People really enjoy playing your game, Fatshark. It’s a ton of fun now that there are so many different play styles available to players through classes, weapons, blessings, and talents.
However, I’m struggling to convince my friends to stick around. The main complaints I hear are about the tedious leveling process and the frustrating weapon grind.
Leveling is a letdown.
It truly is. It doesn’t represent the full potential of the game. Don’t get me wrong; it serves as an alright tutorial. But the game reaches its peak of enjoyment during Auric Damnation when you’re constantly under attack. That’s when the game truly shines. New players spend way too much time enduring a subpar version of the game and never get to experience the actual fun. My friends who persisted until level 30 would have given up much earlier if I hadn’t guided them through an Auric Damnation run. It’s the only thing that kept them invested until level 30.
Grinding for weapons is a pain.
Just check out the number of complaints on the forum and Discord chat—it’s not a coincidence. It’s frustrating. Plasteel and Ordocks are the only currencies that matter, highlighting a flaw in the system. Trying out new weapons and builds takes an eternity because acquiring anything decent enough for Auric Damnation feels like hitting enemies with wet noodles.
The common thread between these complaints is that they both act as arbitrary barriers between players and the fun. Most games require such barriers because the core gameplay isn’t that enjoyable, necessitating hooks to bring players back and encourage grinding.
But you don’t need that. Darktide is unbelievably fun when you have a solid build and gear that feels right. Simply playing the game is enjoyable enough. Fatshark, you don’t need all this unnecessary stuff.
Solution:
Triple or quadruple the experience gained for new players. Expedite their exit from the leveling mode. Lower difficulties should solely serve to teach players the mechanics so they can learn to play the “real” game (Auric). Allow players with a level 30 character to fast-track another class to 30, even if it involves a charge. The potential revenue from letting people purchase level 30 for another class could be substantial.
Eliminate RNG from weapons and crafting. Seriously. Increase the cost to purchase a random weapon from Brunts. Allow players to use currencies to adjust the main stats on a weapon with a slider and lock them in place. Enable the purchase of desired perks and blessings, with a significant increase in price for each step. This way, players have a clear goal in mind. They know the exact cost to obtain the desired weapon and can play until their weapon is complete. This provides new players with an immediate focus and gives veterans the ability to quickly sample new builds.
Both of these solutions serve one purpose: they let us play the game. You don’t need these unnecessary barriers, Fatshark. Understand that your game is incredibly fun and is reason enough to log back in. Please let us play it.
Hard disagree. Not everyone likes high challenge. What is Fun to you may be a miserable experience for others. The 3 friends I have that have not quit due to crafting are perfectly happy to play on malice and heresy because that is the level that is fun for them. You can play malice and heresy very early on.
Yes, and dropping to a lower difficulty alleviates this. Crafting sucks, nobody disagrees with this but of course in the hardest difficulty you are not going to have a good time with sub-par weapons. This was also true in VT2 if you didn’t have max power weapons and accessories you would struggle on higher difficulties.
Do not do this. Not initially. First character SHOULD be slow. after getting one level 30 then the others should go faster. In VT2 you leveled faster after getting one max level because you had accessories to help boost your power on new characters.
While everyone agrees crafting needs to change I do not think this is the way to do it. There are so many posts going into far more depth and discussion on what needs to be done for crafting so I’ll not get into that here.
Definitely gets the from me for the points on crafting. Not sure I agree with faster leveling. Auric isn’t for everyone and I do think that FS has not really done a great job of providing a satisfying mid-tier experience. I haven’t thought much about what that would look like but heresy should I think have some more exciting options and possibilities for rewards so people don’t feel the need to hustle on to the next tier a soon as possible.
I think you may be poisoning the minds of your friends by wanting them to be auric partners for you and pushing them to go into harder difficulties rather than allowing them to enjoy the game at lower levels. This is purely based on your assertion (so if I am just wrong feel free to ignore this, this isn’t an attack, just an observation) that auric is where the fun is when fun is subjective. I mean I don’t know your friends but have they been complaining the game is too easy or have they been complaining they aren’t geared for the content you are bringing them into?
The people I have introduced to the game loved the gameplay but ultimately left because of the crafting and they only disliked the crafting when I started encouraging them to push into higher difficulties (where breakpoints and proper build planning start mattering unlike on malice and heresy where you can get away with almost anything).
Like I said I have about 3 friends that still play and enjoy the game every time they get on and play low level content. This is not the only game they play so it doesn’t feel like a grind to them and the low difficulty enables us to just mess around and have a good time rather than sweat every minute for 20-30minutes or more at a time in higher difficulty. Do I think they could do higher difficulty? Sure, but I don’t push anyone to play higher difficulty because in these games the difficulty is mostly just arbitrary. They much prefer to run a maelstrom heresy mission for increased difficulty than an auric mission.
When I play with my friends I try my best to be positive about the game and just stick to the things game does well and steer them away from the bad stuff like crafting, instead encouraging them to just save ingots for milk weapons that have good stats. High level content all but requires interacting with the worst this game has to offer: the RNG and crafting that goes with it.
Constant high stimulation deadens your dopamine and adrenaline receptors, making one inured to them and demanding higher highs to maintain the same feeling.
It’s why I think the high int/HISTG mods aren’t all that great, they lack any pacing that help make the high points of the action higher and don’t provide the downtime needed to actually process the highs.
The director in DT, apart from the loner/speedrun protection, just feels random, exacerbated by the change horde spawn (where the hordes are split into 3-4 distinct waves and dribble out, also spawning or pulling newly spawned patrols) and the specialist wave spawn (where they spawn all at the same time) behaviour.
