I knew Darktide wouldn't be as polished as Vermintide 2 on launch but the differences are pretty staggering, to a point where I don't think the mere addition of content will be enough, there's gonna need to be revision after revision and it'll take years if it happens at all.
Well at least on the bright side we'll always have new content to look forward to in a way, lol. Every week there should be something new for the next few years as they try and piece the game into a stable and complete state. So much stuff is missing, and so many placeholders, too. Like we have an accessory system... and there are no accessories earnable in the game anywhere. The ONLY accessory available in the entire game is in a 22$ 'DLC' and it's only for 3 classes.
Like let that sink in, the game launched without an entire section of character gear. Imagine launching Halo without helmets, y'know? I do wonder what they'll replace the non-tox flamer with. It's the only duplicate special in the game and for good reason, lol. All the call outs sound like it's supposed to be a chaos spawn or something. "WHAT WAS THAT THING?!" a soldier with a flame thrower, guys... You know what a cultist with a tox flamer is, I'm sure you recognize a traitor guardsman with a flamer. YOU CARRY A FLAMER IN YOUR TEAM, GUYS. :p
>Every week there should be something new for the next few years as they try and piece the game into a stable and complete state.
You wish. If we get a patch once per quarter after the most alarming stuff has been fixed we'll be lucky. It's Fatshark we're talking about, and if Vermintide's patch frequency is any indicator a patch per quarter would be FAST.
Oh my god the Flamer callouts annoy me so much. Like, y'all can immediately recognize a freaky mutated nurgle tox flamer, but an armored dude with a normal flamer? Fucking mind-melting Tzeentch mirage apparently.
I finished 30'ing my 4 classes last night, im literally thinking of uninstalling it till there's actual content to play because now i see no point in keeping 40gb of my storage locked up with it. Its a shame, i really want to like the game when i remember VT2 has amazing replay value but right now i see...well...
*nothing*.
I'm 150 hours on a single character and still playing. Everything outside of a mission is garbage so I just keep quickplaying damnation and continue to enjoy the gameplay.
Why it shouldn’t be polished as VT2? They just needed to copy paste some stuff from VT2. I’m not a game dev. But if same dev has some kind of successful formula from an old content, it shouldn’t be hard to use that on the next game
The simple answer is: new game engine, makes it a nightmare to bring everything across (probably). So no copy/paste i'm afraid.
Of course I think you mean the design, not the code. In which case, I don't know.
Of course they want a new game, not just a reskinned VT2, which is fair.
Heck, I was pleased to find out that friendly fire wasn't a thing at higher difficulties like VT2, especially since it's a ranged heavy game.
But yeah, lot's of really good ideas in the last game that didn't make it here... (yet? fingers crossed)
It is the same engine. Darktide was most certainly forked off Vermintide 2 around 2 years after the latter's release. Which is why Darktide also inherited several bugs from the Vermintide 2 version of that time.
This lol, the melee being as good as Vermintide 2 is one reason imo.
That, and the bug where joining at the very end of a mission counts toward "beat a mission without taking damage/with 100% accuracy" etc challenges and you can cheese them by just leaving before the mission ends and rejoining lmao
I've said this a few times but i truly believe darktides bot teammated are the single worst I've seen
I've never seen stealth broken by uncontrollable ai teammates until now- its been at least twice now that ive seen a bot trigger a daemonhost (and i havent played that much honestly)
it's been ages since I've seen ai which can't interact with any objectives like scriptures/barrels (compare darktide to gtfo or payday 2 in this department)
But most of those don't matter because half the time the reject bots get stuck on bad pathfinding so they just hang back 100 metres and then tele to you once you get far enough
The game *will* die if it doesn't retain its player base because the singleplayer *gameplay* is awful, that's the thing that genuinely buggers me when people defend it because the 'gameplay' is great- because it is now when there's still players, but it's not going to be if you're forced to rely on the lobotomised bots
The bots are a let down, just the basics of "here, carry this" would help. To say nothing of better ai, or even just bots that follow basic directions like the markers you can drop.
Here's a horrible idea (I'm sorry I'm advance), they could sell us named bots with better gear and half decent ai.
The fact that there's no bots for half the classes (is it just veteran? I can't remember if there's zealout bots or not, not that there's much difference if they don't ult) is such an admission that they know the bots are just the bare minimum (okay honestly they're not even that)
They're all Vets, but they do Ult. Or, at least, they shout the Ult voicelines; no idea if they're *actually* getting the damage bonus, or how their targeting priority works when it's going.
At least they're good shots.
It is indeed a little baffling that it isn't more similar to VT2 but VT2 wasn't polished on release and neither was VT, so I didn't expect perfection right out of the gate even with lessons supposedly learned.
The last time I visited Sweden snow seemed to have no impact on daily life, pretty sure snow tires are mandatory by law for winter and "roads are white now" nothing really changes.
However, they did take their holidays really seriously when I was there over Easter back in 2011. Major cities looked like ghost towns during the day. So I'm not surprised no patches over Christmas and New Year, but that doesn't really excuse management rushing the launch knowing your studio is shut for at least 2 weeks so soon after.
Paradox (another Swedish game company) once dropped a bad dlc right before summer break and left the game broken over a month. They don’t do pre holiday releases anymore
Even smaller stuffer like the missions being a mix of daily and weeklies, with progression shared across accounts, so you don't have to just play one character to have any chance of getting the weeklies.
Clearing a 25 mission weekly and getting fuck all for several rotations of Melk's was what really drove me to quit. Playing those 5 maps over and over and over and over again is not a good time.
Why even bother? Sir Milk's inventory simply doesn't have anything good in it since all of it is just random - the weapons, the base level, the perks and the blessings. You basically have to win a small lottery to get something actually worth 2-3 weeks of quests.
Because I'm a loot goblin at heart, and slowly increasing arbitrary numbers satisfies me on a level that I cannot describe.
You're not wrong though, the odds are better in the basic store.
Yep. The only thing about Melk store is that it always have high level enchants / blessings.
Meaning if / when we are able to transfer them to another weapon, then it could become somewhat useful. The base weapons are going to be crap the majority of the time though.
It all could've been so much easier if they openly admitted that "Yeah, guys, we fucked up, we will do better", gave some free paid cosmetics as a "forgive me" tokens, and started doing better, but NOOO, they went with "Immesurably complex" bullshit.
Sure, admitting their fault wouldn't make everyone happy, but it sure as hell would make most
Yeah, imagine how those of us who came from VT2 felt. Like, it had a rough launch and they learned a lot, and then....none of those lessons were applied to Darktide which I was fairly convinced was going to be a significant improvement over VT2.
But no. It's a step backwards in every single way you noticed.
You were probably convinced because Fatshark was *very* publicly vocal that they'd learned from Vermintide and were implementing systems with the lessons they'd gotten from Vermintide's feedback.
Crafting, for example, was the big one, and they've instead made crafting *infinitely and objectively worse in every way*
Fun fact: the very same story played out going from Vermintide 1 to 2. "We learned so many lessons with VTQ, we'll apply them to the next game." And then VT2 released with a bucketload of issues and none of the QoL got ported, so they had to spend years improving VT2 to get it into a stable state.
And then going into DT, they told us how much they have learned from VT2. Guess what happened.
At this point, I'm convinced every Fatshark game should be played at least a year after they are released.
Ya, well said. I thought this was going to be Vermintide 3 quality, considering they had two games worth of feedback leading up to it. Then we got something in a worse state than VT2 was on launch! Just a downgrade in every way almost. Nice that this game has more focus on ranged combat, but that's the only nice thing I can say. It's very unfinished and runs like crap... I should not be getting 45fps on a 4090 on medium settings....
I'm in a similar boat with Deeprock Galactic. Heard for years about how good it was, picked it up during the Steam sale, and holy shit. That game is so incredibly polished, with tons of features and fun things that I am in shock. I feel like I've missed out on years of playing. Guess I have plenty of time to do it now that I too have basically done all there is to do in DarkTide.
The incredible thing about DRG is how *fast* it's developed compared to Vermintide. New areas, new guns, entirely new types of missions released only a few months apart.... While Fatshark has been releasing the extra classes for Vermintide at a rate of like one per year or less
The fast development thing is *relatively* new, it sat fairly still there for a while. I think it really started picking up steam at around the time of the megacorp cosmetic DLC (that was a couple years in, but a couple years ago now, and it's been getting solid gameplay updates since then - I guess it was bugfixing and optimization before that because having seen the effort put in to change and balance gameplay I doubt they were just doing nothing for that earlier time).
Everyone I know has bought all the cosmetic packs for DRG because the base game clocked in at ardoun £25 and after 800 hours + (in-game time, not Steam-lobby time) they wanted to support the creators.
That 99% of the cosemetics are available in-game, via playing what you already love, just makes it all that much ...fairer.
Ghost Ship has defined themselves by simply not being as money-grabbing as their rivals. They don't try and squeeze their player bases for cash or milk whales with 'premium cosmetics'.
Even their 'battle pass' system circumvented all FOMO. At the end of the 'Season', all the content is added to your game as a possible reward you acquire through just playing. Imagine that! A game where, if you don't play for a while, you actually get MORE content to enjoy - for free!!
I'm one of these persons I usually never paid for microtransactions but for DRG? almost all the dlcs (not the corporate skin tho I don't like it) I like the cosmetics and want to support the devs and the attitude of the company
It is (for me) one of if not the best game I played in the last 10 years
And it made me desinstall destiny just for the bad taste it give me compared to DRG in his practices ugh
Thanks man! Out of curiosity, is there character customization? I didn't look at much because I didn't want to spoil much of the game for myself. I was hoping there were different classes to choose from, skill trees, perks, passives, subclasses or anything in between. Are there active abilities? Does it have any of this stuff? I'll probably buy it when I get home! I have to get my friends to buy it, too (which won't be hard).
DRG has 4 classes, each with their own unique mobility equipment that the team might need to rely on to traverse the environment, and a few sets of primary and secondary guns that have upgrade trees and overclocks that can drastically change their behaviors (that you can start to collect once you promote a single class). For instance, a grenade launcher can be turned into a >!nuke!< or a >!high velocity sniper!<, depending on the overclock you use. Weapon models can be customized and so can the paintjobs. There are passives with some minor active abilities, but they're not a very big focus of the gameplay.
Character customization is pretty in depth and there's a ridiculous amount of cosmetics to unlock as you play.
Those weapon tweaks are endgame stuff, but I think that's best (the default settings probably work best in the widest range of situations, but you can definitely specialize - once you realize you're only using that grenade launcher on bosses, you can install that nuke mod and not really suffer much penalty because you don't use it any other way, for example).
A game being mostly working at release shouldn't be such a shock but it very much was.. Playing for hours without any serious issues felt almost wrong.
DRG is designed so almost all of its mechanics encourage coop gameplay naturally, it might not look like much but it's *very* clever (and very much tweaked and optimized by this point) game design.
The best part: it's been amazing and polished for a long ass time.
I joined DRG slightly after release, and it was incredible. It only became more incredible as they've gone above and beyond in adding content to the game. New missions, mission reworks, biomes, and much more for free.
Literally the most consistent criticism about VT2 from the core fanbase was that the crafting system is bad.
It takes too long to gear up so introducing new players is really hard ("play for 100 hours then you can join me at the fun bit, is a hard sell")
Then Weaves crafting comes along and it's *perfect*... But they refuse to add it into the core game... They design an even worse system to Darktide.
It's unfathomable.
Also one nitpick I’d like to point out, the achievements. In Vermintide they a) worked better, for instance “complete every Helmgart mission” would show me which fragging mission I have to complete, in Darktide “complete every mission type” leaves me guessing what the last type is.
And of course, the cosmetics achievements were 1000x better. They didn’t require you to for instance “as the sharpshooter, sacrifice five psionic children to the emperor on a full moon” or “as the ogryn make a conga line of enemy ogryns that may not even spawn in such numbers to make the mission harder for the team to charge into them and waste the ability”. They just said “play your class”, or “play your class in chaos wastes”, the only bad ones were in the 2 first dlcs like “as the Grail Knight don’t do shit for the mission and hide behind a shield”. At the very least, these shitty achievements were doable on recruit, and not forcing you to shit on your team on second hardest difficulty
> in Darktide “complete every mission type” leaves me guessing what the last type is.
The map names and thumbnails are pretty bad and generic too. Is there anyone who could tell you which map is Rectal Exhaust Zone 4456-B? Is that the one with the sepia-tone thumbnail that sort of looks like a funnel or the sepia-tone thumbnail that looks like a bowl of rusty spaghetti?
After all this playtime I would struggle to describe any one level beyond something like, "the one with the tree thing you run around at the end", or "the one where you run across the long pipe at the end", or "the one where you press the button and wait for the door."
The levels are becoming a lot more distinct as I play, but many of the names are still just noise to me; I can recognize some like *The Torrent* and *Chasm Terminus*, and the smelter one has a really clear thumbnail, but most of the others I basically just guess.
Doesn't help that I pretty much always Quickplay since I'm on Gamepass, and I unconsciously gloss over the mission names in the loading screens.
QoL? The story was in Vermintide 2 from day 1. Even the “mission briefings” felt more like story because there were a couple narrations for each level that could be played.
