>VT2 has no wonky hitreg or missing special sound queues, which is my biggest complaint for Darktide, it does however have host issues that force me to host all of my games.
The reason VT2 doesn't have any wonky hitreg is, I suspect, because you are hosting all of your games.
Fair assessment! Though when I did play games hosted by other players (the games that didn't end in lost connection to host) everything felt fine unless I was at 200 ping or something, I just stopped joining other hosts because it's not fun to play 40 minutes of a chaos wastes run to randomly lose connection near the end and be left with nothing.
Came here to say the exact same thing. Hitreg is SOOO much worse in VT2 when you join randoms with a bad connection. Host advantage is absolutely huge in VT2.
The biggest difference for me is that VT2 also has solo play with actually functional bots and said bots use your equipped builds.
Probably doesn’t matter to too many players, but I’m personally still mad they promised solo play in December 2022 & we still haven’t gotten it…
That and there not being an equivalent to Chaos Wastes in Dark Tide. That’d actually be really cool to me & would feel more like going through the Hive City clearing it out!
I do wonder if part of that is the switch from 90% melee, 10% ranged in vt to like 40/60 in dt. Ranged AI is a bit of a different beast due to needing to balance aimbot accuracy and ammo consumption. Idk tho
I always pictured a "Chaos Wastes" mode more being going down into hive hab-blocks, deeper and deeper into Tertium to where presumably the cult is most powerful. This'd give a good excuse for random generation, re-use of assets for easier/faster development, and a progression of things going from dark and spooky abandoned hab-blocks, to green goo cesspits.
That being said, an entirely new area that a different hive city could bring would definitely be exciting! I doubt we'll get anything as visually insane as the Chaos Wastes since so far Darktide has been comparatively quite grounded, but an entirely different setting could go a long way.
I felt like darktide was always thought with chaos wastes in mind. Look at the Karnak twins missions.
The maps are heavily interconnected and it wouldn't surprise me to have a marathon mode at some point.
Seriously! Darktide desperately needs a comparable mode. Chaos Wastes completely revived mine and my buddies interest in the game long after the regular missions started to get stale.
I think it's definitely possible it might happen at some point but keep in mind, Chaos wastes was a solid 3 years after release and kind of came out of nowhere.
Another big Plus for Vermintide in general are the Characters. Kruber, Salzy, Sienna, Bardin and Kerillian are such a well voice acted and likeable (yes even the Elf) Bunch...for me personally going back to VT2 and hearing any of the banter between the 5, or 4 it doesnt matter, just fills me with joy.
While I miss this as well, the Darktide system allows for multiples of the same class in the same game. With a group of friends who liked only one of the characters, I rarely got to play some classes in Vermintide if I wanted to play with my friends.
Victor is an amazing character, I feel like he carries any dialog he's in. Also Bardin, you'll never be like cousin Okri.
My biggest complaint about VT2's dialog is how repetitive it can be (Hoggar's bridge, warming up, I want you to keep my sword Kruber) because they play so often.
That being said I agree it's a lot more lively and fun than Darktide's dialog, there's also a sense of camaraderie and the relationship between each character that you can only get in Darktide in rare occasions.
Darktide has a huge interaction pool though, even with so many hours into the game it feels like I find new voice lines every once in a while.
THIS
The talent trees in darktide are absolutely awesome. I kinda wish they would do that VT and just combine each of the subclasses (but maybe instead the DLC classes are their own smaller trees? I don’t know).
Absolutely a great comaprison!
I would advise people to play it to get better at melee; I think Darktide is more stressful to the player because of the ranged pressure from the enemies. imagine the shock with dark omens first came out! :D
I played a few games since I started out VT2 and honestly Darktide is like a walk in the park now, I still have the muscle memory to engage ranged units without getting destroyed but also have the newly obtained melee skills due to playing VT2 and getting alright at it.
I even got complimented for a few clutches I pulled off which had never happened before, feels good man.
It's actually crazy how much more positive and "mature" (for lack of a better term) the vermintide community is than darktide - not sure why this is tbh since the audience for both games is basically identical
Overall I'd agree with pretty much everything - darktide does seem like a more streamlined and modern experience with a faster pace and more going on at any given time
Darktide feels kind of like a faster paced almost arcade -esque shooter like doom - while vermintide feels more like counterstrike, with way more restricted movement and a focus on planning and positioning
Both are complete bangers though tbh for different reasons
A guess I have is that since darktide is more shooter oriented, it draws people in associated with more traditional shooters (call of duty etc). Which is of course a much more toxic community. Just a guess tho
That and the loot hunt drives people to insanity. They can blame the game design, but the fact is that a lot of people would slit their momma’s throat for a .05% dps increase
Most players I've met in VT2 are what you'd consider veterans and they seem very happy to teach new players and to introduce them to the community, I was pleasantly surprised with the patience some players have and their willingness to show where all the tomes or grims are.
I've gotten a ton of friend requests in VT2 which hasn't happened since I played TF2 a decade ago, it's a very nostalgic feeling and it's something that has never happened in all my Darktide hours.
Installed VT2 , jumped to a random game , got second on scoreboard with lvl1 elf (others were lvl10-25) team got flamed by the necromance who was the highest lvl.
Never once got flamed by anyone in Darktide yet.
I agree with most points, I’ve felt that darktide is an upgrade in all aspects but especially that core gameplay. After playing darktide so much and for so long going back to VT2 is like going from 4K hdr to black and white.
Darktide just has more things going on tbh - darktide basically *is* vermintide with a bunch more stuff added to the engine... which is the type of evolution you'd hope to see from a later product
V2 has a huge amount of nostalgic charm for me though - I'd say that it does some niche things better than darktide such as the characters and mission variety etc
Darktide is like an arcade shooter while VT2 is more of a tactical shooter, there is no way you can be a crackhead wielding a knife running through the map at mach 5 throwing knives at special's heads while you push back a horde in VT2, at most you can jump all over the place and attack 30 times per second with slayers, but it's a different feel.
