This isn’t a babyrage sort of “Do this thing or I’ll…” sort of statement. It’s just a realistic assessment of the ability of the game to sustain my interest long term.
A huge part of what made VT2 compelling to me was tinkering with different builds and using the scoreboard as feedback to figure out if I was filling the niche I was trying to slot into. At the end of a run in VT2 I was excited to see the scoreboard and see how I did. It was a fun moment to unwind a bit and chirp at my buddies over who had what green circles.
Now I’m sitting here at max level in Darktide finding that I’m not really motivated to swap out gear or experiment with different builds, because I have zero feedback outside of the binary “succeeded/failed” of the run. That’s just not enough. There are too many variables I can’t account for without more granularity of feedback, and that means I’m already running out of steam to log in.
I’ve had a lot of fun so far with Darktide (obviously, having dropped 45 hours into it before release), and I’m not regretting buying it, but without a proper scoreboard I can’t see it holding my interest much longer. I’m certainly not going to stick around long enough to buy any DLCs or other purchases.
Maybe you guys have data that says supporting the long term interest in people like me isn’t worth the trade off of some people using the scoreboard as an excuse to be toxic. I wouldn’t know about that since I usually play with my friends and don’t really chat with people in online games. As it stands, you’ve got my $40 and I’ve had at least that amount of fun, so that’s fair. In the long run I can see myself playing more VT2 than Darktide going forward, which is not something I would have forseen a few weeks ago. I really wasn’t prepared for how thoroughly the game’s feedback loop would be gutted.