Darktide

[Mooger Meng]

It looks like the game doesn't know how to incorporate lore into itself. There are 4 short stories about the classes (ogryn, psyker, veteran, zealot) stashed away on their website. And most of the background story is conveyed through cosmetics and weapons descriptions (Here's a list). Then there's the vox transmission wyrmwood agent lore drip feed on fat shark's youtube channel.

Why are these important story pieces hidden away like some sort of shitty ARG? 40k fans would absolutely be okay with reading and watching all these in the game, why not put a library archive corner on the Mourningstar?

I'm convinced they couldn't make a good story for this game with a gun to their heads. I get the appeal of having fully customizable blank slates and really appreciate being able to stack a single class (Ogryn hit squads are the best), but if your mission chatter NPCs are going to do the heavy lifting, they need to not be awful.
Unfortunately, they're fucking awful.

 

[Chug Smuckle]

at this point I've written off the story. I just want something to do that isn't gear grind (like a roguelike mode from vt2), maps released at a more regular pace, new penaces to do, holiday or themed shit like vt2, better mod intergration and when they introduce a bug like the audio bug to priortize fixing it. Like I wanna play your game but you make it so fucking hard. going from VT to VT2 to DT, I know im just pissing in the wind.

 

[The Ugly One]

Recently got this, been playing it a bit. It's pretty fun, but it's not quite as fun as Deep Rock Galactic, which is the closest thing to it I've played. I've been playing as a Psyker, which has been just a blast, occasionally switching to Veteran. Overall, I like the look & feel of the game and the core gameplay loop. Where it doesn't quite have the longevity of DRG for me is that there just doesn't feel like there's as much dynamic variety (especially because there are so few maps), nor do the classes' support powers feel as essential or create any kind of chemistry. Overall, though, I've enjoyed it.

 

[Asian tech support]

I'm convinced they couldn't make a good story for this game with a gun to their heads. I get the appeal of having fully customizable blank slates and really appreciate being able to stack a single class (Ogryn hit squads are the best), but if your mission chatter NPCs are going to do the heavy lifting, they need to not be awful.
Unfortunately, they're fucking awful.

I'd choose preset characters over being able to stack multiple of a single class any day but I agree the ogryn squads are great. I think the custom characters thing was a result of the decision to make the game a live service. As soon as it was revealed there wouldn't be set characters, people on the FS forum pointed out the pitfalls which all ended up coming true. VT has so many good banter lines and the voice acting was great. There are very few DT lines I can recite off the top of my head and there are a handful of personalities that I really don't like.
I could ignore the story being a non-story if players got to do more warband style activities. Instead, we get the same general mission structure that VT and all the other L4D style games have. The notion of rising through an Inquisitorial warband is neat but I don't think that the player experiences that feeling at all.

Recently got this, been playing it a bit. It's pretty fun, but it's not quite as fun as Deep Rock Galactic, which is the closest thing to it I've played. I've been playing as a Psyker, which has been just a blast, occasionally switching to Veteran. Overall, I like the look & feel of the game and the core gameplay loop. Where it doesn't quite have the longevity of DRG for me is that there just doesn't feel like there's as much dynamic variety (especially because there are so few maps), nor do the classes' support powers feel as essential or create any kind of chemistry. Overall, though, I've enjoyed it.

The way the maps are laid out is kind of cool when you consider the scope of the zones they've crafted and it could have worked if there weren't so many reused areas. Like one crossroads per map, not half the map backwards.
Back when VT2 was still popping off, a question that was floated fairly often was if the map tools could be made available for custom maps. Instead of providing specific technical reasons why that wouldn't fly, Fatshark instead used the opportunity to kvetch about just how hard it is to make the maps and tell the modding community they were too dim. Vermintide has much better maps imo. I know the game is low pop but you can still get consistent games. I recommend it to anyone curious about what might have been.

 

[Asian tech support]

I noticed something that I can't believe I didn't notice before. In my quest for acquiring the Surge blessing for the voidstrike staff, I've been buying batches of grey staves from the shop and consecrating them up until they're blue in the hopes of stripping them of missing blessings. Turns out that tier 4 blessings will never roll in the first blessing slot but will almost always roll in the second slot of any weapon you upgrade to orange. This whole process is so stupidly expensive that it makes VT1's crafing look tame.