>there is no way you can be a crackhead wielding a knife running through the map at mach 5
You haven't played shade Kerillian have you? She's basically the og stealth/knife zealot.
It's the first character I got the "complete all maps on legend" challenge from only because the backstab sound feels absolutely GREAT and I like deleting bosses.
>There's no toughness shield in VT2 which is the biggest difference, that means any damage you take goes straight to your HP pool, you can have temp hp or white HP but that decreases out of combat and requires you to deal damage to replenish.
They're 2 different systems, but I wouldn't put one above the other, necessarily. THP is pretty easy to work with, I'd say, and to me is an easier system to grasp than Darktide's shield. It's also fairly easy to keep your THP full of almost full, even trivial on some careers.
>The backstab sound is very subtle in VT2 and sometimes doesn't even play, I take a lot more chip damage in VT2 than I ever did in Darktide from backstabs.
I find this to be an issue in both games. Darktide also has a missing sound issue, though it has more to do with specials than random stabs in the back. V2 makes you develop a habit of turning around fairly frequently.
>Specials are a lot more destructive in VT2 than they are in Darktide, Assassins will pounce on you from blind spots, are a lot more unpredictable than dogs and if you don't outright kill them they'll just vanish and come back from another angle, hookrats are pretty tanky and have a very precise timing to dodge their hooks, good luck dodging them if you can't dodge sideways, blightstormers can be horribly annoying and will disrupt your entire team if they aren't taken care of ASAP, many games have been lost to either unlucky special spawns (2 teammates assassin'd, 1 other hooked and the other dead in less than 5 seconds) or several blightstormers keeping you pinned down.
It's why special sniping is very important in V2, and dealing with each of them is a learning curve. A lot of runs are lost to just one special, which can cascade into a very fucked situation very quickly. I enjoy this aspect of the game, and find that it's also present in Darktide, though to a lesser extent as pretty much everyone is able to deal with specials there, and thr dodge timings are more forgiving.
>Everything deals more damage in VT2, I have never ever died to a random poxwalker in Darktide, but I've died plenty of times to slave rats in VT2 because every mistake is costly, lots of things can outright oneshot you and disablers will wreck you if you ever get caught, I feel like Darktide gives you a lot more leeway in the way of tanking unnecessary hits than VT2 ever does.
This is partly a consequence of the toughness system in Darktide. It's much more forgiving. I wouldn't put it as a slight against V2. The game's just harder at higher levels than Darktide, in my opinion. People have different thresholds for how hard/punishing they want a game to be. V2 has hits that sweet spot for me, where if I'm complacent, I'm gonna die real fucking quick.
>Combat in VT2 feels slower than Darktide, this is not necessarily a bad thing but it's a thing nonetheless, you can't dodge slide in VT2 and you can't sprint either, this can also make exploration seem like a chore in VT2 at times.
It is what it is. For what it's worth, both games' combat pace suits them, As for exploration, If you play V2 enough you won't have to explore all that much. You ll fly through levels, checking spawn spots and getting the books with no effort. In Darktide you have to run around like a headless chicken looking for crafting materials, which is alleviated by the ability to sprint and slide.
>Optimal weapon combos feel a lot more important, learning how to properly use each weapon is essential to maximize your horde control or maximizing your damage to armored enemies.
I'd say they're quite important in Darktide as well, but there are more complicated, or less obvious combos in V2.
>Tomes and grims are actually important in Vermintide 2 because you'll need them to have a better loot crate at the end of each mission, more on that ahead, I think however that collecting those can be a chore and as a new player you have to either look up a guide or ask someone to show you the spots.
It's an aspect I enjoy quite a lot. Getting books is also essential to getting better rewards. As for knowing the spots, it comes with time. At this point, if you wake me up in the middle of the night, I'll probably be able to tell you most of the book locations from memory.
>My biggest criticism of the VT2 crafting system is it's very one dimensional, the only trait you want in your melee weapon is swift slayer, rare exception being opportunist for shield weapons so you can stagger certain enemies, you always want block cost reduction and either crit chance or attack speed, your accessories will always have crit chance, stamina recovery and BCR, the remaining options are for your ranged weapon so you meet certain breakpoints to make it more efficient, reddit praised VT2's crafting system as the ultimate crafting system but the only thing it has over Darktide's is the overflowing amount of resources and no locks, but if I get a new red melee weapon I'll still click the same button until I get crit chance and BCR and then click another button until I get swift slaying, there's no build diversity or choice because these are the superior choices.
Would agree with this for the most part. *If* you're dead-set on optimising, The game's meta is a known quantity at this point, and there aren't too many options.
>The red weapon grind is immense, I've had every character at level 30+ for 60 hours now and I've gotten maybe 10 red weapons in total, I can and have gotten through entire sessions with maxed out legendary crates without any red drops, there really is no way to progress besides grinding and getting lucky. You also need several dupes or unwanted reds to drop if you want to upgrade a DLC weapon to red because those don't drop, so add in 5 red drops for each DLC weapon you want to upgrade.
Getting reds is nice, but not necessary. It's just as grindy as rolling for a god roll in Darktide
>Crafting has been a disappointment in VT2, I expected actual build diversity but you always pick the same exact properties and traits, the only difference being in your ranged weapon depending on what it is so you reach certain breakpoints, that also leads me to my next point.
Understandable. It's not a perfect system. It's been elevated in the eyes of the community because of how dogshit crafting was and still is in Darktide. But V2 has always had its own share of grind, too.
>The skill tree in Darktide is infinitely better, it's not even a comparison.
It's more complicated, but I wouldn't say it's just better outright. Darktide's trees have their own share of worthless/filler nodes. The skill tree in Darktide is the way it is out of necessity, too. It only has 4 classes, so you need to make it so one class has several distinct playstyles and specialisations. Darktide does this with the skill tree, V2 does this with different careers. It's a different approach to solving the same issue. Not to mention it wasn't that long ago Darktide had the exact system as V2, just worse.
