons, it’s kinda secondary thing that kinda there for me, yet I still like to rant about balance and stuff, it’s enjoyable.
I adore the new hounds mode. It’s bloody phenomenal. I may be the only person on the planet who likes it (the people I play with enjoy it too) but I really really love the new dog mode. The dogs themselves can of course be tuned a bit more, but this wave of pups coming barging towards you is incredible. Whoever green lit that should get a raise.
I may be almost done. I really enjoy the core gameplay loop, but I just don’t bother with gear at all. I finish damnation runs with the sub-par gear I have at the moment and FS has made it abundantly clear that their demographic when it comes to gear grind is not me… so screw it honestly… I have better things to do… like playing Damnation missions with shitty gear.
I also want stuff to work towards. To me, in VT2, this was all the weird achievements you could get and finishing stuff in cataclysm difficulty. I already had all the gear that I wanted but I kept playing with friends because of the solid gameplay and because of grinding to finishing FoW on Cataclysm (I never did do that ) and similar achievements.
Darktide could scratch the same itch with some good penances, but the levels are just not there yet. I hope it gets there…
The concept is fine. The execution is horrible. I could go on and on about how all they do is destroy the flow of a run, but I’ll save it for the next anti-dog thread. There’s bound to be another one sooner or later.
Well… RNG makes me play more than I would normally… Cause I always want a new weapon or ameliorate the one I use
So, what they did with RNG, make me play more.
But, soon I will get all what I want or need (still psyker and ogryn to do).
I don’t know if I will play, yet, so much time.
If you ask me, I would say yes cause I like playing the game and fighting in missions. I can play damnation now, but I have possibilities to be better in this difficulty.
I tested high intensity and I need training even if i can complete it.
Dogs are a problem for me.
I tested in training room and…
Pushing is really hard to perform
Dodging works great
Doing baseball with them is rolling dice and hope it will work
But in game, pushing doesn’t work at all, dodging work bad with the servers flaws, and baseball works… But not all the time.
As a result, while by the past I was pushing them, now I try to kill them with ranged and sometimes I waste lot of ammos cause ot them.
I disagree. In no way do they ruin the flow of the run but rather force you to think tactically and stick together to counter them. For me, the dogs are fine now, but with that said I’m no Q&A expert so I’m sure a lot of you have found very legitimate things in their mechanics to complain about.
Completing penances kept me playing at first but they are almost all done now unless I start making other characters and I don’t want to do that until they allow shared resources across my whole account. The ones ive got left will take quite a long time to complete so I’m not really watching them anymore. Stuff like kill 1million heretics. Looking forward to the 1500 missions completed portrait frame but once that’s done I probably wont pay much more attention to them unless they add new ones.
I’ve made some nice loadouts that I enjoy playing with and beating the damnation hi intensity + modifiers is fun with my heaviest damage / meta load outs the other three are for heresy and below if I’m speed running the weekly melk missions. They are still fun to use having three +3 stamina curios with sprint efficiency and the fastest sprint speed blessing on my braced auto gun makes malice fun. Shotgun loadouts/reload feats are good fun on heresy/malice…
I quite enjoy collecting nice blessings and weapons and ive been working on trying to completely fill my blessing library slowly. The tier four blessings are quite the grind but it makes sense to try and build it up. Having those and a nice collection of 370+modifier weapons with a decent stat spread of every type was another goal I set myself and I’m still working on. Getting high stat weapons with the stats in the right places and good blessings takes time. Oddly stuff like that keeps me interested.
Mostly though its because I still enjoy the gameplay quite a lot. We will need some new missions and maps though I think.
I’ve got more than 900 hours now on just veteran. My weapon collection / blessings / portrait frames and penances are looking pretty fancy and would probably make quite a few people green with envy
To be fair I play less than I did now but that’s probably a good thing summer is coming and fresh air is good for you.
It’s too much effort, time, and RNG to do what I want: build crafting.
I don’t really care about getting better at Darktide.
And I’m not really motivated for any achievements.
In VT2, I dumped over 2k hours because it was fun. The other systems that interacted with the main gameplay loop (progression and gear) were a hinderance to my enjoyment of the game but I was able to rather quickly blast through leveling up all heros and stockpiling enough dust to craft whatever I wanted by the time I was at 200 hours. Vermintide 2 was an amazingly fun game in spite of Fatsharks design decisions, because most of them could by bypassed with a few hundred hours of play. Which is still frankly ridiculous.
Darktide has the same fundamental amazing core gameplay loop. But it’s surrounding systems are so frustratingly awful that I just can’t bring myself to put any effort into the game. And why should I? DRG has a much better build crafting environment. And so many other game offer what I want that Darktide just has no pull for me right now. Add in Fatsharks abysmal treatment of the playerbase and the only reason I even touch the game anymore is because my weekend playgroup still plays it occasionally.
Edit:
To be clear, when I talk about ‘build crafting’, I mean experimenting with different traits, skills, weapons, etc. Not to settle on a ‘best’ build, but because it’s fun to try and make weird stuff work and just fiddle with a build until I’m happy with it. That’s all.
) and similar achievements.