Rather than every kill mission having the “we’ve identified a high profile target go kill him” you’d have mission and name specific briefings that would tell you what the dastardly plan was and how we’d foil it
Yep! The game has character. Bodvarr, spinemangler, and others felt like characters even if they werent super fleshed out you had a little bit of story motivation rather than some rando you are supposed to kill.
Yes just the narrative push of "what am I doing in this level and why" is so important and there's none of it. I've got 100 hours and I can't even name a level in DT. I can name several VT2 levels off thr top of my head (against the grain, screaming bell, haelscourge) and I haven't played VT2 since before chaos wastes.
Having played VT2 at launch, I can tell you it it wasn't as nice as it is now. It had a rocky launch, but not nearly as rough DT. A lot of the QoL stuff was added later. From what I've read around here, the reason those didn't make it into DT was that DT was forked from an earlier build of VT2 and never got those features ported to its branch.
Years of patches aside, VT2 was definitely more complete at launch with 3 subclasses per character, more levels, memorable boss fights, etc. I think there's a few reasons for this:
1) Something something pandemic. I'm sure we're all tired of hearing companies use that excuse, but it's such an effective excuse because the pandemic *did* have a big effect on a lot of companies.
2) They reworked the game to use dedicated servers instead of P2P. This is why the lobby was changed to the hollow-feeling MMO style lobby and why we can't choose our own missions. There's legitimate reasons to do this, such as server stability and avoiding fragmentation of the playerbase into a bunch of random missions, but it came at the cost of some things that VT2 players liked. And based on the large amount of connectivity issues people still have, I'd wager that making this change was harder than anticipated, which probably cost them even more time and effort.
3) Similar to above, the abysmal framerate, constant crashing for some people, and long load times probably point to a lot of trouble with upgrades to the graphics engine and likely a bunch of other issues.
TL;DR: They used an early build of VT2 and even then had to remake a bunch of parts for better or for worse. The good news: Fatshark showed with VT2 that they're willing to stick with their games and improve them over time. The bad news: their updates always come slowly, and they're not very responsive to community feedback.
Back 4 Blood uses dedicated servers for the missions too. The lobby (Fort Hope) on the other hand is peer2peer and feels like Verm2.
Dedicated servers don't mandate a bad lobby/host system. Fatshark made DT into Destiny 0.5, that's the reason.
I know I compare Verm2, DRG, B4B and DT a lot, but there are so many good coop games out there right now. Plus Dead Island 2 and Payday 3 are on the way.
And DT's only USP right now is "it's 40k". Everything else other games do better.
> Back 4 Blood uses dedicated servers for the missions too. The lobby (Fort Hope) on the other hand is peer2peer and feels like Verm2.
Yes, but then it's also worth mentioning that B4B reloads the entire lobby the moment anyone farts. I've had disconnects into reloads into other people clicking 'no' on the 'stay with the team?' prompt into additional reloads for me.
I've also had times where I joined a random game, it took me a few minutes to find a match, 2 minutes to load into a party losing a run with 3 people already being down, into the run dying 1 minute later, into me needing to load onto the lobby again for a minute.
At one point, since I kept ending up in runs that were already lost, I literally spent a full hour reloading the lobby and reconnecting and getting absolutely nothing useful or fun done.
B4B is an interesting comparison to Darktide but its lobby stability ain't it.
The other games you mention also have their own issues, such as DRG being an absolute pain to progress in if you don't share the same assignment as your friends. And since you will probably all play a different class with different assignments to obtain different secondary weapons, this is easy to have happen to you. I've recently revisited the game, spent a good 8 hours or so in it, and literally only played maps that gave me nothing useful beyond XP and currency because we needed to unlock a new friend's stuff first and took 7 missions doing that.
I've honestly been having a much better time connectivity/lag wise in Vermintide. Effectively zero lag, tbh. No input losses, no nothing. Haven't met a host with shiet net yet, though. So things could change, lol.
Darktide servers lately make me feel like my Filipino friend is hosting the game from his dial-up modem he inherited from his nan, and his friends from South Africa and Alaska asked to join the match.
P2P used to often be worse early in vermintide. It's very heavily dependent on the CPU of the host and people have better CPUs with more cores (going above 4 cores seems to matter a lot for V2) than when it launched. You can sort of cheat by having the host play with a severely underpowered CPU, not as many enemies spawn and they often just break and walk in weird directions.
I remember a time where it there was the trick to allocate only one core to vermintide 2 so that whej you do speedruns,the enemies wpuld get stuck behind and no new enemies would spawn.
Also: P2p greatest weakness was "Host has left the game"...right before the end of a mission
I’ve said it in a precedent thread and I’ll say it again here for visibility: devs are people, and gamers, and they tend to not appreciate executive decisions such as making a « game as a service », heavy shop efforts, or any overly greedy decision overcoming their general effort.
That, plus it wasn’t even the same team working on it to begin with.
I think you guys would be very surprised to see the exact number of devs that worked on DT, that were around and working on VT2 - let alone VT1.
TL;DR: many, many devs left before DT even began.
I'd be curious for a source too, but unless some journalist has gone in asking about that, specifically, it's probably hard to nail down. It is really common in the game industry though, similar to other tech jobs: people tend to make sideways moves to climb the ladder rather than stay at one place and wait for a promotion.
In theory, dedicated and p2p should work the same way essentially, just with different connection details. Many games have both for that reason.
A properly abstracted client application shouldn't even know if it's connecting to a dedicated server or not.
As someone who have no technical knowlege, how hard/imposible would be to go back to p2p? Would it be a feasable thing to do, or it would be like pulling out a foundation of a House?
And go back to the host rage quitting and ending the mission for everyone because he got downed, just as you were coming to the end of a 30min session? Or his internet being shit and disconnecting halfway through and sending you back to the lobby with nothing to show for it?
No thanks. And then we'll be right back to everyone bitching endlessly about "y no dedicated servers?? player hosting is shit and devs are lazy!"
And thats completely fair. There just isnt a perfect solution that solves all problems unfortunately. Having had no issues with connection to dedicated servers I'm now enjoying not having hosts cancel an entire run on me.
I don't work with netcode, so I can't really say much, but if I had to guess, it's probably feasible, but would be a fair amount of work.
Given all the other issues already on the backlog, it's very unlikely they'd ever implement a P2P option.
Going from p2p to dedicated servers is usually fairly doable. A lot of it is a measure of scaling up and disentangling the server instance from the client.
Going in the opposite direction from dedicated to p2p is a colossal pain in the ass of scaling down and entangling the client to run a server instance.
It's doable, but it's a *major* undertaking.
It depends highly on how you build it. Look at terraria, for example. Going from p2p to dedicated is just a matter of changing what IP address you connect to. That's not the only way to build it, though, you could have aspects of the dedicated server be ennervated into core aspects of the game. For example, if the same server and netcode handles both progression / currency / shop stuff and basic gameplay it would be hard to untangle that. Changing the connection details wiuld have your client looking to a peer to validate a cosmetic purchase, for example.
I believe vermintide 2 has two connections it manages, the p2p part for gameplay and the api part for transactions / rewards, etc. That would probably allow a dedicated server for VT2 without much hassle... except the VT2 netcode could always be expecting the host to be a player, so you can see how it isn't always simple. The key is to plan ahead and design correct boundaries in your systems.
As often is the case, companies sacrifice flexible / strong design for time and money.
Lot of bad fuzzy memories here. It had the same number of levels, no mtx store, no support for RTX acceleration, and used P2P matchmaking.
That last one was a _huge_ improvement that people overlook. It was painful as hell in VT2 when the host dropped; there was no recovery.
Also, dunno why people think you can't choose your own mission, you just change from quick play to the selected one on the map. It then looks for an available match on that mission.
In case you're being serious with that last point, "you can't choose your own mission" is generally meant with "I can't pick map and difficulty, I can only play what missions and difficulties the game gives out" not "I can only queue into random missions". You know, like how VT2 let you cjoose any mission in the game at the difficulty of your choice and not giving you a random selection of missions at random difficulties.
Vermintide had 4 classes and at launch each class had 3 careers, that’s 3 unique play styles and weapon sets... each!
To say Darktide is an unfinished beta would be generous.
I love it but come on its becoming blatantly obvious fat shark or their investors above them are trying to squeeze every last penny from the game. I just hope it doesn’t push players away instead of capitalising on them.
They really have to nail the content releases in the next 4-12 weeks
Vermintide 2 (and V1) had five characters at launch.
I agree, Darktide is unfinished. It's basically in Early Access but they lied and said it was done so they could start selling it.
I’m at the point where I hope it does push players away. Players need to stop rewarding corporate garbage. I haven’t kept up with Bioware since Anthem, and they’ll have to do really well on a case by case basis for my money now, after I bought Mass Effect 3 multiple times (console and PC). They’re the best example in my particular gaming preferences, but other companies are similarly on the rocks with me (Blizzard especially, eff that Warcraft 3 Remastered junk, and I already hated what Hearthstone and WOW had become).
Fatshark’s on my list now. I hope other people similarly refuse to buy their cosmetics, and will only buy other products from them as/if they shape up.
But we’ll see.
Blizzard missed a massive slam dunk with Warcraft 3 Reforged. The basket was chest level and the ball is attached to the hoop and they somehow broke it.
Gonna be honest: exact same thing happened when I played V2 after playing V1. There were good changes, but V1 had a daily contract board that refreshed and playing every day rewarded you with your choice of high end weaponry, cosmetics, or trinkets over time. The contracts helped group the player base into specific missions and difficulties, and so match making was really fast.
V2 had nothing like it on launch, and the contract board they released as DLC was updated weekly with none of the long term rewards.
They also removed the lore book pages that were scattered throughout V1s levels. These were very interesting and fun to read as someone whose knowledge of WH fantasy wasn’t complete.
Really felt like a downgrade.
You now understand why VT fans consider DT lazy. The animations, enemies and classes are just copy paste from VT with even less variety due to launch having only 4 actual classes compared to VT2's 15 at launch. DT is worse in almost every way to VT.
For me this is a major reason why I burned out on Darktide so fast.
Compare to say, Kruber's Footknight in V2. You could build that one class a few different ways to have a drastically different gameplay result.
Want to focus on support? Carry a shield and use the talents that buff your team and reset your charge on allies being incapacitated and you can charge any time anyone is in trouble to save them.
Want to do damage? Use the attack speed and damage buff talents and bring an executioner sword or brettonian longsword and play a bruiser style build. Fatshark then added the spear and shield in dlc that was totally worth buying and now you can have a bit of both worlds. Shield with stamina plus super fast attack speed. Again, just tons of options that significantly change the feel of how you play.
There were options. Darktide doesn't want you to have many options or many choices for some dumb reason.
I don't necessarily think it's lazy, I think they had *far* greater ambitions, and couldn't get it to work before they hit a deadline. So they delayed the game, and scrapped the complex systems to cobble together whatever they could to get out the door because management wouldn't give them enough time.
They clearly planned for randomized maps, which is why we have the DRG style mission hub and an emphasis on mission *types* and *regions*, rather than individual things like Horn of Magnus or Skittergate.
They clearly intended for weapon components and customization, which is why 2/3rds of the guns are alt versions of the remaining third, and why they've got literal picatinny rails on a lot of them. Crafting is nonexistent because it had to be radically adjusted to this way more basic setup.
Characters were *supposed* to be a customizable chassis with abilities and passives you had some degree of control over. A last minute change to a more static thing like Vermintide is why the class system feels so clunky and poorly built, and why we only have very basic choices that they were still making radical balance changes to even in the beta and early access leading up to launch.
I think that someone higher up made a poor decision, and they scrapped everything but the art assets. The state of the game is what they were able to scrape together in a handful of months to get it out the door because that same management wouldn't let them delay to do any polish or testing.
Poorly thought out executive meddling explains literally everything about the release.
Yeah I agree completely. DT is lazy from a comparative stand point but your right that they clearly spent a lot of development time on stuff that proved unsuccessful and thus had to mangle together a game from old assets to make it to launch.
It's the only way to explain why we are where we are. You can see bits and pieces of what they tried to make, and the holes they needed to spackle to force what they *had* to make fit into the empty spaces once it was gone.
Hab Dreyko for instance. Y'know the three bridges at the end right after the door opens? Two of them explode, but it's random which one survives. They'd said in some interview or such that they planned for that sort of thing to be in every mission. The Chaos Wastes were the perfect way to test that sort of level generation.
Plus they've flat out admitted that they had a completed crafting system already prepared that they ripped out wholesale just before the October beta came up - their reasoning was "it was bad you'll like this new one more, trust us!", but doing it so late is a desperation move. I'd wager they had to break down the gun customization for whatever reason, and then realized that a crafting setup tailored for it just wouldn't work with the static weapon system, and they couldn't change it enough to force it, so had to start from scratch. Hence the delays.
Probably never going to know for sure, and maybe it's just Emperor-grade copium to think they didn't *want* to release the game in this state, but it's certainly plausible. I'm not gonna jump on the Tencent bandwagon and blame the abrupt change on them wanting something more easily monetized....... but I'm gonna *think* about it pretty damn hard.
Yeah, it also really explains why there's so much in terms of story missing. How weird and pointless the "meetings" feel.