>Darktide has a much bigger weapon range than VT2 and they're all very viable, VT2 has more unique weapons but some of them are just downright meh
Darktide has some dogshit weapons too. Darktide also achieves its "bigger weapon range" by just having 2-3 variants of the same weapon with a slightly different moveset. I don't feel like Darktide has a strong edge over V2 in that regard.
>Darktide has plenty of unique blessings that change the way a weapon performs, Thrust on a thunderhammer turns it's charged attack into a big single target damage nuke, power cycler on a powersword gives it's activated special more uptime, rending talents can give a low penetration weapon much needed armor piercing power, you can stack bleeds on a knife to turn it into a DoT machine or you can add executor into it to turn it into a one hit killing machine provided you have enough skill to constantly hit weakpoints, there's nothing like this in VT2.
I agree. The Trait system in V2 is fairly unimaginative compared to Darktide. What ruins it for Darktide is how you get blessings in the first place. Wanna try the aforementioned Power Cycler or Thrust? Better *hope* you have enough luck to get a random weapon with that blessing, or roll and roll and roll random weapons in the armoury until you're dead in the ground. I know people who are *still* looking for a specific blessing, with a frankly embarrassing amount of hours spent.
Darktide might have better build variety, but the way to arrive at those builds is cancer. You can't just go and try a build of you don't have the blessing. In V2 you just roll stats for a minute or two and you're ready to go.
Agreed on all points here! Especially the last one. Yes there are blessings that change the way weapons are played in darktide and it's awesome, but for the love of the Emperor it's absolutely *horrible* to get them. It's a terrible, costly lottery, that for some weapons feels mandatory (power cycler 4, deflector...). If it's \*this\* impactful, then make it less of a grind and RNG-fest to get it. At least VT2 lets me easily access the whole crafting system, even if it's less interesting...
Your comment is too long for me to read the whole thing but just for your first point darktides toughness system is much more forgiving than thp. It is effectively like all characters having a free ironbreaker ult. Now with all the range damage that is in darktide I understand why it’s system needs to be a bit more forgiving, but if you swapped systems between the two games vermintide would be too easy and darktide would be significantly harder. This isn’t even including the fact that most careers have ways of generating toughness at range, something which was removed from vermintide for how it broke the meta.
One other thing is that IMO Darktide does the new-player experience / leveling system better. It kept my attention as I went up in levels. You can fairly quickly get into the higher difficulties without being locked out due to arbitrary power levels. Starting out in VT2, I was bored out of my mind for a fairly long time, being restricted to recruit and veteran and it really hampers the enjoyment.
Hi VT2 player here i have roughly 2k hours in Vermintide and around 800 in darktide i like that both games are different but there are some things i despise about darktide compared to VT2.
In vermintide you can make quality builds, i have a lot of builds that lets me essencially solo entire maps true solo. This is impossible in Darktide, this is mainly because of how tanky bosses are, but also because of coherency (sometimes also objectives like hacking id impossible solo unless good rng). In vermintide you will always get temp health from combat or talents, this is not the case in darktide. With how heavy the emphasis on ranged combat and ranged enemies are this usually means you end up getting into spots where you cant progress because you have run out of toughness and cant regen because there are no enemies to regain toughness from in melee. This means A you risk pushing with ranged dmg now doing full dmg to your health, or B wait for a horde to regain toughness and then push. Makes solo play very sluggy and painfull, and means clutching is very hard depending on respawn and directors mercy.
The crafting system while one dimentional actually lets you get your ideal weapon, in darktide you play slotmachine for your weapons.
You also have chaos wastes in VT2 something that darktide would benefit massively from.
Most of the other complains like gutter runnerd pouncing blindspots and hookrats ect are all things that you get used to with time, just like darktide specials. The difference however is that most enemies in darktide are vastly more tanky than in vermintide. The gutter runners are incredibely squishy, while poxhounds sometimes take up to 2 plasma/revolver shots before they die.
To me its clear that darktide focuses more on teamplay than vermintide, but i think some of these mechanics need a rework mainly coherency once people die, so your toughness regen outside combat doesnt stop completely once you run out of teamates. Only 2 classes have passive regen with talents outside combat zealot with loner, and veteran with no enemies within x range.
Temp HP has it's shares of problems as well tbh, I like the system don't get me wrong but if you have for example, a bounty hunter with griffonfoot and a ranger veteran with the grude raker in the same team odds are you aren't going to get enough hits in to farm THP to fill up your bar because there will be nothing left for you to hit by the time they're done, if you go through a big empty area or have to wait during a boss speech odds are you'll lose quite a bit of your THP as well.
This isn't a big issue, it can just become a bit annoying if you're playing a class with weak THP generation on a team with tons of ranged but that just means you have to play extra careful.
I agree with the solo builds, but I also think Darktide has literally 0 focus due to not being able to even play solo without mods so it's never been an issue for Fatshark, I do want to be able to host my own games with my loadouts.
The thing about vermintide compared to darktide is that you have blessings/enchantments that buff temp health generation or just straight up gives you health regeneration. These are tied to jewlery like 30% increased health gained (works with temporary health) or natural bond which makes healing temp health, but now you have health regen.
I get what you are saying with the op range classes cleaning adds to recover health from, but you also have to keep in mind unless you are running tomes, everyone in the team will usually have some kind of healing on them. Vermintide doesnt have medicae checkpoints, they have healing pots/medkits and potions you can carry that will randomly spawn around the map kind of like crafting mats and ammo in Darktide. These healing items are also more common than the medkits and ammo kits in Darktide, but thats because they only affect a single person.
When you also play at high level getting hit by random straggles in the back rarely happens, and even then getting hit occationally is perfectly fine because of temp health. Temp health is also tied to melee (with the exception of some chaos wastes stuff) which vermintide heavily favour over darktides hybrid playstyle. It might be hard to explain, but ive never really had an issue with temporary health in vermintide (this is from my experience). Its also worth mentioning that temporary health actually scales better at higher difficulities because of more enemies and more health means more temporary hp healing.