I’d prefer the modifiers in VT2 better: more hordes, roaming elites, more patrols, etc. rather than the current spawn diarrhoea ones in DT.
I heavily disagree. Long slog missions where you are constantly under attack are by far my favorite, It pushes you and your team to their absolute limit. There is no comparison to beating a mission like that where you know you played your best, and where able to win because of it.
It doesn’t help that with persistent power creep constant attacks are really the last thing the heretics have left.
My big thing is the VT2 mission system allowed to to pick and choose when you would take on a short mission or a long mission. This game is far too random.
Sometimes the same map with the same modifiers on the same difficulty with the same squad running the same kits takes 20 minutes other times it takes 40+ and that is not good. The predictable mission length of VT2 was great. It meant if you had a limited amount of time to play you knew roughly how many missions you could run with your mates before having to call it a night. In DT you have 30 minutes left is that enough to get through a match? Unclear. That isn’t a good feeling.
I’m one of the friend he mentioned. The story for us has been, we almost quit before 30 because it was taking so long to get there. Got 30 and started running auric and absolutely love it. We’ve all got a build with pretty good weapons that we enjoy, but now I’d like to try a new class or build. Staring down the barrel of leveling to 30 and rolling weapons for hours is not appealing when I only have 1-2 hours (maybe) a night to play.
I highly encourage you to grind normal damnation then instead of pushing auric. It is much MUCH easier to grind lower difficulty consistently to push past than it is to do high difficulty with less than ideal kit. At least in terms of having limited time to play. It is, unfortunately, a “live service” game. Currently it is designed to be slow.
I cannot stress enough how pushing higher content even if you want more of a challenge before grinding out a least a one good melee and one good ranged you like makes the game at least 50% more enjoyable.
Focus on finding just one melee and one ranged option you like and grind out those two weapons. The less you have to interact with the “crafting” the better.
Just want to note that leveling feels much better now that you get a shiny new skill point every level, instead of every 5.
It takes time, but I’ve found it an enjoyable change of pace. I’ve found Malice (T3) Maelstrom missions are a great place for lower level toons!
Also, for some reason, I’ve been incredibly lucky in that after I reach level 30 I quickly was able to roll some great weapons – not perfect, but perfectly serviceable for T4/5. I’m a little suspicious of that actually…
IMO XP rates were increased enough. It’s very fast to level now, super fast if a friend pulls you into Heresy/Damn missions fairly early.
Leveling isn’t needed at all in games like this. The system exists in MMORPG’s because of the glut of skills and systems the player is inundated with and serves as a means of drip feeding the player these systems and abilities without overwhelming them. Having 80 levels to get to know, understand and use 30~40 abilties, many of which are situational, makes sense.
Darktide is not that. You only have two active skills, all of which are very easy to understand at a basic level. You could start with the entire talent tree unlocked and 30 points to spend and have a full working grasp of it with just a couple hours worth of play. The leveling system adds nothing of benefit to the player, it’s just a treadmill to artificially inflate play time and in Darktide’s case it, along with the horrible loot and crafting systems, serve as nothing but barriers between a new player and the actual fun part of the game.
omg couldn’t agree more to this. Despite having lvl 30 on all chars, I freakin hate leveling from start. You know how boring it is to play? I would pay for a lvl 30 ticket.
You’re talking as is there isn’t a very significant skill curve in this game. The leveling kinda guides new players through difficulty progression as they get a handle on all the combat mechanics, positioning, team play skill etc which I can tell you feel PUGing experience is not guaranteed to have been ingrained even for people playing level 30 +50 characters.
So yeah just because there isn’t intricacy in RPG elements doesn’t mean there isn’t a huge skill curve for new players to adapt to.
I think leveling is necessary for people who play the game for the first time. But once we reach level 30 on 1 char, I don’t think we should spend the same amount of time leveling another char to 30. It’s super boring.
Oh the game is phenomenal. I have no issues saying that unlike some of the window lickers who play the game religiously but talk like it’s a pile of dog dung. There are clearly extrenely talented people at Fatshark. It seems like most of the problems come from weird decision making, not from the actual people developing the game
Parts of the game can be dog dung at the same time other parts are phenomenal. But if that’s the case, why is the dog dung still dragging down the phenomenal parts?
As I mentioned VT2 had a great way to boost leveling of subsequent characters and that was they all shared the same accessories. Now that we have a shared inventory of materials I think it is high time weapons that are available to multiple characters (like all the autoguns, the shredder, the axes, the catachans, etc) and curios be shared (oh and have those three curio slots be unlocked already, don’t force us to re-unlock them). This would be an excellent stop-gap in lieu of an actual crafting change. Having a couple weapons that you can just put on a brand new character would make you able to easily just skip right to malice and then heresy and even into damnation before hitting 20 because having a 500+ range and melee AND curios would speed up things without arbitrarily increase exp gains.
Yup, the gameplay is amazing, it is the only reason I keep coming back. But so many decisions, right from the GO are just baffling. Like tossing out all the progress they made with VT2 missions system and the crafting in VT2, while not perfect, is so incredibly better than it was on-release and a damn-sight better than this travesty we have in DT.
from me for the points on crafting. Not sure I agree with faster leveling. Auric isn’t for everyone and I do think that FS has not really done a great job of providing a satisfying mid-tier experience. I haven’t thought much about what that would look like but heresy should I think have some more exciting options and possibilities for rewards so people don’t feel the need to hustle on to the next tier a soon as possible.