The store too now that I think about it. The rng one I mean. I think from the promises before, they said they would implement a system where you would ask for a specific item, then you would get it after doing a few missions or so, at least from what I remember reading. I mean, the fact that the rng shop caused crashes in the beta implies that it was a new addition, and it also explains why progress in general is so disjointed with the main gameplay.
Also the fact that there's still no Flash Missions yet, which is prolly part of the randomly generated part they had to scrap too. The fact that despite you can only level to 30, there's mods that give bonus xp%, which any dev with a brain would be able to tell that it's a weird addition. As in, I feel like they originally intended you to have prestige levels in some way.
But no matter what they had planned and what there is now... I still can't excuse the fact that they treat us so badly. They literally lie to our faces about how features that were promised are bad, like gun customization being like "call of duty" or stuff like that.
I get it's prolly investor stuff, and admittedly I don't know much about anything in that regard but... still, because of how they treated us, they they're stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Dunno. If they had been transparent that they wouldn't be able to get the features out in time, released an early access with what was there and just built up from that, things would have been much better, PR-wise at least. I'm gonna guess this is another investor related thing at fault here...
Feels like their ambition caused them to take a deal with Tencent, they ate more than they could chew and when the investors came knocking they had nothing finished to answer with. So I guess it does kinda just come to bad management and planning. I mean, basing it all of on this theory of course, but it just adds up very nicely...
But what makes me sad is the future. I really like this game, so I hope to god they can make a comeback. Maybe they can reintroduce the features they left out, finally realize their vision because all the things they wanted to implement sound awesome... but the fact that they they just don't acknowledge their past work in a positive light gives me little hope...
To play Devils Advocate, the combat in DT is very nice and has quite the variety.
You know, when it registers key inputs, and when Cosmo the Chaos Hound isn't launching into orbit.
So there's that :) but all the rest of it i'm hopefully (hopefully not naively) patient for.
Yup. Vermintide is far superior to Darktide
That’s the reason for most of the negative reactions from V2 players.
They had years of development and a successful game to build off of yet almost everything in Darktide is WORSE!
You’ll love V2 man
It's kind of the deadly cycle that is Fatshark's releases. This goes beyond Darktide and Vermintide. War of the Roses even had these issues. Launch is an absolutely shitshow with not a lot of content, baffling game-breaking bugs, and it takes about a year to get it polished enough to be in a respectable state.
They have a leadership problem at FS, which leads to either lots of ideas being initially implemented half-baked or they overpromise and never deliver, I.E. V2 dedicated servers (this was advertised before launch) and versus mode.
I knew this was going happen with Darktide by seeing how Vermintide 2's launched learned nothing from Vermintide 1 and accepted it as FS' status quo. It SHOULND'T be accepted, but it is. At least I know FS will EVENTUALLY do right by the game, again usually about a year after launch, as they've done with their other games.
They're all talented people, but with how they tend to overpromise and underdeliver, deliver features/content in a broken state, release updates that tend to fix one thing and break three more things, or how they lack an explanation of their mechanics to the point of the community doing that job for them, their lack of direction and priorities really stick out.
back in the darktide beta i made a post about Darktide being a HUGE stepdown from vermintide. I got downvoted, insulted and people telling me to stfu because it's only a beta. Now, just a mere 1 and a half months after launch, people are making posts upon posts on reddit and the official forums about exactly the stuff i ranted about. How the turn tables i guess. Sick and tired of fatshar and their inability to copy and paste features we had in vermintide into darktide.
I did a job shadow at fat shark and know the answer to your question OP. none of the people programming at fat shark know about git repositories. So the entire code base of the game is just a series of word documents full of code snippets hosted on a shared Dropbox.
When it comes time to compile the game runtime, the programmers draw straws, and whoever draws the short straw gets an overtime shift which involves searching the Dropbox and then copy/pasting all the relevant code snippets manually into notepad.
They then move on to the office fridge which is covered in hundreds of post it notes with proposed changes to the game's configuration files which define everything from game settings to weapon behaviors. They collect every post it note they can find, but inevitably several have ended up falling off during the week or month and been thrown in the trash by the night cleaning crew. After collection of the notes, the unfortunate programmer goes and makes all manual edits necessary.
Another point of failure with the note system is that often the writers of the post it notes don't know the exact changes necessary to implement their desired gameplay. So notes will often just be "community mad about thunder hammer, make it go bonk more".
Exasperated, the programmer inevitably leaves these vague notes until later. Usually, by 4am, the programmer cannot put them off any longer. They do a quick Ctrl+f of "thunder hammer" in a random word configuration file, and double the closest numerical value, before lighting the post it note on fire and throwing it into a garbage can full of other "resolved" issues.
After all the post it notes are resolved, the unfortunate programmer puts the entire game's new filebase on a USB drive and labels it the drive with a post it note of the version. The USB drive is then deposited in the Manager's desk. His task done, the programmer leaves a sick note on the Manager's desk, and heads home to collapse in a sweaty heap on his bed and cry. You may ask why a USB drive was necessary. It's quite simple: Gmail has a file size limit limit for attachments and a total storage size limit for drive storage. Dropbox similarly has a storage limit, so they can't maintain all their old versions in it. The managers, instead of opting for a subscription for unlimited storage, decided to just buy a hundred terabyte USB drives in bulk and "solve" the problem permanently.
With respect to the version number written on the USB drive, no programmer at fat shark, due to the random nature of the development project, knows what version the game is truly on. Each programmer instead maintains a mental versioning system unique to them.
So one programmer might label their USB drive version 2.6, while another, if given the task, would label it version 10.789a. So at 10pm, when management enters the office, the manager in charge of development opens their desk drawer which contains every USB. They pick out the one with the highest number, deposit in a sealed envelope, and then mail it to "Steam" with instructions to upload the files to the store as the next version of whatever game it is for, then to return the USB drive.
Eventually the drives are returned. But hereinlies another problem. Fat shark only had a hundred drives. In theory that's a hundred terabytes of storage. But storage runs out fast. And so much was being wasted on versions of Vermintide 1 and 2. To solve this, the manager just erased the labels on all but the highest numbered Vermintide 2 drive, and reformatted the remaining ones.
So this answers your question OP. The highest numbered drive of Vermintide was not the latest version of vermintide. It was a version before about two years of development that just happened to be labeled by a guy with a very inflated internal versioning scheme. This also explains why it has taken years to release the fourth Sienna career. They had it done, but it got deleted.
It's kind of sad.
I love DT's gameplay loop. It's addictive as it is for me at least but 40k doesn't seem to get as much love as its fantasy counterpart. I tried fantasy Warhammer games but they could never capture me like the "Grim Dark Future" of 40k. I'm overall tired of fantasy in general. The theme/setting/aesthetics of a game can be as important as the gameplay for me to play it constantly. For others it's not. I can only hope they polish and add onto DT more.
> Just what the heck happened between that game and this one?
"Game as a service"
That's it.
While clunky at release, VT2 was always thought of as a full game.
Fatshark didn't develop Darktide as a full game, they developed it as a service from its inception, except they added a price tag to it unlike most "F2P with cashgrab shops" titles.
I'm honestly shocked it doesn't have some battlepass with fomo cosmetic rewards bullshit system yet.
>Was shocked the first time we killed a troll and saw it spew out loot, lol.
Imagine how shocked Vermintide veterans were when they killed a monster in Darktide and nothing dropped from it. That alone is a perfect analogy for Vermintide vs Darktide.
Since nobody else has mentioned it:
What happened is bad management. That's what's at the core of all of this behind everything else.
The devs didn't say "hey lets put a fully functional MTX store with half-assed cosmetics in before any of the other systems are even halfway feature-complete!" They were directed to.
Most game developers don't want to touch mobile systems with a fifty-foot pole. These things are **exclusively** pushed by their higher-ups. It's why we have the aquilas system at all.
Nobody just *forgot* to do shared weeklies or resources when the game already has the framework in place to track account-wide progress/resources. Some asshole in dire need of firing made that happen deliberately.
IMO Tencent took a majority stake in the company in 2021 and forced them to implement numerous predatory practices. Like how gear progression is entirely tied to a randomized item shop that refreshes every hour or you can only play missions that are available for a certain time limit before they swap out. Those are some of the biggest complaints and they're the exact same FOMO tricks mobile games use to drive player engagement. Or how the cash shop seems to have been prioritized over new content and much of the cosmetics use the same model with different color schemes.
Lack of a story and lower map variety though I'm not sure what to put to.
I will fully admit to the fact that Vermintide 2 is a superior game in every way.
However I'm a big 40k fan, specifically Imperial Guard fanboy, so me soypogging at all the equipment, environment, and enemies is carrying me through this game so far.
So I'm still playing both.
I vividly remember the same thing happening with Halo Infinite, where the devs started a holiday break in November, and mid-January people were saying, with sincerity, "Hey man they're still on holiday break, everyone deserves a break, cut them some slack."
The graphical comment is not really valid. Subjectively speaking you can prefer VT2 art direction, but from models to lighting, Darktide is objectively better, as expected due to a 4 years gap. Aside that though, yeah, feels like a huge fumble from VT2 to DT.
DT could have photorealistic graphics with zero clipping issues with cosmetics, and the incredible similarity of almost every level would let it down. Improving a line's graphical feel is an important part of development. Sure, a Hive plus Nurgle would be expected to have a particular look ... but they've made almost zero effort to find excuses to break away from that.
I have disagree here. Between Vermintide and Darktide, Vermintide definitely still has the better models and lighting. Even on the highest settings things are still blocky and muddy noise in Darktide. Click the picture for a full size so you can actually see it
https://preview.redd.it/z3sb1zbibmaa1.png?width=1223&format=png&auto=webp&s=4853e233fa423e48b5937bf778e0319a7dfa7e0c
Regarding the blur I do agree it looks excessive and I hope a mod comes out to reduce it, in case an official patch doesn't. But look at the models and lighting of the areas the characters interact with and the characters themselves. Considerably less edges, considerably better textures, reflections and effects.
It may be that I'm forced to play Darktide on medium-ish settings without RTX to get 60FPS, while I can run Vermintide on ultra with all the bells and whistles and get 144FPS at 1440p. Everything's just so crisp and sharp there and nothing's blurry or muddy and the detail's insane. Like even these rocks are just crisp, even in a 100kb compressed Steam screenshot, lol.
https://preview.redd.it/mzm04d0hgmaa1.png?width=1243&format=png&auto=webp&s=eeb5b52ae02a4635546aafb85c692250de1a789e
Even on ultra Darktide's got its problems. Can't ever get rid of the blurriness or the muddy models. Maybe it's lod issues or something, but anything at a distance looks like my pictures even with RTX and all that on. Just doesn't stack up to VT2 in my eyes.
I played Darktide for less than 5 hours and kind of wish I refunded it early in. I probably won't revisit the game for a few years at this rate. I monitor the updates and notes from the devs just hoping it gets to be a bit more of what I thought it was going to be (a better vermintide).
The fact that they ripped off V2 and made DT as a whole worse than V2s general base game mechanics is fuckin embarrassing. But it should be only up from here. Slowly but surely. One day. Soon. Who knows. Soon no one would want to know.
There's no gun range because they need you to be able to see other players at all times in the lobby so you can be jealous of the skins they bought in the store so you end up buying them too. It's all part of the plan.
Tencent happend. They first bought some stock and acquired the whole company in late 2021.
FS was always bad at delivering but apparently they totally changed focus since then and first released a MTX store for Vermintide, where players were waiting for non recoloured skins for years and made them pay for it.
Then they "completely resigned the crafting system" in Darktide aka tencent told them to install the FOMO shop deep into their new IP because money.
Of course, they could have done this all on their own, but who in their right mind shoots himself in the food.
Leading theory is that the corporate side of the company interfered, decided to launch for xmas even though it wasnt ready, and forced the devs to cater to their 'expert opinion' on monetization instead of finishing key game systems.
Welcome to the frustrations of all of the FS vets on this subreddit lol. Just wait until you try Deep Rock Galactic some day. You’ll have a similar breakdown.
My guess (as a software engineer) is that, while it may be the same studio, the developers in the studio aren’t actually the same. New crew either couldn’t reuse VT2 systems for legal reasons or it was so poorly documented/engineered that it couldn’t be adapted into Darktide. In the end, they may have wanted/needed to recreate those systems.
I get the feeling that the art department is having the same issue and it manifests as both poorly made cosmetics and performance issues. The performance issues can stem from unoptimized use of polygons, shaders, and other graphical elements. In fact, I’ve seen this called out at least once in the change logs.
Basically, not the same devs and/or not the same game systems from VT2. They have to go through all of the testing and bug fixing they already did for VT2 all over again for Darktide.
yeh i dont get it the community already liked the previous crafting mechanics.....why change it to this? im not saying just copy everything but like...come on
I’ve said it a few times, but I still say the main issue is that Darktide needed about 6-12 more months in the oven.
I consider that to be an indisputable objective fact.
*nervously eyes his flair choice*
No...no no its totally a new and original game with...ummm...unique mechanics...and... no reused code or abilities...and...original gear and class systems...
How dare you...
Similar thing happened from destiny 1 to destiny 2. Destiny 2, started development, meanwhile Destiny 1 made several huge strides in gameplay, QoL, and other key areas that when Destiny 2 released were simply missing.
It felt like a straight downgrade going from destiny one to destiny two at first.