 

[Glossy Paper]

I noticed something that I can't believe I didn't notice before. In my quest for acquiring the Surge blessing for the voidstrike staff, I've been buying batches of grey staves from the shop and consecrating them up until they're blue in the hopes of stripping them of missing blessings. Turns out that tier 4 blessings will never roll in the first blessing slot but will almost always roll in the second slot of any weapon you upgrade to orange. This whole process is so stupidly expensive that it makes VT1's crafing look tame.

The blessing rolls are based on the weapon's current rating (high rating# = high tier roll). The advice is to first rebless the 1st blessing to a high tier one that you DON'T want, and hope the 2nd roll gives a good high tier you want, then switch the 1st back into something viable.

 

[Gorby-Chan]

Me and some friends picked it up recently, I like that you can stack classes and I love that ogryn is the tard wrangler class. Carried a few heresy runs doubling up on them

 

[Asian tech support]

Update dropped.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1361210/view/3856832811044186714?l=english

Seems fairly substantial although devoid QoL changes save for the ability to dodge cancel out of revved chain weapons locked animation.
I like the new map but boy is it low intensity. The final event is boring as hell.

 

[Asian tech support]

The mk 5 shit shovel is a beast. Let's you play assassin ogryn.

Wish it had better first target.

 

[Asian tech support]

I came back after not playing since the twins fight dropped. Just wanted so say I was WRONG about gun psyker that shit is 110% busted. Did not realize how much finesse you could stack from scryer's gaze and disrupt destiny. Disrupt destiny is a horribly designed keystone but it's very strong. The build very much carried my butt through hard mode twins.
I also finally got my staff.

 

[Asian tech support]

monthly dorktide update

I think a new content patch is close. There was a hotfix a few days ago that gave the psykanium lady some new lines about a genetor/magos biologis that knows Hadron showing up. Probably not getting an AdMech class but presumably a couple new maps and maybe a new progression mechanic.

I've also made a next to unkillable extremely mobile vet build

Stripped down + duck and dive + sprint efficiency + stamina on trinket means you can sprint through gunfire forever. Weapon specialist + the natural mobility of the combat knife means you're constantly ducking and dodging super far while moving even faster. You could get some nasty burst damage if you take some of the damage on ability use nodes but I don't think it's necessary at least not with the that particular autogun. Brittleness is a garbage effect unless you can get a ton of it and onslaught lets the autogun do work on carapace armor. It kind of only works with autoguns and the columnus mk5 is the fastest firing one. Still better off going into melee with crushers. I have a version for the plasma gun and it's just about as good.

 

[POWER IN MISERY]

@Asian tech support give me a sitrep fella. the closed beta made me sad but all january i burned myself out from playing it so much. are they gonna spice it up any time soon?

 

[Asian tech support]

@Asian tech support give me a sitrep fella. the closed beta made me sad but all january i burned myself out from playing it so much. are they gonna spice it up any time soon?

If you only played the closed beta and launch window, there are really only three significant changes: improved skill trees as shown in some of the previous pages, weapon rerolling, although it's not in a good state (more on that in a sec), and auric (hard mode) maps.

The new skill trees are a bit of a mixed bag. They're better than the old VT2 style ones and you'd think that would let buildcraft finally shine but that's not really the case. A lot of the nodes don't work the way the sound like they do and many are less impactful than they seem. There are some seriously cracked builds that can elevate an otherwise mediocre player, sort of like picking Ironbreaker or Battle Wizard in VT2. It's an improvement but needs another pass. Unfortunately, with Fatshark's track record of nerfing fun, that second pass isn't something I'm looking forward to. I've tried very hard to make builds that are fun and effective and there are very few of those imo. I'll include a few of my favorites below.

The crafting system is still awful and exactly what the doomsayers were saying it'd be, even during the first super secret closed beta before the closed beta in October '22. Every mission rewards an item now and the vendor has an option to spam buy grey items ad infinium. It will become apparent why this is useful. You can only reroll two perks and/or blessings in any combination. So to get a good weapon, you're gonna be looking for:

1. One with high base stats.
2. A good spread of those stats (most weapons have a dump stat or one that's more important that others - tip: in most cases, damage is actually the dump stat).
3. A grey item. Normal vendor items always have low tier blessings and crap perks so almost 100% of blues are worthless and greens only slightly less so - the most alluring buy is a high stat grey, so most of the time you're looking to spam buy from the armory's grey gamble.
4. At least one usable perk/blessing you can lock in by the time the item is upgraded to blue. Higher base stat items have a better chance of rolling tier 4 blessings off the bat. Earlier I made a post suggesting that tier 4 blessings do not appear normally in the first blessing slot but I was wrong. If the item has three useless perks/blessings by the time it's purple, it's trash and taking it to orange is a waste of materials.