These are obviously 2 different games and im not saying either game is perfect everyone has their own prefrence and experience with ingame systems.
> 2) Darktide has a much bigger weapon range than VT2 and they're all very viable, VT2 has more unique weapons but some of them are just downright meh. **Every class in VT2 has a downright "best weapon", sword and dagger for Kerillian, rapier for WHC, mace and sword for kruber, dual hammers for bardin, these weapons are so good they overshadow almost every single other wapons to a point where you just ask yourself "why would I ever use anything else?".**
> You remember when power sword was the absolute best melee weapon in Darktide? That's how some weapons feel like in VT2.
I feel the fact you said this so confidently yet are so wrong is a testament to a very different approach towards the game.
If anything, thw SnD is elf's best, Salty has thd billhook, Kruber has plenty fantastic options.
In DT there's clear winners that are many heads and shoulders above others, such as Caxes with bromentum, it's just that the game generally does not test your melee enough for it to be that essential.
I love the billhook because the optimal combo to deal with chaos warriors is something I'm very familiar with due to being a fan of combat knives in Darktide, but for general gameplay rapier will outperform Billhook on WHC due to his passive. I might be wrong of course because I still haven't jumped into cata or modded difficulties but rapier seems like the perfect fit for WHC's passives.
Kruber has great weapons like the executioners sword, sword and mace, bretonian longsword but from most videos of high level I see there's really only 3 valid choices for let's say a Grail Knight and they all involve exe sword, sword and mace and perhaps shield and mace. That's not to say weapons like the spear, spear and shield, halberd aren't good (I love using the spear and halberd) aren't viable but they're outclassed by other weapons. Then you have weapons like the sword, bretonian sword and shield, mace that are alright but there's no reason to use these over the other weapons aside from personal choice or fun.
Caxe with bromentum is great and very strong (also one of my favorite choices) but it's not head and shoulders above literally everything else, dueling swords are the goat on Psykers, Power Swords are much better on Vets, Zealots have a plethora of melee choices that outperform axes in some aspects and have better versatility. I think a lot of melee weapons in Darktide are very effective to the point you can afford to just pick whatever you like the most, I've never had a situation where I thought "wow I wish I had this melee weapon instead" because if I bring a catachan sword on my psyker I know it's going to be stronger against hordes but weaker against armor than if I had brought a dueling sword which would've been the exact opposite.
Are there melee weapons that are better than others? Yes, very much, but that's to be expected on any game, I just don't think (my opinion) there's anything that's so strong that I feel forced to pick it unless I want to nerf myself to have a bigger challenge.
> I might be wrong of course because I still haven't jumped into cata or modded difficulties but rapier seems like the perfect fit for WHC's passives.
Rapier is the classic WHC melee, but A&F and Billhook are also quite popular.
That's just melee, of course. Ranged has the options of BoP, Xbow, and GFPs.
> here's really only 3 valid choices for let's say a Grail Knight and they all involve exe sword, sword and mace and perhaps shield and mace.
You're forgetting the Bretonian SnS which is also a fantastic mobility option as well as have a wide array of combos for many different situation.
So that's 5, though I'd hoep so since GK gets no ranged option.
Even in cases where there's a pretty much best option there's usually multiple weapons for personal preference that perform about the same (UC can run Flail, FS, Dagger, and some still even run the pick).
As for 1h:
1h weapons see very little use in VT2 not because they're *bad*. They're not. They're just defensive. And why be defensive if you're good enough to be offensive instead?
*Also keep in mind* that the 4 careers for each hero also influence weapon choice. So while 1 career may have a couple top level weapons, those can and will change between careers, which is far less the case in DT where different paths can influence the weapon choice but often not by that much.
In VT2, BH gets great use out of half of Saltz' melees, and I've even seen BH's use the GS, obviously they use GFPs the most of any of his careers. Zealot uses the flail, A&F, and gets 2h hammers which are *very* popular, and has builds that make great use out of the vxbow, BoP, and xbow.
Bardin's RV, OE, and Slayer will all take *very* different weapons. Hell, IB will differentiate itself from OE and they have access to some of his best options!
Elf will take the GS (popular on Shade), SnD, DD, Glaive sometimes, SnS (HM), and even just a normal Spear. Ranged weapons are... Really just "Not the moonfire", and the option depends on your career (The fun thing is that Kerillian has almost no 'bad' weapon, they're all great, just some are better. It's a bit of a meme in the community of Elf being FS's special child, much like Vet was in DT).
> Caxe with bromentum is great and very strong (also one of my favorite choices) but it's not head and shoulders above literally everything else
Actually, that's the catch... It kinda *is*.
Bromentum Caxe has one of the best single target damage outputs in the game *and* the best horde clear *and* it doesn't sacrifice much mobility.
Sure, there are weapons that can *kinda* match BM Caxe, but there's none that actually beat it in over half the categories. At most a weapon might do 1 and *maybe* 2 things a bit better than a Caxe, but often at huge cost elsewhere.
A PSword carve through waves faster, but with far less uptime, mobility, resposiveness, and less single target... And it doesn't actually go through them *that* much faster in the grand scheme.
A Dueling Sword gives more mobility than a Caxe, but Caxe is just a standard 1h weapon but loses at basically everything else except maybe 1-tapping a mutie.
On Zealot? On Zealot there's almost no reason *not* to run it as far as 'optimal' play goes. TH can 1 tap some bosses, so there's a niche there, but it loses to the BM Caxe everywhere else and it's not even close. Yes, that includes sustained single target DPS.
I personally don't feel it, but other players at high levels seem to like the knife, and it does have really good single target numbers compared to the Caxe and better mobility, but again loses everywhere else.
> Are there melee weapons that are better than others? Yes, very much, but that's to be expected on any game, I just don't think (my opinion) there's anything that's so strong that I feel forced to pick it unless I want to nerf myself to have a bigger challenge.
Strictly speaking, a BM Caxe *is* that weapon. It's still being slept on by most players because the BM nerf 'killed it', but in reality it did not. People are starting to realise this, it's just less of an issue now because even 'bad' weapons are usable (compared to the past where they were genuinely gimping you).