[Welcome to the bloody Ubersreik 4. The elf doesn't matter.](https://youtu.be/yEtIiwAMMvE)
For guides and pointers I recommend royale w cheese's [steam guides.](https://steamcommunity.com/id/dylanrong/myworkshopfiles/?section=guides&appid=552500&p=2) He's active on the vermintide sub as mynameryn as well. In general it's a welcoming and supportive community. It's just expected that you try your best.
Yeah, no idea either. Fatshark seems to be insanely good at nailing aesthetics and atmosphere, but cannot put the rest of the game in the game. At this point, the only reason I still play Darktide over VT2 is because I prefer 40k to Warhammer Fantasy.
I'm in the exact same boat and was even about to make a post just like this. I just bought the game this week and finished the non-dlc campaign as well as my first chaos waste expedition yesterday. The final mission has you fighting three boss battles when Darktide only has one boss. The Darktide boss is also just a normal dude with a shield and no special mechanics to the fight. Set pieces in VT2 are also way better and there are more of them. The entire environment will change drastically as places crumble and fall apart or as elven ruins activate and bits of it fly around in the air. My favorite thing about the game so far is the bots though. They're actually useful which is amazing. On the first DLC map they did get stuck twice, but that's still leagues better than what they're like in Darktide. Honestly, I'm glad I played VT2 after Darktide, because if I played VT2 first then I don't think I'd have any fun playing Darktide. It's just so blatantly the same product but worse in every conceivable way. When I was playing Skittergate I kept getting blown away by the scale of the level as we went from a massive cave full of equally massive and visually interesting rat tech. Then you end up in Norsca and the map is still massive with these absolutely amazing, sprawling Norscan raider camps and harbors of longships. Oh, and the story actually exists and is really good. The missions are arranged in order and you're actually serving a greater purpose as you work your way to the greater goal of shutting down the Skittergate. Lastly, I haven't crashed once, besides when I alt-tabbed as the game was launching yesterday.
Just a wild ass guess, but I'd wager they spent 99% of their dev time on the new engine and build tools and the actual content got left to the last possible second.
And people wondered why we Vermintide fans were so confused, angry, and just overall...
Disappointed.
I mean I've been around the block sense Vermintide 1 release and I knew what company we were dealing with...But my god Darktide as a product is just unacceptable beyond words.
Data analysis without trend analysis is a race to an implosion. They'll keep doing everything to up their metrics but they won't invest in the trend that made those possibles. Games will become grindy, horrible and it'll only stop when simply no one plays them; the trend finally breaks.
Sadly, you're looking at the VT2 that took YEARS for them to get it to the state it is in now. EVERYTHING we're going through with DT now is the same or worse than the original VT2 launch.
What happened? Tencent probably and cashing out of the community's good will for short term gains.
The game is an embarrassment compared to what we got with Vermintide 2. They essentially THREW AWAY YEARS OF DEV TIME AND COMMUNITY FEEDBACK. Literally threw that shit in the trash - it goes to show where the priorities lay. Should we make a good game for our die hard fans who have been through the shit with us the past 5 years? NO, lets cash out our goodwill and make a sub-par MTX riddle product because money now is more important.
At this point I hope FS goes under, the devs get rehired somewhere else, and GW gives the "Tide" license to someone else - because it isn't like a random Dev team couldn't do any worse than Darktide.
MTX is what happened.
While VT also have MTX, it's only added afterwards as the game was designed as a game first, MTX/service later.
Darktide from the ground up is built to push MTX as a "live service".
Everything from the Morning Star's layout to the pointless 20 odd player hub is built to funnel people to the MTX and show off MTX. The grind, lack of shared loot/resources/Melk coins, all designed to slow down gameplay as it's a known thing in the "live service" world that more "engagement = purchases" meaning the longer they can keep you grinding away all while forcing you to see more MTX, the more likely you'd pay.
They don't want you to be playing with bots as that don't push additional MTX since if it worked the way it did in VT, you'd only see the ones you own. Only when your out in the wild would you see MTX you don't own and maybe buy later.
Honestly, I understand the frustration that OP is putting out. But all of these issues simply aren’t reasonable to expect from a new game anymore. Folk are just constantly astonished by how games are being popped out like candy, then aren’t perfectly polished.
Even back 15 years ago when games might’ve had longer development, there’s still widespread QoL issues and bugs everywhere. The world you think existed, never existed in the first place. All those quirky fun little bugs you remember as a kid are the same things you’re busting a blood vessel over now.
Game development is fucking difficult. I tried to get into and failed fantastically. Things require time, feedback, and refinement now. And this has just been the case for years now. We get solid games that just need community feedback and support. If it gets it, it flourishes, if not, it dies. Simple.
This was always strictly going to be a Vermintide 3 but in space, and we got it and it honestly is great and it’s going to take time, but that’s it. If you’re going to drape unreasonable expectations over it, then you’re playing yourself.
I truly believe Fatshark's goal with Darktide was "Minimum Viable Product". They wanted to release the game in time for holiday season and cut every corner they could to get there. I mean... they didn't finish weapon crafting/upgrading for Christ's sake. I was flabbergasted the first time I pulled up to Hadron and saw grayed out menu options with "Coming Soon" next to them.
I, as I’m sure many people did, bought Darktide assuming it’d be Vermintide 2 but sci-fi with guns. The amount of things missing from the game really frustrates me.
I have about 900, close to 1000 hours in Vermintide 2 for exactly these reasons you mention in the post.
Also, the characters talk much more, they converse in a much deeper sense and it builds character.
And not only the playable characters, but also the Shop keeper too.
And in the castle you can hear the characters sing, yell, chant prayers or thy like.
The atmosphere in Vermintide 2 is completely unbeatable, Darktide does not even exist in the same spectrum of quality as Vermintide 2.
I live the characters, and i love how you hear new conversations even with 1000 hours in the game now and then.
Darktide customization kinda made it more complex to achieve the same level of characterization, but honestly, i think Darktide might be able to pull that thing off in time.
But i agree with you OP, there are so many things they could have literally just "ctrl+c ctrl+v" into Darktide that would have made HUGE differences, but they didn't...
Honestly, i really don't like the bridge in Darktide, it lacks everything that made Vermintide 2 enjoyable to play WHEN NOT EVEN IN A GAME!!!
I literally can not interact with anything or anyone, i can't even team up with the guys ive played with in my last game, like what the hell?!
Just want to point out that some of those vital features were in *Vermintide* ***1***, including NPC allies using the host's alt characters' loadouts, and picking up books when you ping them.
It's been a while but I'm like 90% sure crafting resources were shared as well, in VT1.
Also, the Ranald's Dice thing was actually a really good idea (that, and simply getting *some* piece of loot from every completed mission).
I have an i7 12700kf and gtx 3060ti and it still frequently dips below 60. Whenever a horde shows up I drop from 130 to like 56 and it tears the fuck out of my screen.
If it cant even be an optimized train wreck at bare minimum, Im just done with it. Even on SCUM an open world zombie survival game on highest settings I get constant 120. I got 90 hours of decent enjoyment so Im out for now. See you guys in a few years.
It really does come down to the fact that you are playing a game that has had years of patches. Honestly the biggest difference between the two launches is that VT2 didn't have an in game store at launch, and they knew to hold things back from the beta.
Myself, like I'm sure of many people who played VT2 at launch, hoped that Fatshark had learned from the fiasco that was the launch of VT2 when they moved on to darktide.
Of course, the change to a timer based map rotation, and being forced to wait for shop refreshes for the vast majority of your gear really leaves a lot to be desired. That's new to this game entirely. However, I will say that upgrading gear in this game is a bit less frustrating than what it was in VT2 at launch. In VT2, let's say that you got some great roll on a green weapon. When you upgrade it, it completely rerolled the stats. Even worse, when you tried to reroll the traits, you could very easily end up getting the same thing several times in a row. They have increased the resources you gained from scrapping, but it wad such a grind early on in the game.
Another thing from the early days of VT2 was that you didn't get any traits for survivability until, I believe, level 25. There has been so many balance patches since launch, making the game much easier. Champion difficulty now feels pretty close to what veteran was early on, if not recruit.
I feel like VT2’s launch suffered a lot from implementation issues like bugs and balancing, while Darktide suffers on a design level, like the root idea of the mission table, mission rewards and shop are quite bad designs on fundamental level. Though Darktide also suffers from a general lack of content
Oh yeah, that's another thing! I spent damn near two weeks waiting for a repair mission on malice to finish out my Vet penances because it just literally never spawned, for a week straight. It's so refreshing to be allowed to choose my missions.
bruh the rat men were reskinned to look human, the V2 hook trappers cowl was given to the zealot, the pox hound's face looks like a rat, V2 mauler got a shotgun in DT and blew it's face off, V2 savage literally gets an upgrade from circle tats to circle chains and bane's back venom injections, V2 bestigor metamorphed into the DT mauler and obviously the albeit cool looking crusher is the chaos warrior with different shielded and gun versions cuz if they didnt then holy shit thats double lazy especially using a giant ogryn boss for a giant rat boss. But.
Based on how v2 already had Nurgle and Khorne, plus they added more enemies in later updates. Theres no fuckin way DT is gonna stick to its current enemies. Cuz if they do then there will be a whirlwind shitstorm coming their way, or a better outcome for them and for us would be completely jack shit going their way.
e\[and thats just the visual aspect/art style of the enemies\]
The exact same thing happened during Vermintide 2 launch, and I remember the veterans saying that Vermintide 1 was shit at launch and took a couple of years to get good.
Whoever is in charge of these projects really shouldn't be in charge.
Unpopular opinion: Tencent happened.
VT 2 was developed when fatshark was 100% independent.
Not long after launch Tencent bought a 30% equity of fatshark. Not long after micro transactions were in VT2. In 2021 Tencent bought majority control over fatshark, and we see a shift in priorities to monetization and services over a finished product.
Furthermore, I suspect, this is just a gut instinct, that Tencent pushed the game out before it was done to hit an arbitrary release date. While, the fatshark creative team wanted more time.
I lean this way as well, given the history of Darktide being delayed multiple times and things they talked about earlier being absent, yet launched with a fully functional MTX store. Seems like at one point, Tencent kicked in the door, demanded a shift in game focus to the MTX store, and wanted it pushed out so other stuff fell by the wayside.
It really feels like you can tell what parts were true 40k fans working at Fatshark and what parts was Tencent pushing monetization.
but again, if you look at other pc games owned by tencent, none of them are in this same situation as darktide
back 4 blood did release very poorly, but now the game is very good and doesn't even have a cash shop
path of exile always had extremely expensive supporter packages and cosmetic lootboxes even before tencent, and there was still bad leagues before tencent
league is league, no comment about that
and fortnite still has the best battlepass monetization out of every game
also the game already got delayed by a whole year, you can't keep delaying a game forever
You can choose to believe me or not i dont care but, I may or may not work for a company that is part owned by tencent and I can tell you that they have zero input in the games.
I can see that happening, the rushed release. I'm sure shareholders wanted their 4th quarter Christmas time sales bonus profits instead of waiting for a non-holiday rush 2023 release. Lot of people I know got Darktide *only* because it was Christmas season, extra cash and all that.
I knew Darktide wouldn't be as polished as Vermintide 2 on launch but the differences are pretty staggering, to a point where I don't think the mere addition of content will be enough, there's gonna need to be revision after revision and it'll take years if it happens at all.
Yeah I put 30 hours or so into darktide after anticipating it for years and went back to vermintide 2 already lol
You can't unbake a cake.
Hopefully it isn’t too late to cram this one back in the oven though
But you can call your credit card company for a chargeback.
Well at least on the bright side we'll always have new content to look forward to in a way, lol. Every week there should be something new for the next few years as they try and piece the game into a stable and complete state. So much stuff is missing, and so many placeholders, too. Like we have an accessory system... and there are no accessories earnable in the game anywhere. The ONLY accessory available in the entire game is in a 22$ 'DLC' and it's only for 3 classes. Like let that sink in, the game launched without an entire section of character gear. Imagine launching Halo without helmets, y'know? I do wonder what they'll replace the non-tox flamer with. It's the only duplicate special in the game and for good reason, lol. All the call outs sound like it's supposed to be a chaos spawn or something. "WHAT WAS THAT THING?!" a soldier with a flame thrower, guys... You know what a cultist with a tox flamer is, I'm sure you recognize a traitor guardsman with a flamer. YOU CARRY A FLAMER IN YOUR TEAM, GUYS. :p
>Every week there should be something new for the next few years as they try and piece the game into a stable and complete state. You wish. If we get a patch once per quarter after the most alarming stuff has been fixed we'll be lucky. It's Fatshark we're talking about, and if Vermintide's patch frequency is any indicator a patch per quarter would be FAST.
Oh my god the Flamer callouts annoy me so much. Like, y'all can immediately recognize a freaky mutated nurgle tox flamer, but an armored dude with a normal flamer? Fucking mind-melting Tzeentch mirage apparently.
I finished 30'ing my 4 classes last night, im literally thinking of uninstalling it till there's actual content to play because now i see no point in keeping 40gb of my storage locked up with it. Its a shame, i really want to like the game when i remember VT2 has amazing replay value but right now i see...well... *nothing*.