We're taking at least 4 layers of rng - one for the high base stats, another for the stat distribution, and two more for at least two ideal perks/blessings. About a week ago they released a blog post informing all two people still playing the game that now that they've finally recovered from their four month long Swedish Christmas vacation, they're gonna get to work on releasing versus for VT2 (DOA mode - I tried it and its lacking) and I quote:

What’s coming up in Darktide?

Our first update will focus on a comprehensive revamp and expansion of the penance system, including adding many additional rewards and a completely new way to earn them. We will be sharing more information on this update by the end of the month along with a dev blog, so keep your eyes peeled on our Communication channels to learn more.

Following this, we are working on an overhaul of our current itemisation process. With the new system we want to remove a lot of the unpredictable grind that came from an RNG heavy system whilst giving players more agency and a steady manner to progress toward specific loadouts, blessings, and stats refinement.

Although these are significant portions of each update, this is not our full plan for 2024. We will be adding new elements to Darktide throughout the year as well including (but not limited to) new missions, new enemies, new weapons, new conditions, and new features alongside balance updates, quality of life additions, along with some other surprises which we will share in due time.

So yeah, a bunch of vague nonsense with no meaningful additions of content. Fatshark never fails to disappoint. I'll take a crafting rework but I'd imagine most people still playing already have their god rolled items.

Auric missions are difficulty 4 and 5 missions that all have the high-intensity modifier plus something else, hounds, shock troops, power outage (more darmonhosts), etc. There's also maelstrom missions which have some kind of additional modifier plus a beneficial one. It can be something like select enemies have a health and damage buff but the players have reduced ability cooldowns. These are nice touches and something I wish VT2 had outside of the weekly challenge maps and deeds as most of those modifiers were shit. Some modifiers are harder than others but none are harder than modded VT2.

They also added a proper boss fight mission with a secret hard mode. This is the best boss fight they've done imo. It's essentially two of the scab captains from the assassination missions but one is melee focused, one is ranged focused, and they buff each other's void shields. Hard mode makes it so if you get put out of action, you can't be rescued in addition to the bosses being tanked up and adding more elites to the fight. It's genuinely a tough fight.

So to finally answer the question as to whether or not the game is gonna be spiced up soon, the answer is no unless you consider the last year's worth of updates spicy enough.

In the Vermintide thread, I linked a video that's clearly made by Fatshark that's somehow tied to the new Age of Sigmar edition which is seemingly gonna be introducing Skaven to the setting. Fatshark makes the best known Skaven centric game, I'm just connecting the dots. Whether or not this is VT3, more VT2, or something else entirely remains to be seen but I'm personally not a fan of AoS and don't want to play Vermintide: Very Best Friends Edition.

Spoiler: my builds

Autogun vet

This is the one I showed above. You don't really take ranged damage although specials and disablers can still fuck you up. For trinkets, I run one health, one toughness, and one stamina, three instances of ability regen, three instances of stamina regen, two instances of block cost reduction, and one instance of sprint cost reduction. This allows you to replenish stamina while sprinting through and auto dodge gunfire with the autogun out.

Plasma gun vet

This one needs Focus Target to reliably one shot crushers with a crit headshot. There's only one way to build the plasma gun right now and that's with gets hot and blaze away (which there is no tier 4 blessing for - some are like that). Charge rate is a dump stat as charged shots are useless and the uncharged shot isn't really affected. Mine is almost perfect. I wish it had vs unyielding instead of vs elites but I can always swap vs flak if I must. Vs unyielding lets the plasma gun shred monsters.

Other plasma gun vet using the same items

I like this one more because I value mobility over damage.

These are the other melee weapons I use.

I need to change the perks on the shovel. I don't like power swords and don't have a good chain sword.

Eviscerator zealot

Brainless. Uses the same trinket setup as the vet. This can carry through any content. Can swap blessings for cleave and damage ones.
Also uses these weapons

Neither are prefect rolls.

Gun psyker

This is maybe my strongest build but is so ammo hungry is needs a scavenger vet. Uses the same trinket setup as mentioned before. Not a lot to say; it does damage and a lot of damage.

Staff psyker isn't as strong as gun psyker right now but that could change if this particular gun gets nerfed.