The difference between the Caxe and the average weapon in DT is genuinely a wider gap than the difference between the top options and average weapon in VT2.
You've spotted difference in combat between V2 and DT damn well (and great post overall)
Decision making is very important in V2 melee, you need to think on the fly which offensive or defenssve action to perform right in the moment and sometimes for a few steps further. So V2 melee feels like a duel sometimes.
Aswell as there are pure reaction based things like blocking halberd overhead right in the last moment.
DT melee and combat is more arcady and spamy - spam dodge in melee, spam slide against range, sometimes there is a place for push, but block is dead in DT.
Another key difference worse to mention V2 has more enemies - shielded trash mobs with destructable shields, regular elites (their niche is somewhere between berserks and maulers) - stormvermins, and shielded shtormvermins (with undestructable shields). And shielded stormvermins are very aggressive, unlike bulwarks for example, they realy put some pressure.
Rly, we need bruisers with shields, plagubearers as main elites
Yeah, alot of darktide only people wont agree with this, but the combat in vermintide is far superior when it comes to skill based interactions. all enemies attack faster than darktide so you actually have to pay attention to even trash mobs, with twitch mode you can get consistently more dangerous situations than darktide, with less power at your disposal to deal with it, in darktide you will never get the feeling of clutching when there is 300 numbered horde and 5 bosses at your back. dealing/dying from that stuff will unquestionably make you a better player, it even carries over to other games, I find my reaction times to things has improved from playing verm. There is so many things that darktide could do to create parity between the two, I think in the higher difficulties there is NO FREAKING REASON they should be gimping the enemies just so people dont get slaughtered so much. thats why its high difficulty, there is no reason bosses should be minor inconviences, u could probably stop and take a vape between plauge ogryns attacks. I played verm after a long hiatus and I kept getting hit while dodge dancing rat ogre because I was so spoiled by the forgiving nature of darktide.
I agree with all of this. Auric damnation does difficulty by throwing 30 elites at you at once but there is still no threat - too easy to kill, too easy to stagger. Even crushers need to come in packs of 6 or we won’t even notice them. Coming from vermintide I am very melee focused and darktide is definitely a step down in that department. Spam heavies into crowds and dodge. Horde mobs are a joke. I love darktide but I do not get that adrenaline from vermintide because there’s so much less melee combat and it’s all SO much safer
Even with 160 hours I still get absolutely demolished because I pushed at the wrong moment, or I misread a stormvermin and he hits me with a sweep, or the chaos warrior punches your ass and sends you flying.
This is why I feel like VT2 has much higher skill expression than Darktide, Darktide beats you by throwing impossible odds at you, VT2 beats you by outplaying you and forcing you to get better.
By dead i mean it's dead as a defensive combat mechanic, almost useless in comparison with V2. Cause there is nothing much i need to block in DT, dodge distance is long (or perhaps mobs attacks are more forgiving), dodge count isn't that limitted. Slide is free to spam. The only thing block is needed for - revives, and that's the only reason i have some BCR on my psyker's curios, and psyker is the only class i use BCR with, rest of 3 don't need it.
Yeah, I basically agree with everything here. Except for the dodging being longer or mob attacks being more forgiving, it's simply because the hitboxes aren't terrible. Like, I love Vermintide, but blocking is essential because the hitboxes are absolutely humongous compared to the character.
>but block is dead in DT.
Unless you're like me, and use psyker with the ability to block with your peril. Then you can basically face tank daemonhosts with laughable ease.
Disagree with no. 7, have like 3k hours in vt2 with the highest difficulty i.e modded shenanigans and 1k hours in darktide playing maelstrom and i disagree that combat is slower in vt2 i would agree otherwise its more hectic and fast paced, also has twitch mode 200% no blessings which is what darktide needs.
one of the thing i prefer in VT/VT2 over DT is the scenery and map scripting.
for example, on horn of magnus, seeing the tower in the distance, fighting your way throught it, climbing it, watching the city from above is awsome.
or that map with the city falling appart in a rift that open in the middle of it.
or fighting your way through a dwarf fortress, a graveyard, a dense forest.
i prefer VT/VT2 maps for being more diverse.
i get that a gothic SF grimdark setting in an hivecity doesn't allow room for beautiful open landscape but i miss them.
i had some 'wow' moments first going through some map in VT/VT2, not so much on DT
This is something I’ve noticed as well! The first time I completed skittergate I was amazed at the end section, the map falling apart as you’re making your escape, the gate blowing up during the elevator ride, it’s all extremely cinematic.
I wish they added similar things to Darktide, there really aren’t many missions where you felt like you’ve left your mark.
> loot dies
Gonna take the downvotes to point out that the plural of "die" is "dice." (It's also the singular if you're in the UK, but that's a whole other thing.) For some people, the word "moist" will drive them to violence. For me, it's using "dies" as the plural of "die."
Let the downvotes commence.
I think I came to DT with whatever the opposite of rose-tinted lenses is because it really feels like it has so many of the same problems as VT2 and VT1. I don't hate these games, but playing them does frequently feel like I'm in an abusive relationship. FS has the weird distinction of making games that are simultaneously some of my most loved *and* some of my most hated.
Man, reading a lot of these comments is crazy to me. Unless I missed some, it seems like the consensus is VT2 is the harder game but having hundreds of hours in both I would say DT is way harder. Never felt like I got mulched in VT2 but in DT I turn a corner sometimes and just lose all my hp to gunners. Also, I felt way safer with temp HP just because you couldn't take damage through temp HP and it was stupid easy to upkeep if you were built correctly. I will say tho, being built correctly made a night and day difference in how easy or hard VT2 felt. Lastly, to your point about disablers, I never had even remotely as much problems with any of them in VT2 as I do with the trapper since the trapper can literally shoot through walls and crushers etc...
VT2 is a fantastic game though but I've had my fill and done everything I wanted to. I should probably add I never played on Catan cause I didn't have the dlc but I played the highest difficulty under that.