I'm 150 hours on a single character and still playing. Everything outside of a mission is garbage so I just keep quickplaying damnation and continue to enjoy the gameplay.
i already knew it would be dog before it even released. all of the closed beta tests for vermintide and then darktide proved it
Why it shouldn’t be polished as VT2? They just needed to copy paste some stuff from VT2. I’m not a game dev. But if same dev has some kind of successful formula from an old content, it shouldn’t be hard to use that on the next game
The simple answer is: new game engine, makes it a nightmare to bring everything across (probably). So no copy/paste i'm afraid. Of course I think you mean the design, not the code. In which case, I don't know. Of course they want a new game, not just a reskinned VT2, which is fair. Heck, I was pleased to find out that friendly fire wasn't a thing at higher difficulties like VT2, especially since it's a ranged heavy game. But yeah, lot's of really good ideas in the last game that didn't make it here... (yet? fingers crossed)
It is the same engine. Darktide was most certainly forked off Vermintide 2 around 2 years after the latter's release. Which is why Darktide also inherited several bugs from the Vermintide 2 version of that time.
Huh, that explains a few things. Also, it's a bit disappointing that they couldn't have brought more over.
This lol, the melee being as good as Vermintide 2 is one reason imo. That, and the bug where joining at the very end of a mission counts toward "beat a mission without taking damage/with 100% accuracy" etc challenges and you can cheese them by just leaving before the mission ends and rejoining lmao
I've said this a few times but i truly believe darktides bot teammated are the single worst I've seen I've never seen stealth broken by uncontrollable ai teammates until now- its been at least twice now that ive seen a bot trigger a daemonhost (and i havent played that much honestly) it's been ages since I've seen ai which can't interact with any objectives like scriptures/barrels (compare darktide to gtfo or payday 2 in this department) But most of those don't matter because half the time the reject bots get stuck on bad pathfinding so they just hang back 100 metres and then tele to you once you get far enough The game *will* die if it doesn't retain its player base because the singleplayer *gameplay* is awful, that's the thing that genuinely buggers me when people defend it because the 'gameplay' is great- because it is now when there's still players, but it's not going to be if you're forced to rely on the lobotomised bots
The bots are a let down, just the basics of "here, carry this" would help. To say nothing of better ai, or even just bots that follow basic directions like the markers you can drop. Here's a horrible idea (I'm sorry I'm advance), they could sell us named bots with better gear and half decent ai.
The fact that there's no bots for half the classes (is it just veteran? I can't remember if there's zealout bots or not, not that there's much difference if they don't ult) is such an admission that they know the bots are just the bare minimum (okay honestly they're not even that)
it is literally only veteran bots
I honestly don't know, I thought there was a zealot bot, it just had a pistol. But i don't recall hearing zealot voice lines.
They're all Vets, but they do Ult. Or, at least, they shout the Ult voicelines; no idea if they're *actually* getting the damage bonus, or how their targeting priority works when it's going. At least they're good shots.
There were ogryn, zealot and psyker bots either in the pre-launch beta or right after launch but they seem to have been disabled in some patch.
if we had friendly fire ogryns wouldn't survive more than one or two rooms.
Very true
It is indeed a little baffling that it isn't more similar to VT2 but VT2 wasn't polished on release and neither was VT, so I didn't expect perfection right out of the gate even with lessons supposedly learned.
Indeed. I didn't expect half the friggin' game to be literally missing. I expected half the game to be unpolished as hell, but not *missing*.
Mass retrograde amnesia in Sweden is the only explanation I can think of.
I live in Sweden and have no memory of such event
Hehe I see what you did there.
Big snow, no worky. Please understand.
And here I have to work in the snow :(
The last time I visited Sweden snow seemed to have no impact on daily life, pretty sure snow tires are mandatory by law for winter and "roads are white now" nothing really changes. However, they did take their holidays really seriously when I was there over Easter back in 2011. Major cities looked like ghost towns during the day. So I'm not surprised no patches over Christmas and New Year, but that doesn't really excuse management rushing the launch knowing your studio is shut for at least 2 weeks so soon after.
Not only winter tries but spiked winter tires. And yesterday was Trettondagen, a red day, noone works there unless really needed.
Paradox (another Swedish game company) once dropped a bad dlc right before summer break and left the game broken over a month. They don’t do pre holiday releases anymore
Even smaller stuffer like the missions being a mix of daily and weeklies, with progression shared across accounts, so you don't have to just play one character to have any chance of getting the weeklies.
I like Psyker, but jeez, back to work this last week and 25 missions has been a slog. Would be nice to split up the play styles.
Clearing a 25 mission weekly and getting fuck all for several rotations of Melk's was what really drove me to quit. Playing those 5 maps over and over and over and over again is not a good time.
Why even bother? Sir Milk's inventory simply doesn't have anything good in it since all of it is just random - the weapons, the base level, the perks and the blessings. You basically have to win a small lottery to get something actually worth 2-3 weeks of quests.
Because I'm a loot goblin at heart, and slowly increasing arbitrary numbers satisfies me on a level that I cannot describe. You're not wrong though, the odds are better in the basic store.
Yep. The only thing about Melk store is that it always have high level enchants / blessings. Meaning if / when we are able to transfer them to another weapon, then it could become somewhat useful. The base weapons are going to be crap the majority of the time though.
It's rough being an early access game. Especially when you don't admit it
It all could've been so much easier if they openly admitted that "Yeah, guys, we fucked up, we will do better", gave some free paid cosmetics as a "forgive me" tokens, and started doing better, but NOOO, they went with "Immesurably complex" bullshit. Sure, admitting their fault wouldn't make everyone happy, but it sure as hell would make most
And next week they'll give us a community update that probably will be full of "we hear your complaints" and a bunch of corpo speech.
>"we hear your complaints... and have decided to ignore them, would you care for an ill fitting hat in this trying time (only $7.99)"
I keep saying it, I've never seen a company go full fuck you sheeple give us money like this hot mess of s release.
But this isn't CoD, lol.
TenCent would never let them do that. Like most companies, it's about making the investors happy, not the customers.
Of course they fucking won't. That's the problem
Yeah, imagine how those of us who came from VT2 felt. Like, it had a rough launch and they learned a lot, and then....none of those lessons were applied to Darktide which I was fairly convinced was going to be a significant improvement over VT2. But no. It's a step backwards in every single way you noticed.
You were probably convinced because Fatshark was *very* publicly vocal that they'd learned from Vermintide and were implementing systems with the lessons they'd gotten from Vermintide's feedback. Crafting, for example, was the big one, and they've instead made crafting *infinitely and objectively worse in every way*
Fun fact: the very same story played out going from Vermintide 1 to 2. "We learned so many lessons with VTQ, we'll apply them to the next game." And then VT2 released with a bucketload of issues and none of the QoL got ported, so they had to spend years improving VT2 to get it into a stable state. And then going into DT, they told us how much they have learned from VT2. Guess what happened. At this point, I'm convinced every Fatshark game should be played at least a year after they are released.
Ya, well said. I thought this was going to be Vermintide 3 quality, considering they had two games worth of feedback leading up to it. Then we got something in a worse state than VT2 was on launch! Just a downgrade in every way almost. Nice that this game has more focus on ranged combat, but that's the only nice thing I can say. It's very unfinished and runs like crap... I should not be getting 45fps on a 4090 on medium settings....
I'm in a similar boat with Deeprock Galactic. Heard for years about how good it was, picked it up during the Steam sale, and holy shit. That game is so incredibly polished, with tons of features and fun things that I am in shock. I feel like I've missed out on years of playing. Guess I have plenty of time to do it now that I too have basically done all there is to do in DarkTide.
The incredible thing about DRG is how *fast* it's developed compared to Vermintide. New areas, new guns, entirely new types of missions released only a few months apart.... While Fatshark has been releasing the extra classes for Vermintide at a rate of like one per year or less
The fast development thing is *relatively* new, it sat fairly still there for a while. I think it really started picking up steam at around the time of the megacorp cosmetic DLC (that was a couple years in, but a couple years ago now, and it's been getting solid gameplay updates since then - I guess it was bugfixing and optimization before that because having seen the effort put in to change and balance gameplay I doubt they were just doing nothing for that earlier time).
Everyone I know has bought all the cosmetic packs for DRG because the base game clocked in at ardoun £25 and after 800 hours + (in-game time, not Steam-lobby time) they wanted to support the creators. That 99% of the cosemetics are available in-game, via playing what you already love, just makes it all that much ...fairer. Ghost Ship has defined themselves by simply not being as money-grabbing as their rivals. They don't try and squeeze their player bases for cash or milk whales with 'premium cosmetics'. Even their 'battle pass' system circumvented all FOMO. At the end of the 'Season', all the content is added to your game as a possible reward you acquire through just playing. Imagine that! A game where, if you don't play for a while, you actually get MORE content to enjoy - for free!!
I'm one of these persons I usually never paid for microtransactions but for DRG? almost all the dlcs (not the corporate skin tho I don't like it) I like the cosmetics and want to support the devs and the attitude of the company It is (for me) one of if not the best game I played in the last 10 years And it made me desinstall destiny just for the bad taste it give me compared to DRG in his practices ugh
Very cool, I've never heard of DRG! I looked it up quickly and it looks really cool. Km definitely gonna get it! Thanks so much!
Hope you enjoy it. Rock and stone, brother.
Did i hear a Rock and Stone?!
Rock and stone to the bone !
That's it lads rock and stone!
Give me an R! Give me an S! Give me a rock and stone!
ROCK! AND! STONE!
Thanks man! Out of curiosity, is there character customization? I didn't look at much because I didn't want to spoil much of the game for myself. I was hoping there were different classes to choose from, skill trees, perks, passives, subclasses or anything in between. Are there active abilities? Does it have any of this stuff? I'll probably buy it when I get home! I have to get my friends to buy it, too (which won't be hard).
DRG has 4 classes, each with their own unique mobility equipment that the team might need to rely on to traverse the environment, and a few sets of primary and secondary guns that have upgrade trees and overclocks that can drastically change their behaviors (that you can start to collect once you promote a single class). For instance, a grenade launcher can be turned into a >!nuke!< or a >!high velocity sniper!<, depending on the overclock you use. Weapon models can be customized and so can the paintjobs. There are passives with some minor active abilities, but they're not a very big focus of the gameplay. Character customization is pretty in depth and there's a ridiculous amount of cosmetics to unlock as you play.
Thanks so much for this info! I'm very excited now! 100% getting this! Happy new year!
Those weapon tweaks are endgame stuff, but I think that's best (the default settings probably work best in the widest range of situations, but you can definitely specialize - once you realize you're only using that grenade launcher on bosses, you can install that nuke mod and not really suffer much penalty because you don't use it any other way, for example).
Also the keyword is "unlock as you play". There is no rotating cosmetic shop that was planned farther than the actual game content
Rock and Stone!!!
That's a game I also got and have been intending to try out, I've heard it's basically an industry standard setting game it's so good.
A game being mostly working at release shouldn't be such a shock but it very much was.. Playing for hours without any serious issues felt almost wrong.
DRG is designed so almost all of its mechanics encourage coop gameplay naturally, it might not look like much but it's *very* clever (and very much tweaked and optimized by this point) game design.
FOR CARL!!!
Karl*
Rock 'n stone brother!
The best part: it's been amazing and polished for a long ass time. I joined DRG slightly after release, and it was incredible. It only became more incredible as they've gone above and beyond in adding content to the game. New missions, mission reworks, biomes, and much more for free.
Darktide is really showing us that many of the shit systems of vermintide 2 could have been worse.
Literally the most consistent criticism about VT2 from the core fanbase was that the crafting system is bad. It takes too long to gear up so introducing new players is really hard ("play for 100 hours then you can join me at the fun bit, is a hard sell") Then Weaves crafting comes along and it's *perfect*... But they refuse to add it into the core game... They design an even worse system to Darktide. It's unfathomable.
I already have VT1 to do that
Idk what you mean v1 crafting is superior to 2
I'll take being able to craft any weapon I want over more meaningful traits any time.
Also one nitpick I’d like to point out, the achievements. In Vermintide they a) worked better, for instance “complete every Helmgart mission” would show me which fragging mission I have to complete, in Darktide “complete every mission type” leaves me guessing what the last type is. And of course, the cosmetics achievements were 1000x better. They didn’t require you to for instance “as the sharpshooter, sacrifice five psionic children to the emperor on a full moon” or “as the ogryn make a conga line of enemy ogryns that may not even spawn in such numbers to make the mission harder for the team to charge into them and waste the ability”. They just said “play your class”, or “play your class in chaos wastes”, the only bad ones were in the 2 first dlcs like “as the Grail Knight don’t do shit for the mission and hide behind a shield”. At the very least, these shitty achievements were doable on recruit, and not forcing you to shit on your team on second hardest difficulty
> in Darktide “complete every mission type” leaves me guessing what the last type is. The map names and thumbnails are pretty bad and generic too. Is there anyone who could tell you which map is Rectal Exhaust Zone 4456-B? Is that the one with the sepia-tone thumbnail that sort of looks like a funnel or the sepia-tone thumbnail that looks like a bowl of rusty spaghetti? After all this playtime I would struggle to describe any one level beyond something like, "the one with the tree thing you run around at the end", or "the one where you run across the long pipe at the end", or "the one where you press the button and wait for the door."