I don't play a as much ogryn but ogryn builds are the most flexible imo. They Just Work™.

That's quite enough autism for today.

 

[Asian tech support]

Update.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1361210/view/4172096195384845504?l=english

Incredibly disappointing. I didn't really give a shit about Okri's book of grudges (penances) in Vermintide and I don't care about the drip game so for me personally, it adds nothing. 90% chance all the "new" cosmetics all recolors and shit ones at that, similar to the ones you can buy with ordos.

Earlier, I had speculated that there would be some actual new content and gear progression, but this seems to be neither of those things. The biggest issues plaguing the game right now are gear acquisition and content apathy. The game is solved. No one gives two fucks about penances. Add better crafting, new weapons, and more maps. Once that's on its way, we can talk classes. It's simple. People have been saying this for TEN YEARS. It worked in VT1 and should have been apparent after Winds of Magic was soundly rejected.

I like puzzles but it's nice when there's a reward tied to it. There were a bunch in VT2's post launch maps but most were just tied to one of okri's challenges and very few of them gave you pickups. Most grimoires were behind some kind of puzzle but DT has regressed into them contributing nothing besides a negligible amount of xp and ordos, with DT's corruption being way more of a pain than VT's curse. If the plan is to go back to hiding the books and making them actually give rewards comparable to VT, then I'm all for it, just put the grim in the stim slot now. I don't think that's what they're going for though or else they'd have said so.

Total Swedecuck Death.

 

[Mooger Meng]

Update.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1361210/view/4172096195384845504?l=english

Incredibly disappointing. I didn't really give a shit about Okri's book of grudges (penances) in Vermintide and I don't care about the drip game so for me personally, it adds nothing. 90% chance all the "new" cosmetics all recolors and shit ones at that, similar to the ones you can buy with ordos.

Earlier, I had speculated that there would be some actual new content and gear progression, but this seems to be neither of those things. The biggest issues plaguing the game right now are gear acquisition and content apathy. The game is solved. No one gives two fucks about penances. Add better crafting, new weapons, and more maps. Once that's on its way, we can talk classes. It's simple. People have been saying this for TEN YEARS. It worked in VT1 and should have been apparent after Winds of Magic was soundly rejected.

I like puzzles but it's nice when there's a reward tied to it. There were a bunch in VT2's post launch maps but most were just tied to one of okri's challenges and very few of them gave you pickups. Most grimoires were behind some kind of puzzle but DT has regressed into them contributing nothing besides a negligible amount of xp and ordos, with DT's corruption being way more of a pain than VT's curse. If the plan is to go back to hiding the books and making them actually give rewards comparable to VT, then I'm all for it, just put the grim in the stim slot now. I don't think that's what they're going for though or else they'd have said so.

Total Swedecuck Death.

So... Gas Rat 2.0 and a whole raft of useless cosmetic shit?
One job, Fatshark. One fucking job.

 

[Asian tech support]

Update is bland. Loads of recolored cosmetics with a few new things here and there. The gas rat bomber isn't much of a threat and the mission modifier doesn't spawn that much.
Scavenger got the mother of all nerfs. It now has a 5 second internal cooldown. Most of ogryn's toughness replenishment kit got nerfed as did momentum but pretty much everything else got a buff. Heavy weapons guy ogryn might be viable in auric maelstrom now.

 

[Asian tech support]

A week in and the survivalist nerf is truly felt. It's still the best vet aura but that's only because the other two are shit. 5% damage and 5% movement speed might as well not exist.
I've come up with a couple alternatives for each:

• Increase Survivalist's ammo granted from 1% to 5% while keeping the cooldown or have a small ammo pack drop every 5-8 elites/specials killed by team within coherency without a cooldown.
• Make Fire Team give an additional 10% weak spot damage on top of the 5% damage.
• Crank Close and Kill up to 10% movement speed and add 20% dodge distance on top of that.

Survivalist currently is too unreliable on auric where you get packs of 20+ elites and specials. Even though they're tankier and in greater numbers, a coordinated squad can wipe a pack in seconds, resulting in less than 1/10th the ammo survivalist previously provided. Ammo is always useful but the change gives it an inversely proportional impact alongside increasing skill, coordination, and difficulty. If nothing else, it should reward skillful, expedient play.