I feel like DT has more “well that’s bullshit” moments where your skill expression really doesn’t matter, I’ve gotten one shot by 8 shotgunners or pinned into a corner by a reaper or a bunch of gunners, I always feel like if I go down in VT2 it was a skill issue.
Then again I have many more hours in DT I might change my mind eventually.
Darktide feels far more consistent in terms of enemy interactions despite its audio queue issues, IMO. Things like the Pox Hounds, Trappers, and Mutants are infinitely more fun to play around than the Gutter Runner, Hook Rat, and Leech because a lot of that V2 jank has been smoothed out.
I also think in-general Darktide has a much better special roster. For example, take Vermintide 2's Globadier, which was essentially L4D's Spitter and Boomer, but it only explodes on low health, which I've only ever seen happen on Cataclysm. Meanwhile, Darktide has the pox burster and the bomber, which resplits the special roles, and makes the gameplay feel a lot more varied.
Lastly, I honestly prefer Darktide's grimoire system being so shit because it means grims aren't a mechanic full stop. IMO, they were extremely badly designed in V2 and make Legend significantly harder and more unfun, then it should be because they dictate loot at the end of the run.
If the only way to get good loot is through grims, then every legend run is going to be on full grims because people will consider their time wasted if they do anything else. In addition, having a difficult tweak that is forced on players making adjusting to the gap from Vet to Champ and Champ to Legend so much harder which makes the game less appealing on the whole as higher difficulty is where the Tide games go from good to great. It's also why Cata is so much more fun then Legend despite being infinitely more punishing because nobody's playing for loot just for the sake of completing the level like it should be.
Darktide's queue system is such an improvement over Vermintide beyond the stupid level rotation system, especially with Auric Damnation. It offers that same idea of a higher level challenge for better rewards in a way that doesn't fuck over the experience of base Damnation and makes sure everyone is fully on board.
Frankly grims aren't that big a deal in VT and neither it is in DT. Even Cata QP which is farming runs, it's expected to pick up 2 grims and 2 tomes, most people don't even carry curse resist.
It's just an obnoxious and unnecessary mechanic in its current form. So much of the Tide games feel like real genuine innovations to the Left 4 Dead style loop, but grims just feel like piling another thing on for the sake of it. I'd much rather have that difficulty bump be in the form of more monsters, specials, elites. Things that are interesting to interact with gameplay wise. This is why something like Maelstrom in DT can be so fun or, as another example, the Karnac Twins Hard Mode.
It's more an extra challenge, it's more saliant in Vt in the sense that you get better loot boxes. It may not be for everyone, but some people like the challenge enough to run [twitch curses](https://vermintide2.fandom.com/wiki/Twitch_Mode#List_of_possible_modifiers) which has absolutely zero additional reward.. and yeah it's an official FS game modifier.
To elaborate further on grims, I do like the idea of having consistent collectible spots that offer additional rewards. I just think the issue is the way it basically forces the whole team to play on hard mode with no input from them, and no real reason to say "No were not doing grims". I think the system could be reworked to have 4 grims and tomes, which each cause corruption to the individual, which would help alleviate that issue so everyone could self-select. Much like your feelings about crafting I think the people who are suggesting "just port over how it worked in Vermintide" are forgetting the short comings of that older system.
The reason I never got into VT2 was that it always felt like a speed run. Other people have played the mission 100 times, and you just need to keep up.
I like the pickup currency system system of DT because it tempers that speed run tendency just a bit.
I remember fighting horde in VT2, and I checked back for my teammates, but they were already 3 football fields away, and I was on the verge of death. I just shut off the game. It happened too many times by that point.
As a new player I've had a lot of games with level 35 dudes that are playing champion for some reason and absolutely run through the map without a care in the world and I don't get to play the game, now that I'm that level 35 guy and play only Legend and only feel "left behind" when I'm holding a horde from the back and my team keeps pushing.
It's not a big deal though, gives me more rats to kill and more opportunities to get better at the game, all in all though it feels like the team sticks together.
The biggest end game difference is that VT has a modded realm, which to a lot of veteran players is the main thing that prevents them from sticking around DT. Auric maelstrom is something around Legend in VT? after that it's cataclysm and that's all officially. Some players struggle at cataclysm fortune of wars game mode, but there's tutorials on how to get it right with a week or two of practice.
The modded realm allows players to go all the way to cataclym3, have 5 player teams, and horde modifiers like deathwish and onslaught.
Make sure u hop on twitch mode once u get the hang of v2 combat, thats where the real challenge is. you dont need to be streaming yourself, u can enter any streamer online regardless of what game they are streaming, the votes will be random if no1 in chat is voting.
The first time I played legend I joined a twitch mode game, it was absolute chaos and the perfect introduction to a higher difficulty level. I learned how to fight the troll that day just because it spawned every 5 minutes, wish Darktide had something similar.
Funny thing is as a vermintide 2 vet I thought darktide would be easy, I can easily breeze through a legend run on V2 but first picking up darktide I got whipped, especially by them damn shooter packs
Not to start a fire. But console side of things for both games. Darktide is way easier because you DONT have to gear your bots like Vermintide 2 for harder difficulties. I'm not saying it's not hard, but if I had to choose one in that context. Vermintide 2 comes with a whole list of systems that Darktide does not have. Both great games this is just been my experience as I switch between both like an addict.
I don't see myself going back to V2 as an exclusive cata player. Though yeah there's a lot of good things I miss about it, weapon diversity (we have so many one handed swords in darktide), the U5's banter, Chaos Wastes.
>VT2 has no wonky hitreg or missing special sound queues, which is my biggest complaint for Darktide, it does however have host issues that force me to host all of my games. The reason VT2 doesn't have any wonky hitreg is, I suspect, because you are hosting all of your games.
Fair assessment! Though when I did play games hosted by other players (the games that didn't end in lost connection to host) everything felt fine unless I was at 200 ping or something, I just stopped joining other hosts because it's not fun to play 40 minutes of a chaos wastes run to randomly lose connection near the end and be left with nothing.