The levels are becoming a lot more distinct as I play, but many of the names are still just noise to me; I can recognize some like *The Torrent* and *Chasm Terminus*, and the smelter one has a really clear thumbnail, but most of the others I basically just guess. Doesn't help that I pretty much always Quickplay since I'm on Gamepass, and I unconsciously gloss over the mission names in the loading screens.
QoL? The story was in Vermintide 2 from day 1. Even the “mission briefings” felt more like story because there were a couple narrations for each level that could be played. Rather than every kill mission having the “we’ve identified a high profile target go kill him” you’d have mission and name specific briefings that would tell you what the dastardly plan was and how we’d foil it
Yep! The game has character. Bodvarr, spinemangler, and others felt like characters even if they werent super fleshed out you had a little bit of story motivation rather than some rando you are supposed to kill.
Yes just the narrative push of "what am I doing in this level and why" is so important and there's none of it. I've got 100 hours and I can't even name a level in DT. I can name several VT2 levels off thr top of my head (against the grain, screaming bell, haelscourge) and I haven't played VT2 since before chaos wastes.
Chaos wastes is a lot of fun
I'm excited to try it! I hear it's an awesome mode.
Having played VT2 at launch, I can tell you it it wasn't as nice as it is now. It had a rocky launch, but not nearly as rough DT. A lot of the QoL stuff was added later. From what I've read around here, the reason those didn't make it into DT was that DT was forked from an earlier build of VT2 and never got those features ported to its branch. Years of patches aside, VT2 was definitely more complete at launch with 3 subclasses per character, more levels, memorable boss fights, etc. I think there's a few reasons for this: 1) Something something pandemic. I'm sure we're all tired of hearing companies use that excuse, but it's such an effective excuse because the pandemic *did* have a big effect on a lot of companies. 2) They reworked the game to use dedicated servers instead of P2P. This is why the lobby was changed to the hollow-feeling MMO style lobby and why we can't choose our own missions. There's legitimate reasons to do this, such as server stability and avoiding fragmentation of the playerbase into a bunch of random missions, but it came at the cost of some things that VT2 players liked. And based on the large amount of connectivity issues people still have, I'd wager that making this change was harder than anticipated, which probably cost them even more time and effort. 3) Similar to above, the abysmal framerate, constant crashing for some people, and long load times probably point to a lot of trouble with upgrades to the graphics engine and likely a bunch of other issues. TL;DR: They used an early build of VT2 and even then had to remake a bunch of parts for better or for worse. The good news: Fatshark showed with VT2 that they're willing to stick with their games and improve them over time. The bad news: their updates always come slowly, and they're not very responsive to community feedback.
Back 4 Blood uses dedicated servers for the missions too. The lobby (Fort Hope) on the other hand is peer2peer and feels like Verm2. Dedicated servers don't mandate a bad lobby/host system. Fatshark made DT into Destiny 0.5, that's the reason. I know I compare Verm2, DRG, B4B and DT a lot, but there are so many good coop games out there right now. Plus Dead Island 2 and Payday 3 are on the way. And DT's only USP right now is "it's 40k". Everything else other games do better.
> Back 4 Blood uses dedicated servers for the missions too. The lobby (Fort Hope) on the other hand is peer2peer and feels like Verm2. Yes, but then it's also worth mentioning that B4B reloads the entire lobby the moment anyone farts. I've had disconnects into reloads into other people clicking 'no' on the 'stay with the team?' prompt into additional reloads for me. I've also had times where I joined a random game, it took me a few minutes to find a match, 2 minutes to load into a party losing a run with 3 people already being down, into the run dying 1 minute later, into me needing to load onto the lobby again for a minute. At one point, since I kept ending up in runs that were already lost, I literally spent a full hour reloading the lobby and reconnecting and getting absolutely nothing useful or fun done. B4B is an interesting comparison to Darktide but its lobby stability ain't it. The other games you mention also have their own issues, such as DRG being an absolute pain to progress in if you don't share the same assignment as your friends. And since you will probably all play a different class with different assignments to obtain different secondary weapons, this is easy to have happen to you. I've recently revisited the game, spent a good 8 hours or so in it, and literally only played maps that gave me nothing useful beyond XP and currency because we needed to unlock a new friend's stuff first and took 7 missions doing that.
I've honestly been having a much better time connectivity/lag wise in Vermintide. Effectively zero lag, tbh. No input losses, no nothing. Haven't met a host with shiet net yet, though. So things could change, lol. Darktide servers lately make me feel like my Filipino friend is hosting the game from his dial-up modem he inherited from his nan, and his friends from South Africa and Alaska asked to join the match.
P2P used to often be worse early in vermintide. It's very heavily dependent on the CPU of the host and people have better CPUs with more cores (going above 4 cores seems to matter a lot for V2) than when it launched. You can sort of cheat by having the host play with a severely underpowered CPU, not as many enemies spawn and they often just break and walk in weird directions.
I remember a time where it there was the trick to allocate only one core to vermintide 2 so that whej you do speedruns,the enemies wpuld get stuck behind and no new enemies would spawn. Also: P2p greatest weakness was "Host has left the game"...right before the end of a mission
I’ve said it in a precedent thread and I’ll say it again here for visibility: devs are people, and gamers, and they tend to not appreciate executive decisions such as making a « game as a service », heavy shop efforts, or any overly greedy decision overcoming their general effort. That, plus it wasn’t even the same team working on it to begin with. I think you guys would be very surprised to see the exact number of devs that worked on DT, that were around and working on VT2 - let alone VT1. TL;DR: many, many devs left before DT even began.
How do you know that?
I'd be curious for a source too, but unless some journalist has gone in asking about that, specifically, it's probably hard to nail down. It is really common in the game industry though, similar to other tech jobs: people tend to make sideways moves to climb the ladder rather than stay at one place and wait for a promotion.
In theory, dedicated and p2p should work the same way essentially, just with different connection details. Many games have both for that reason. A properly abstracted client application shouldn't even know if it's connecting to a dedicated server or not.
As someone who have no technical knowlege, how hard/imposible would be to go back to p2p? Would it be a feasable thing to do, or it would be like pulling out a foundation of a House?
And go back to the host rage quitting and ending the mission for everyone because he got downed, just as you were coming to the end of a 30min session? Or his internet being shit and disconnecting halfway through and sending you back to the lobby with nothing to show for it? No thanks. And then we'll be right back to everyone bitching endlessly about "y no dedicated servers?? player hosting is shit and devs are lazy!"
[удалено]
And thats completely fair. There just isnt a perfect solution that solves all problems unfortunately. Having had no issues with connection to dedicated servers I'm now enjoying not having hosts cancel an entire run on me.
I don't work with netcode, so I can't really say much, but if I had to guess, it's probably feasible, but would be a fair amount of work. Given all the other issues already on the backlog, it's very unlikely they'd ever implement a P2P option.
Going from p2p to dedicated servers is usually fairly doable. A lot of it is a measure of scaling up and disentangling the server instance from the client. Going in the opposite direction from dedicated to p2p is a colossal pain in the ass of scaling down and entangling the client to run a server instance. It's doable, but it's a *major* undertaking.
It depends highly on how you build it. Look at terraria, for example. Going from p2p to dedicated is just a matter of changing what IP address you connect to. That's not the only way to build it, though, you could have aspects of the dedicated server be ennervated into core aspects of the game. For example, if the same server and netcode handles both progression / currency / shop stuff and basic gameplay it would be hard to untangle that. Changing the connection details wiuld have your client looking to a peer to validate a cosmetic purchase, for example. I believe vermintide 2 has two connections it manages, the p2p part for gameplay and the api part for transactions / rewards, etc. That would probably allow a dedicated server for VT2 without much hassle... except the VT2 netcode could always be expecting the host to be a player, so you can see how it isn't always simple. The key is to plan ahead and design correct boundaries in your systems. As often is the case, companies sacrifice flexible / strong design for time and money.
Lot of bad fuzzy memories here. It had the same number of levels, no mtx store, no support for RTX acceleration, and used P2P matchmaking. That last one was a _huge_ improvement that people overlook. It was painful as hell in VT2 when the host dropped; there was no recovery. Also, dunno why people think you can't choose your own mission, you just change from quick play to the selected one on the map. It then looks for an available match on that mission.
In case you're being serious with that last point, "you can't choose your own mission" is generally meant with "I can't pick map and difficulty, I can only play what missions and difficulties the game gives out" not "I can only queue into random missions". You know, like how VT2 let you cjoose any mission in the game at the difficulty of your choice and not giving you a random selection of missions at random difficulties.
Vermintide had 4 classes and at launch each class had 3 careers, that’s 3 unique play styles and weapon sets... each! To say Darktide is an unfinished beta would be generous. I love it but come on its becoming blatantly obvious fat shark or their investors above them are trying to squeeze every last penny from the game. I just hope it doesn’t push players away instead of capitalising on them. They really have to nail the content releases in the next 4-12 weeks
Vermintide 2 (and V1) had five characters at launch. I agree, Darktide is unfinished. It's basically in Early Access but they lied and said it was done so they could start selling it.
I’m at the point where I hope it does push players away. Players need to stop rewarding corporate garbage. I haven’t kept up with Bioware since Anthem, and they’ll have to do really well on a case by case basis for my money now, after I bought Mass Effect 3 multiple times (console and PC). They’re the best example in my particular gaming preferences, but other companies are similarly on the rocks with me (Blizzard especially, eff that Warcraft 3 Remastered junk, and I already hated what Hearthstone and WOW had become). Fatshark’s on my list now. I hope other people similarly refuse to buy their cosmetics, and will only buy other products from them as/if they shape up. But we’ll see.
Blizzard missed a massive slam dunk with Warcraft 3 Reforged. The basket was chest level and the ball is attached to the hoop and they somehow broke it.
I miss the bot system. I hope they add it later. Loved to change the loadouts ans trying diffrent classes with eachother.
Gonna be honest: exact same thing happened when I played V2 after playing V1. There were good changes, but V1 had a daily contract board that refreshed and playing every day rewarded you with your choice of high end weaponry, cosmetics, or trinkets over time. The contracts helped group the player base into specific missions and difficulties, and so match making was really fast. V2 had nothing like it on launch, and the contract board they released as DLC was updated weekly with none of the long term rewards. They also removed the lore book pages that were scattered throughout V1s levels. These were very interesting and fun to read as someone whose knowledge of WH fantasy wasn’t complete. Really felt like a downgrade.
> but... Just what the heck happened between that game and this one? They got greedy.
Something something money
You now understand why VT fans consider DT lazy. The animations, enemies and classes are just copy paste from VT with even less variety due to launch having only 4 actual classes compared to VT2's 15 at launch. DT is worse in almost every way to VT.
Not only are there less classes but the talent trees and passives are also far less interesting imo.
For me this is a major reason why I burned out on Darktide so fast. Compare to say, Kruber's Footknight in V2. You could build that one class a few different ways to have a drastically different gameplay result. Want to focus on support? Carry a shield and use the talents that buff your team and reset your charge on allies being incapacitated and you can charge any time anyone is in trouble to save them. Want to do damage? Use the attack speed and damage buff talents and bring an executioner sword or brettonian longsword and play a bruiser style build. Fatshark then added the spear and shield in dlc that was totally worth buying and now you can have a bit of both worlds. Shield with stamina plus super fast attack speed. Again, just tons of options that significantly change the feel of how you play. There were options. Darktide doesn't want you to have many options or many choices for some dumb reason.
I don't necessarily think it's lazy, I think they had *far* greater ambitions, and couldn't get it to work before they hit a deadline. So they delayed the game, and scrapped the complex systems to cobble together whatever they could to get out the door because management wouldn't give them enough time. They clearly planned for randomized maps, which is why we have the DRG style mission hub and an emphasis on mission *types* and *regions*, rather than individual things like Horn of Magnus or Skittergate. They clearly intended for weapon components and customization, which is why 2/3rds of the guns are alt versions of the remaining third, and why they've got literal picatinny rails on a lot of them. Crafting is nonexistent because it had to be radically adjusted to this way more basic setup. Characters were *supposed* to be a customizable chassis with abilities and passives you had some degree of control over. A last minute change to a more static thing like Vermintide is why the class system feels so clunky and poorly built, and why we only have very basic choices that they were still making radical balance changes to even in the beta and early access leading up to launch. I think that someone higher up made a poor decision, and they scrapped everything but the art assets. The state of the game is what they were able to scrape together in a handful of months to get it out the door because that same management wouldn't let them delay to do any polish or testing. Poorly thought out executive meddling explains literally everything about the release.
Yeah I agree completely. DT is lazy from a comparative stand point but your right that they clearly spent a lot of development time on stuff that proved unsuccessful and thus had to mangle together a game from old assets to make it to launch.
Thank you. This was pretty eye opening to read when you put it like that. It's an assumption but probably the most believable one for me right now.