The other two are just whatever. As they are now, 5% damage doesn't pop any important breakpoints and 5% movement speed is insulting. The proposed changes fit nicely into dedicated marksman and cqc archetypes. 10%ms + 20% dodge distance on top of Weapons Specialist? Now we're talking.

The other issue is that the nodes leading to the non-Survivalist auras are hot shite.

• Grenade tinkerer is good but 1) frag nades are used for the stun, not the damage, and it has a big radius already, 2) smoke nades are bad, even if you can make them have 50% uptime, and 3) dedicated nade builds aren't good and until krak nades get some kind of aue buff, this doesn't solve the inherent issues around them.
• Covering Fire's duration is crap. This should be a perk to take with Weapons Specialist but it's too limiting to consistently apply to yourself while also remaining in coherency.
• Serrated Blade is one of the worst talents in the game. 1 stack of bleed is fucking nothing.
• Agile Engagement is really good but overkill, far away from Survivalist, and under smoke nades. Put this next to covering fire.

The nerf I think showcased how very limited vet builds are and how awkward the off meta is.

• Infiltrate is an awful ability and needs to many nodes to be useful. It should have the damage bonus and threat reduction built in.
• Marksman's Focus is really really hard to use to its full effectiveness while also not playing like a retard.
• People who think 10% rending is good when the plasma gun exists should be forced to watch an entire jewtube playlist about how rending and brittleness work and why it's an awful node.

And the last thing is how Survivalist dumpstered a ton of weapons' ammo economy. The plasma gun was largely unaffected as it's highly ammo efficient but autoguns got hit and revolvers are practically unusable. The revolvers already only got one round back and now we're talking about receiving close to 1/20th of the ammo we used to.

 

[🔪Cold Steel Brand Rep🔪]

Are KF users anything other than Vet mains? I get how it's objectively the strongest class in the game, but I play Zealot so I can do all the stupid shit I want and be rewarded for it, it really just seems like the whole Darktide community is stunted when it comes to games that allow for freedom of play like that. At the tail end of my grind for my Espionage frame I was using Shroudfield to dip out and solo an entire Malice mission by completing the objectives on my own, and the thing that struck me the most was people just getting frustrated and leaving like I was singlehandedly ruining the game for them like mobs weren't spawning on me instead. Is the 4th person in coherence that important? Do you care that the Throneside elevator is there by the time you reach the room? "Hell no, you're supposed to play the optimal way because that's what I build around" is just such an unusual mindset to me.

 

[Asian tech support]

it really just seems like the whole Darktide community is stunted when it comes to games that allow for freedom of play like that.

"Hell no, you're supposed to play the optimal way because that's what I build around" is just such an unusual mindset to me.

In VT circles, there's a meme about all the tryhard build policing faggots being stuck in legend lobbies as they're too shit to play in cata+. The skill ceiling in DT is arguably lower and while the amount of shitters goes down once you start queuing in auric, they're still there. While I was still getting acquainted with the finer mechanics, I just muted all chat as I didn't need someone who had less hours than me telling me how I should play.

A lot of DT's mechanics are course corrections from VT. Because some of these mechanics play out in certain ways, it reinforces the idea in some of these goober's minds that they have to enforce what they think is correct. Example: coherency. Coherency is a dogshit mechanic that is both a poorly implemented holdover from the tabletop and an answer to a problem that didn't really exist, that problem being the proverbial handmaiden main that runs ahead aggroing everything, only to die and abandon. It wasn't really an issue in high tier VT and was also overstated by galaxy brained redditors. Coherency is the game's way of punishing the player should they stray away from the group. They should have simply used positive reinforcement (perhaps auras that increase in potency once the player is within a certain radius of other players) instead of negative reinforcement (tying passive toughness regeneration to proximity of others). This not only discourages expedient players from scouring the map for resources but also heavily gimps clutch plays. I can understand how bad players would be antsy about people going against the "intended" way of playing but drawing attention to it is a sure sign of a shitter.

 

[🔪Cold Steel Brand Rep🔪]

Quote replies?

First paragraph, shitters be damned, shitters are the worst part of any game.

Second paragraph, coherency is a genuinely impressive mechanic when it comes to the idea of a multiplayer game in general, especially an FPS. The coherency mechanics in the higher difficulties can mean life-or-death, and there aren't many multiplayer games that attempt to force team cohesion through relatively organic means these days.

My hangup is how people can get stuck on games for reasons other than how it's fun to kill lots of things with a big stick after work sometimes. It's almost like there's an imaginary skill gap that people really hate.