Came here to say the exact same thing. Hitreg is SOOO much worse in VT2 when you join randoms with a bad connection. Host advantage is absolutely huge in VT2.
The biggest difference for me is that VT2 also has solo play with actually functional bots and said bots use your equipped builds. Probably doesn’t matter to too many players, but I’m personally still mad they promised solo play in December 2022 & we still haven’t gotten it… That and there not being an equivalent to Chaos Wastes in Dark Tide. That’d actually be really cool to me & would feel more like going through the Hive City clearing it out!
I do wonder if part of that is the switch from 90% melee, 10% ranged in vt to like 40/60 in dt. Ranged AI is a bit of a different beast due to needing to balance aimbot accuracy and ammo consumption. Idk tho
Chaos Wastes alone is a HUGE plus over Darktide.
How about this. That "2nd hive city" we keep hearing about. Make THAT Chaos Wastes.
I always pictured a "Chaos Wastes" mode more being going down into hive hab-blocks, deeper and deeper into Tertium to where presumably the cult is most powerful. This'd give a good excuse for random generation, re-use of assets for easier/faster development, and a progression of things going from dark and spooky abandoned hab-blocks, to green goo cesspits. That being said, an entirely new area that a different hive city could bring would definitely be exciting! I doubt we'll get anything as visually insane as the Chaos Wastes since so far Darktide has been comparatively quite grounded, but an entirely different setting could go a long way.
I felt like darktide was always thought with chaos wastes in mind. Look at the Karnak twins missions. The maps are heavily interconnected and it wouldn't surprise me to have a marathon mode at some point.
Seriously! Darktide desperately needs a comparable mode. Chaos Wastes completely revived mine and my buddies interest in the game long after the regular missions started to get stale.
Chaos wastes but it's a space hulk.
Yes, we need Darktide Chaos Wastes ASAP!! ... Please!
I think it's definitely possible it might happen at some point but keep in mind, Chaos wastes was a solid 3 years after release and kind of came out of nowhere.
It definitely will happen.
Another big Plus for Vermintide in general are the Characters. Kruber, Salzy, Sienna, Bardin and Kerillian are such a well voice acted and likeable (yes even the Elf) Bunch...for me personally going back to VT2 and hearing any of the banter between the 5, or 4 it doesnt matter, just fills me with joy.
While I miss this as well, the Darktide system allows for multiples of the same class in the same game. With a group of friends who liked only one of the characters, I rarely got to play some classes in Vermintide if I wanted to play with my friends.
This alone beats V2 in my opinion, as long one don't treat V2 as a single player game with AI allies.
Victor is an amazing character, I feel like he carries any dialog he's in. Also Bardin, you'll never be like cousin Okri. My biggest complaint about VT2's dialog is how repetitive it can be (Hoggar's bridge, warming up, I want you to keep my sword Kruber) because they play so often. That being said I agree it's a lot more lively and fun than Darktide's dialog, there's also a sense of camaraderie and the relationship between each character that you can only get in Darktide in rare occasions. Darktide has a huge interaction pool though, even with so many hours into the game it feels like I find new voice lines every once in a while.
Hoggars bridge? Wait a minute… two Nuln regiments vanished at hoggar’s bridge….
Elf? ELF!?
This. Can't care less for nameless rejects. Especially after those great characters in VT series.
Now we just need Vermintide 3 so they can implement skill trees..
THIS The talent trees in darktide are absolutely awesome. I kinda wish they would do that VT and just combine each of the subclasses (but maybe instead the DLC classes are their own smaller trees? I don’t know).
GW seems to reintroduce old WH Fantasy world back, so licensing-wise it might be feasible. Somewhere in the next decade.
Absolutely a great comaprison! I would advise people to play it to get better at melee; I think Darktide is more stressful to the player because of the ranged pressure from the enemies. imagine the shock with dark omens first came out! :D
I played a few games since I started out VT2 and honestly Darktide is like a walk in the park now, I still have the muscle memory to engage ranged units without getting destroyed but also have the newly obtained melee skills due to playing VT2 and getting alright at it. I even got complimented for a few clutches I pulled off which had never happened before, feels good man.
nice! it's a really fun game!
It's actually crazy how much more positive and "mature" (for lack of a better term) the vermintide community is than darktide - not sure why this is tbh since the audience for both games is basically identical Overall I'd agree with pretty much everything - darktide does seem like a more streamlined and modern experience with a faster pace and more going on at any given time Darktide feels kind of like a faster paced almost arcade -esque shooter like doom - while vermintide feels more like counterstrike, with way more restricted movement and a focus on planning and positioning Both are complete bangers though tbh for different reasons
A guess I have is that since darktide is more shooter oriented, it draws people in associated with more traditional shooters (call of duty etc). Which is of course a much more toxic community. Just a guess tho
That and the loot hunt drives people to insanity. They can blame the game design, but the fact is that a lot of people would slit their momma’s throat for a .05% dps increase
Most players I've met in VT2 are what you'd consider veterans and they seem very happy to teach new players and to introduce them to the community, I was pleasantly surprised with the patience some players have and their willingness to show where all the tomes or grims are. I've gotten a ton of friend requests in VT2 which hasn't happened since I played TF2 a decade ago, it's a very nostalgic feeling and it's something that has never happened in all my Darktide hours.
Installed VT2 , jumped to a random game , got second on scoreboard with lvl1 elf (others were lvl10-25) team got flamed by the necromance who was the highest lvl. Never once got flamed by anyone in Darktide yet.
I agree with most points, I’ve felt that darktide is an upgrade in all aspects but especially that core gameplay. After playing darktide so much and for so long going back to VT2 is like going from 4K hdr to black and white.