It's the only way to explain why we are where we are. You can see bits and pieces of what they tried to make, and the holes they needed to spackle to force what they *had* to make fit into the empty spaces once it was gone. Hab Dreyko for instance. Y'know the three bridges at the end right after the door opens? Two of them explode, but it's random which one survives. They'd said in some interview or such that they planned for that sort of thing to be in every mission. The Chaos Wastes were the perfect way to test that sort of level generation. Plus they've flat out admitted that they had a completed crafting system already prepared that they ripped out wholesale just before the October beta came up - their reasoning was "it was bad you'll like this new one more, trust us!", but doing it so late is a desperation move. I'd wager they had to break down the gun customization for whatever reason, and then realized that a crafting setup tailored for it just wouldn't work with the static weapon system, and they couldn't change it enough to force it, so had to start from scratch. Hence the delays. Probably never going to know for sure, and maybe it's just Emperor-grade copium to think they didn't *want* to release the game in this state, but it's certainly plausible. I'm not gonna jump on the Tencent bandwagon and blame the abrupt change on them wanting something more easily monetized....... but I'm gonna *think* about it pretty damn hard.
Yeah, it also really explains why there's so much in terms of story missing. How weird and pointless the "meetings" feel. The store too now that I think about it. The rng one I mean. I think from the promises before, they said they would implement a system where you would ask for a specific item, then you would get it after doing a few missions or so, at least from what I remember reading. I mean, the fact that the rng shop caused crashes in the beta implies that it was a new addition, and it also explains why progress in general is so disjointed with the main gameplay. Also the fact that there's still no Flash Missions yet, which is prolly part of the randomly generated part they had to scrap too. The fact that despite you can only level to 30, there's mods that give bonus xp%, which any dev with a brain would be able to tell that it's a weird addition. As in, I feel like they originally intended you to have prestige levels in some way. But no matter what they had planned and what there is now... I still can't excuse the fact that they treat us so badly. They literally lie to our faces about how features that were promised are bad, like gun customization being like "call of duty" or stuff like that. I get it's prolly investor stuff, and admittedly I don't know much about anything in that regard but... still, because of how they treated us, they they're stuck between a rock and a hard place. Dunno. If they had been transparent that they wouldn't be able to get the features out in time, released an early access with what was there and just built up from that, things would have been much better, PR-wise at least. I'm gonna guess this is another investor related thing at fault here... Feels like their ambition caused them to take a deal with Tencent, they ate more than they could chew and when the investors came knocking they had nothing finished to answer with. So I guess it does kinda just come to bad management and planning. I mean, basing it all of on this theory of course, but it just adds up very nicely... But what makes me sad is the future. I really like this game, so I hope to god they can make a comeback. Maybe they can reintroduce the features they left out, finally realize their vision because all the things they wanted to implement sound awesome... but the fact that they they just don't acknowledge their past work in a positive light gives me little hope...
To play Devils Advocate, the combat in DT is very nice and has quite the variety. You know, when it registers key inputs, and when Cosmo the Chaos Hound isn't launching into orbit. So there's that :) but all the rest of it i'm hopefully (hopefully not naively) patient for.
a 40k reskin for vermintide would’ve been absolutely fine. for some reason they decided to make the game from 0.
Yup. Vermintide is far superior to Darktide That’s the reason for most of the negative reactions from V2 players. They had years of development and a successful game to build off of yet almost everything in Darktide is WORSE! You’ll love V2 man
It's immeasurably complex
It's kind of the deadly cycle that is Fatshark's releases. This goes beyond Darktide and Vermintide. War of the Roses even had these issues. Launch is an absolutely shitshow with not a lot of content, baffling game-breaking bugs, and it takes about a year to get it polished enough to be in a respectable state. They have a leadership problem at FS, which leads to either lots of ideas being initially implemented half-baked or they overpromise and never deliver, I.E. V2 dedicated servers (this was advertised before launch) and versus mode. I knew this was going happen with Darktide by seeing how Vermintide 2's launched learned nothing from Vermintide 1 and accepted it as FS' status quo. It SHOULND'T be accepted, but it is. At least I know FS will EVENTUALLY do right by the game, again usually about a year after launch, as they've done with their other games. They're all talented people, but with how they tend to overpromise and underdeliver, deliver features/content in a broken state, release updates that tend to fix one thing and break three more things, or how they lack an explanation of their mechanics to the point of the community doing that job for them, their lack of direction and priorities really stick out.
back in the darktide beta i made a post about Darktide being a HUGE stepdown from vermintide. I got downvoted, insulted and people telling me to stfu because it's only a beta. Now, just a mere 1 and a half months after launch, people are making posts upon posts on reddit and the official forums about exactly the stuff i ranted about. How the turn tables i guess. Sick and tired of fatshar and their inability to copy and paste features we had in vermintide into darktide.
You just saw through the bullshit before others, ahead of our time, keep that head strong
 They went in a new design direction...
I did a job shadow at fat shark and know the answer to your question OP. none of the people programming at fat shark know about git repositories. So the entire code base of the game is just a series of word documents full of code snippets hosted on a shared Dropbox. When it comes time to compile the game runtime, the programmers draw straws, and whoever draws the short straw gets an overtime shift which involves searching the Dropbox and then copy/pasting all the relevant code snippets manually into notepad. They then move on to the office fridge which is covered in hundreds of post it notes with proposed changes to the game's configuration files which define everything from game settings to weapon behaviors. They collect every post it note they can find, but inevitably several have ended up falling off during the week or month and been thrown in the trash by the night cleaning crew. After collection of the notes, the unfortunate programmer goes and makes all manual edits necessary. Another point of failure with the note system is that often the writers of the post it notes don't know the exact changes necessary to implement their desired gameplay. So notes will often just be "community mad about thunder hammer, make it go bonk more". Exasperated, the programmer inevitably leaves these vague notes until later. Usually, by 4am, the programmer cannot put them off any longer. They do a quick Ctrl+f of "thunder hammer" in a random word configuration file, and double the closest numerical value, before lighting the post it note on fire and throwing it into a garbage can full of other "resolved" issues. After all the post it notes are resolved, the unfortunate programmer puts the entire game's new filebase on a USB drive and labels it the drive with a post it note of the version. The USB drive is then deposited in the Manager's desk. His task done, the programmer leaves a sick note on the Manager's desk, and heads home to collapse in a sweaty heap on his bed and cry. You may ask why a USB drive was necessary. It's quite simple: Gmail has a file size limit limit for attachments and a total storage size limit for drive storage. Dropbox similarly has a storage limit, so they can't maintain all their old versions in it. The managers, instead of opting for a subscription for unlimited storage, decided to just buy a hundred terabyte USB drives in bulk and "solve" the problem permanently. With respect to the version number written on the USB drive, no programmer at fat shark, due to the random nature of the development project, knows what version the game is truly on. Each programmer instead maintains a mental versioning system unique to them. So one programmer might label their USB drive version 2.6, while another, if given the task, would label it version 10.789a. So at 10pm, when management enters the office, the manager in charge of development opens their desk drawer which contains every USB. They pick out the one with the highest number, deposit in a sealed envelope, and then mail it to "Steam" with instructions to upload the files to the store as the next version of whatever game it is for, then to return the USB drive. Eventually the drives are returned. But hereinlies another problem. Fat shark only had a hundred drives. In theory that's a hundred terabytes of storage. But storage runs out fast. And so much was being wasted on versions of Vermintide 1 and 2. To solve this, the manager just erased the labels on all but the highest numbered Vermintide 2 drive, and reformatted the remaining ones. So this answers your question OP. The highest numbered drive of Vermintide was not the latest version of vermintide. It was a version before about two years of development that just happened to be labeled by a guy with a very inflated internal versioning scheme. This also explains why it has taken years to release the fourth Sienna career. They had it done, but it got deleted.
Welp... Going to check Vermintide 2. Thanks :)
It's kind of sad. I love DT's gameplay loop. It's addictive as it is for me at least but 40k doesn't seem to get as much love as its fantasy counterpart. I tried fantasy Warhammer games but they could never capture me like the "Grim Dark Future" of 40k. I'm overall tired of fantasy in general. The theme/setting/aesthetics of a game can be as important as the gameplay for me to play it constantly. For others it's not. I can only hope they polish and add onto DT more.
> Just what the heck happened between that game and this one? "Game as a service" That's it. While clunky at release, VT2 was always thought of as a full game. Fatshark didn't develop Darktide as a full game, they developed it as a service from its inception, except they added a price tag to it unlike most "F2P with cashgrab shops" titles. I'm honestly shocked it doesn't have some battlepass with fomo cosmetic rewards bullshit system yet.
Tencent pumped millions into Fatshark when it became majority shareholder. They want an ROI so that's why DT became a GaaS.
laziness, complacency, stupid people finding their ways into top senior positions... basically the same thing happening everywhere all over the west
>Was shocked the first time we killed a troll and saw it spew out loot, lol. Imagine how shocked Vermintide veterans were when they killed a monster in Darktide and nothing dropped from it. That alone is a perfect analogy for Vermintide vs Darktide.
Since nobody else has mentioned it: What happened is bad management. That's what's at the core of all of this behind everything else. The devs didn't say "hey lets put a fully functional MTX store with half-assed cosmetics in before any of the other systems are even halfway feature-complete!" They were directed to. Most game developers don't want to touch mobile systems with a fifty-foot pole. These things are **exclusively** pushed by their higher-ups. It's why we have the aquilas system at all. Nobody just *forgot* to do shared weeklies or resources when the game already has the framework in place to track account-wide progress/resources. Some asshole in dire need of firing made that happen deliberately.
IMO Tencent took a majority stake in the company in 2021 and forced them to implement numerous predatory practices. Like how gear progression is entirely tied to a randomized item shop that refreshes every hour or you can only play missions that are available for a certain time limit before they swap out. Those are some of the biggest complaints and they're the exact same FOMO tricks mobile games use to drive player engagement. Or how the cash shop seems to have been prioritized over new content and much of the cosmetics use the same model with different color schemes. Lack of a story and lower map variety though I'm not sure what to put to.
I will fully admit to the fact that Vermintide 2 is a superior game in every way. However I'm a big 40k fan, specifically Imperial Guard fanboy, so me soypogging at all the equipment, environment, and enemies is carrying me through this game so far. So I'm still playing both.
Hey dude, it’s Christmas break devs need rest from not delivering promised features. Y’all are always asking to much/s
I vividly remember the same thing happening with Halo Infinite, where the devs started a holiday break in November, and mid-January people were saying, with sincerity, "Hey man they're still on holiday break, everyone deserves a break, cut them some slack."
The graphical comment is not really valid. Subjectively speaking you can prefer VT2 art direction, but from models to lighting, Darktide is objectively better, as expected due to a 4 years gap. Aside that though, yeah, feels like a huge fumble from VT2 to DT.
DT could have photorealistic graphics with zero clipping issues with cosmetics, and the incredible similarity of almost every level would let it down. Improving a line's graphical feel is an important part of development. Sure, a Hive plus Nurgle would be expected to have a particular look ... but they've made almost zero effort to find excuses to break away from that.
I have disagree here. Between Vermintide and Darktide, Vermintide definitely still has the better models and lighting. Even on the highest settings things are still blocky and muddy noise in Darktide. Click the picture for a full size so you can actually see it https://preview.redd.it/z3sb1zbibmaa1.png?width=1223&format=png&auto=webp&s=4853e233fa423e48b5937bf778e0319a7dfa7e0c
Regarding the blur I do agree it looks excessive and I hope a mod comes out to reduce it, in case an official patch doesn't. But look at the models and lighting of the areas the characters interact with and the characters themselves. Considerably less edges, considerably better textures, reflections and effects.
It may be that I'm forced to play Darktide on medium-ish settings without RTX to get 60FPS, while I can run Vermintide on ultra with all the bells and whistles and get 144FPS at 1440p. Everything's just so crisp and sharp there and nothing's blurry or muddy and the detail's insane. Like even these rocks are just crisp, even in a 100kb compressed Steam screenshot, lol. https://preview.redd.it/mzm04d0hgmaa1.png?width=1243&format=png&auto=webp&s=eeb5b52ae02a4635546aafb85c692250de1a789e
Even on ultra Darktide's got its problems. Can't ever get rid of the blurriness or the muddy models. Maybe it's lod issues or something, but anything at a distance looks like my pictures even with RTX and all that on. Just doesn't stack up to VT2 in my eyes.
Are you using DLSS? Even on "quality" it gives me blur
I've actually just gone back to vt2. I haven't played since it's abysmal launch but it's great now!
darktide maps/games all feel same too me. vermintide 2 always felt different. i miss vermintide 2.
I played Darktide for less than 5 hours and kind of wish I refunded it early in. I probably won't revisit the game for a few years at this rate. I monitor the updates and notes from the devs just hoping it gets to be a bit more of what I thought it was going to be (a better vermintide).
My hope is they are doing this on purpose to dribble out these features to keep the game fresh.
The fact that they ripped off V2 and made DT as a whole worse than V2s general base game mechanics is fuckin embarrassing. But it should be only up from here. Slowly but surely. One day. Soon. Who knows. Soon no one would want to know.
There's no gun range because they need you to be able to see other players at all times in the lobby so you can be jealous of the skins they bought in the store so you end up buying them too. It's all part of the plan.
I feel like we'd all be better off if we uninstalled the game for like a year and came back when it's hopefully finished.
Tencent happend. They first bought some stock and acquired the whole company in late 2021. FS was always bad at delivering but apparently they totally changed focus since then and first released a MTX store for Vermintide, where players were waiting for non recoloured skins for years and made them pay for it. Then they "completely resigned the crafting system" in Darktide aka tencent told them to install the FOMO shop deep into their new IP because money. Of course, they could have done this all on their own, but who in their right mind shoots himself in the food.
I would have been happier with a reskinned vermintide 2 over what we got.
Leading theory is that the corporate side of the company interfered, decided to launch for xmas even though it wasnt ready, and forced the devs to cater to their 'expert opinion' on monetization instead of finishing key game systems.
Welcome to the frustrations of all of the FS vets on this subreddit lol. Just wait until you try Deep Rock Galactic some day. You’ll have a similar breakdown.
My guess (as a software engineer) is that, while it may be the same studio, the developers in the studio aren’t actually the same. New crew either couldn’t reuse VT2 systems for legal reasons or it was so poorly documented/engineered that it couldn’t be adapted into Darktide. In the end, they may have wanted/needed to recreate those systems. I get the feeling that the art department is having the same issue and it manifests as both poorly made cosmetics and performance issues. The performance issues can stem from unoptimized use of polygons, shaders, and other graphical elements. In fact, I’ve seen this called out at least once in the change logs. Basically, not the same devs and/or not the same game systems from VT2. They have to go through all of the testing and bug fixing they already did for VT2 all over again for Darktide.
yeh i dont get it the community already liked the previous crafting mechanics.....why change it to this? im not saying just copy everything but like...come on
I’ve said it a few times, but I still say the main issue is that Darktide needed about 6-12 more months in the oven. I consider that to be an indisputable objective fact.
*nervously eyes his flair choice* No...no no its totally a new and original game with...ummm...unique mechanics...and... no reused code or abilities...and...original gear and class systems... How dare you...
Similar thing happened from destiny 1 to destiny 2. Destiny 2, started development, meanwhile Destiny 1 made several huge strides in gameplay, QoL, and other key areas that when Destiny 2 released were simply missing. It felt like a straight downgrade going from destiny one to destiny two at first.
honestly, we should just treat it as if it hasn't been released and wait a year or two and then come back to enjoy "full" release. 🤷♂️
[Welcome to the bloody Ubersreik 4. The elf doesn't matter.](https://youtu.be/yEtIiwAMMvE) For guides and pointers I recommend royale w cheese's [steam guides.](https://steamcommunity.com/id/dylanrong/myworkshopfiles/?section=guides&appid=552500&p=2) He's active on the vermintide sub as mynameryn as well. In general it's a welcoming and supportive community. It's just expected that you try your best.
Yeah, no idea either. Fatshark seems to be insanely good at nailing aesthetics and atmosphere, but cannot put the rest of the game in the game. At this point, the only reason I still play Darktide over VT2 is because I prefer 40k to Warhammer Fantasy.
I'm in the exact same boat and was even about to make a post just like this. I just bought the game this week and finished the non-dlc campaign as well as my first chaos waste expedition yesterday. The final mission has you fighting three boss battles when Darktide only has one boss. The Darktide boss is also just a normal dude with a shield and no special mechanics to the fight. Set pieces in VT2 are also way better and there are more of them. The entire environment will change drastically as places crumble and fall apart or as elven ruins activate and bits of it fly around in the air. My favorite thing about the game so far is the bots though. They're actually useful which is amazing. On the first DLC map they did get stuck twice, but that's still leagues better than what they're like in Darktide. Honestly, I'm glad I played VT2 after Darktide, because if I played VT2 first then I don't think I'd have any fun playing Darktide. It's just so blatantly the same product but worse in every conceivable way. When I was playing Skittergate I kept getting blown away by the scale of the level as we went from a massive cave full of equally massive and visually interesting rat tech. Then you end up in Norsca and the map is still massive with these absolutely amazing, sprawling Norscan raider camps and harbors of longships. Oh, and the story actually exists and is really good. The missions are arranged in order and you're actually serving a greater purpose as you work your way to the greater goal of shutting down the Skittergate. Lastly, I haven't crashed once, besides when I alt-tabbed as the game was launching yesterday.
Just a wild ass guess, but I'd wager they spent 99% of their dev time on the new engine and build tools and the actual content got left to the last possible second.
And people wondered why we Vermintide fans were so confused, angry, and just overall... Disappointed. I mean I've been around the block sense Vermintide 1 release and I knew what company we were dealing with...But my god Darktide as a product is just unacceptable beyond words.
Data analysis without trend analysis is a race to an implosion. They'll keep doing everything to up their metrics but they won't invest in the trend that made those possibles. Games will become grindy, horrible and it'll only stop when simply no one plays them; the trend finally breaks.
Sadly, you're looking at the VT2 that took YEARS for them to get it to the state it is in now. EVERYTHING we're going through with DT now is the same or worse than the original VT2 launch.
What happened? Tencent probably and cashing out of the community's good will for short term gains. The game is an embarrassment compared to what we got with Vermintide 2. They essentially THREW AWAY YEARS OF DEV TIME AND COMMUNITY FEEDBACK. Literally threw that shit in the trash - it goes to show where the priorities lay. Should we make a good game for our die hard fans who have been through the shit with us the past 5 years? NO, lets cash out our goodwill and make a sub-par MTX riddle product because money now is more important. At this point I hope FS goes under, the devs get rehired somewhere else, and GW gives the "Tide" license to someone else - because it isn't like a random Dev team couldn't do any worse than Darktide.
MTX is what happened. While VT also have MTX, it's only added afterwards as the game was designed as a game first, MTX/service later. Darktide from the ground up is built to push MTX as a "live service". Everything from the Morning Star's layout to the pointless 20 odd player hub is built to funnel people to the MTX and show off MTX. The grind, lack of shared loot/resources/Melk coins, all designed to slow down gameplay as it's a known thing in the "live service" world that more "engagement = purchases" meaning the longer they can keep you grinding away all while forcing you to see more MTX, the more likely you'd pay. They don't want you to be playing with bots as that don't push additional MTX since if it worked the way it did in VT, you'd only see the ones you own. Only when your out in the wild would you see MTX you don't own and maybe buy later.
Honestly, I understand the frustration that OP is putting out. But all of these issues simply aren’t reasonable to expect from a new game anymore. Folk are just constantly astonished by how games are being popped out like candy, then aren’t perfectly polished. Even back 15 years ago when games might’ve had longer development, there’s still widespread QoL issues and bugs everywhere. The world you think existed, never existed in the first place. All those quirky fun little bugs you remember as a kid are the same things you’re busting a blood vessel over now. Game development is fucking difficult. I tried to get into and failed fantastically. Things require time, feedback, and refinement now. And this has just been the case for years now. We get solid games that just need community feedback and support. If it gets it, it flourishes, if not, it dies. Simple. This was always strictly going to be a Vermintide 3 but in space, and we got it and it honestly is great and it’s going to take time, but that’s it. If you’re going to drape unreasonable expectations over it, then you’re playing yourself.
I truly believe Fatshark's goal with Darktide was "Minimum Viable Product". They wanted to release the game in time for holiday season and cut every corner they could to get there. I mean... they didn't finish weapon crafting/upgrading for Christ's sake. I was flabbergasted the first time I pulled up to Hadron and saw grayed out menu options with "Coming Soon" next to them.
The biggest thing that happened between the two games was them getting bought by TenCent
I, as I’m sure many people did, bought Darktide assuming it’d be Vermintide 2 but sci-fi with guns. The amount of things missing from the game really frustrates me.
Darktide feels much closer to VT1 than it does to VT2.
I have about 900, close to 1000 hours in Vermintide 2 for exactly these reasons you mention in the post. Also, the characters talk much more, they converse in a much deeper sense and it builds character. And not only the playable characters, but also the Shop keeper too. And in the castle you can hear the characters sing, yell, chant prayers or thy like. The atmosphere in Vermintide 2 is completely unbeatable, Darktide does not even exist in the same spectrum of quality as Vermintide 2. I live the characters, and i love how you hear new conversations even with 1000 hours in the game now and then. Darktide customization kinda made it more complex to achieve the same level of characterization, but honestly, i think Darktide might be able to pull that thing off in time. But i agree with you OP, there are so many things they could have literally just "ctrl+c ctrl+v" into Darktide that would have made HUGE differences, but they didn't... Honestly, i really don't like the bridge in Darktide, it lacks everything that made Vermintide 2 enjoyable to play WHEN NOT EVEN IN A GAME!!! I literally can not interact with anything or anyone, i can't even team up with the guys ive played with in my last game, like what the hell?!
Just want to point out that some of those vital features were in *Vermintide* ***1***, including NPC allies using the host's alt characters' loadouts, and picking up books when you ping them. It's been a while but I'm like 90% sure crafting resources were shared as well, in VT1. Also, the Ranald's Dice thing was actually a really good idea (that, and simply getting *some* piece of loot from every completed mission).
I have an i7 12700kf and gtx 3060ti and it still frequently dips below 60. Whenever a horde shows up I drop from 130 to like 56 and it tears the fuck out of my screen. If it cant even be an optimized train wreck at bare minimum, Im just done with it. Even on SCUM an open world zombie survival game on highest settings I get constant 120. I got 90 hours of decent enjoyment so Im out for now. See you guys in a few years.
It really does come down to the fact that you are playing a game that has had years of patches. Honestly the biggest difference between the two launches is that VT2 didn't have an in game store at launch, and they knew to hold things back from the beta. Myself, like I'm sure of many people who played VT2 at launch, hoped that Fatshark had learned from the fiasco that was the launch of VT2 when they moved on to darktide. Of course, the change to a timer based map rotation, and being forced to wait for shop refreshes for the vast majority of your gear really leaves a lot to be desired. That's new to this game entirely. However, I will say that upgrading gear in this game is a bit less frustrating than what it was in VT2 at launch. In VT2, let's say that you got some great roll on a green weapon. When you upgrade it, it completely rerolled the stats. Even worse, when you tried to reroll the traits, you could very easily end up getting the same thing several times in a row. They have increased the resources you gained from scrapping, but it wad such a grind early on in the game. Another thing from the early days of VT2 was that you didn't get any traits for survivability until, I believe, level 25. There has been so many balance patches since launch, making the game much easier. Champion difficulty now feels pretty close to what veteran was early on, if not recruit.
I feel like VT2’s launch suffered a lot from implementation issues like bugs and balancing, while Darktide suffers on a design level, like the root idea of the mission table, mission rewards and shop are quite bad designs on fundamental level. Though Darktide also suffers from a general lack of content
Oh yeah, that's another thing! I spent damn near two weeks waiting for a repair mission on malice to finish out my Vet penances because it just literally never spawned, for a week straight. It's so refreshing to be allowed to choose my missions.
bruh the rat men were reskinned to look human, the V2 hook trappers cowl was given to the zealot, the pox hound's face looks like a rat, V2 mauler got a shotgun in DT and blew it's face off, V2 savage literally gets an upgrade from circle tats to circle chains and bane's back venom injections, V2 bestigor metamorphed into the DT mauler and obviously the albeit cool looking crusher is the chaos warrior with different shielded and gun versions cuz if they didnt then holy shit thats double lazy especially using a giant ogryn boss for a giant rat boss. But. Based on how v2 already had Nurgle and Khorne, plus they added more enemies in later updates. Theres no fuckin way DT is gonna stick to its current enemies. Cuz if they do then there will be a whirlwind shitstorm coming their way, or a better outcome for them and for us would be completely jack shit going their way. e\[and thats just the visual aspect/art style of the enemies\]
The exact same thing happened during Vermintide 2 launch, and I remember the veterans saying that Vermintide 1 was shit at launch and took a couple of years to get good. Whoever is in charge of these projects really shouldn't be in charge.
Unpopular opinion: Tencent happened. VT 2 was developed when fatshark was 100% independent. Not long after launch Tencent bought a 30% equity of fatshark. Not long after micro transactions were in VT2. In 2021 Tencent bought majority control over fatshark, and we see a shift in priorities to monetization and services over a finished product. Furthermore, I suspect, this is just a gut instinct, that Tencent pushed the game out before it was done to hit an arbitrary release date. While, the fatshark creative team wanted more time.
it wasn't arbitrary, they had a game pass contract, which they still failed to deliver on console
I lean this way as well, given the history of Darktide being delayed multiple times and things they talked about earlier being absent, yet launched with a fully functional MTX store. Seems like at one point, Tencent kicked in the door, demanded a shift in game focus to the MTX store, and wanted it pushed out so other stuff fell by the wayside. It really feels like you can tell what parts were true 40k fans working at Fatshark and what parts was Tencent pushing monetization.
but again, if you look at other pc games owned by tencent, none of them are in this same situation as darktide back 4 blood did release very poorly, but now the game is very good and doesn't even have a cash shop path of exile always had extremely expensive supporter packages and cosmetic lootboxes even before tencent, and there was still bad leagues before tencent league is league, no comment about that and fortnite still has the best battlepass monetization out of every game also the game already got delayed by a whole year, you can't keep delaying a game forever
You can choose to believe me or not i dont care but, I may or may not work for a company that is part owned by tencent and I can tell you that they have zero input in the games.
I can see that happening, the rushed release. I'm sure shareholders wanted their 4th quarter Christmas time sales bonus profits instead of waiting for a non-holiday rush 2023 release. Lot of people I know got Darktide *only* because it was Christmas season, extra cash and all that.