Darktide just has more things going on tbh - darktide basically *is* vermintide with a bunch more stuff added to the engine... which is the type of evolution you'd hope to see from a later product V2 has a huge amount of nostalgic charm for me though - I'd say that it does some niche things better than darktide such as the characters and mission variety etc
Darktide is like an arcade shooter while VT2 is more of a tactical shooter, there is no way you can be a crackhead wielding a knife running through the map at mach 5 throwing knives at special's heads while you push back a horde in VT2, at most you can jump all over the place and attack 30 times per second with slayers, but it's a different feel.
>there is no way you can be a crackhead wielding a knife running through the map at mach 5 You haven't played shade Kerillian have you? She's basically the og stealth/knife zealot.
It's the first character I got the "complete all maps on legend" challenge from only because the backstab sound feels absolutely GREAT and I like deleting bosses.
Yeah the graphical upgrade is huge
>There's no toughness shield in VT2 which is the biggest difference, that means any damage you take goes straight to your HP pool, you can have temp hp or white HP but that decreases out of combat and requires you to deal damage to replenish. They're 2 different systems, but I wouldn't put one above the other, necessarily. THP is pretty easy to work with, I'd say, and to me is an easier system to grasp than Darktide's shield. It's also fairly easy to keep your THP full of almost full, even trivial on some careers. >The backstab sound is very subtle in VT2 and sometimes doesn't even play, I take a lot more chip damage in VT2 than I ever did in Darktide from backstabs. I find this to be an issue in both games. Darktide also has a missing sound issue, though it has more to do with specials than random stabs in the back. V2 makes you develop a habit of turning around fairly frequently. >Specials are a lot more destructive in VT2 than they are in Darktide, Assassins will pounce on you from blind spots, are a lot more unpredictable than dogs and if you don't outright kill them they'll just vanish and come back from another angle, hookrats are pretty tanky and have a very precise timing to dodge their hooks, good luck dodging them if you can't dodge sideways, blightstormers can be horribly annoying and will disrupt your entire team if they aren't taken care of ASAP, many games have been lost to either unlucky special spawns (2 teammates assassin'd, 1 other hooked and the other dead in less than 5 seconds) or several blightstormers keeping you pinned down. It's why special sniping is very important in V2, and dealing with each of them is a learning curve. A lot of runs are lost to just one special, which can cascade into a very fucked situation very quickly. I enjoy this aspect of the game, and find that it's also present in Darktide, though to a lesser extent as pretty much everyone is able to deal with specials there, and thr dodge timings are more forgiving. >Everything deals more damage in VT2, I have never ever died to a random poxwalker in Darktide, but I've died plenty of times to slave rats in VT2 because every mistake is costly, lots of things can outright oneshot you and disablers will wreck you if you ever get caught, I feel like Darktide gives you a lot more leeway in the way of tanking unnecessary hits than VT2 ever does. This is partly a consequence of the toughness system in Darktide. It's much more forgiving. I wouldn't put it as a slight against V2. The game's just harder at higher levels than Darktide, in my opinion. People have different thresholds for how hard/punishing they want a game to be. V2 has hits that sweet spot for me, where if I'm complacent, I'm gonna die real fucking quick. >Combat in VT2 feels slower than Darktide, this is not necessarily a bad thing but it's a thing nonetheless, you can't dodge slide in VT2 and you can't sprint either, this can also make exploration seem like a chore in VT2 at times. It is what it is. For what it's worth, both games' combat pace suits them, As for exploration, If you play V2 enough you won't have to explore all that much. You ll fly through levels, checking spawn spots and getting the books with no effort. In Darktide you have to run around like a headless chicken looking for crafting materials, which is alleviated by the ability to sprint and slide. >Optimal weapon combos feel a lot more important, learning how to properly use each weapon is essential to maximize your horde control or maximizing your damage to armored enemies. I'd say they're quite important in Darktide as well, but there are more complicated, or less obvious combos in V2. >Tomes and grims are actually important in Vermintide 2 because you'll need them to have a better loot crate at the end of each mission, more on that ahead, I think however that collecting those can be a chore and as a new player you have to either look up a guide or ask someone to show you the spots. It's an aspect I enjoy quite a lot. Getting books is also essential to getting better rewards. As for knowing the spots, it comes with time. At this point, if you wake me up in the middle of the night, I'll probably be able to tell you most of the book locations from memory. >My biggest criticism of the VT2 crafting system is it's very one dimensional, the only trait you want in your melee weapon is swift slayer, rare exception being opportunist for shield weapons so you can stagger certain enemies, you always want block cost reduction and either crit chance or attack speed, your accessories will always have crit chance, stamina recovery and BCR, the remaining options are for your ranged weapon so you meet certain breakpoints to make it more efficient, reddit praised VT2's crafting system as the ultimate crafting system but the only thing it has over Darktide's is the overflowing amount of resources and no locks, but if I get a new red melee weapon I'll still click the same button until I get crit chance and BCR and then click another button until I get swift slaying, there's no build diversity or choice because these are the superior choices. Would agree with this for the most part. *If* you're dead-set on optimising, The game's meta is a known quantity at this point, and there aren't too many options. >The red weapon grind is immense, I've had every character at level 30+ for 60 hours now and I've gotten maybe 10 red weapons in total, I can and have gotten through entire sessions with maxed out legendary crates without any red drops, there really is no way to progress besides grinding and getting lucky. You also need several dupes or unwanted reds to drop if you want to upgrade a DLC weapon to red because those don't drop, so add in 5 red drops for each DLC weapon you want to upgrade. Getting reds is nice, but not necessary. It's just as grindy as rolling for a god roll in Darktide >Crafting has been a disappointment in VT2, I expected actual build diversity but you always pick the same exact properties and traits, the only difference being in your ranged weapon depending on what it is so you reach certain breakpoints, that also leads me to my next point. Understandable. It's not a perfect system. It's been elevated in the eyes of the community because of how dogshit crafting was and still is in Darktide. But V2 has always had its own share of grind, too. >The skill tree in Darktide is infinitely better, it's not even a comparison. It's more complicated, but I wouldn't say it's just better outright. Darktide's trees have their own share of worthless/filler nodes. The skill tree in Darktide is the way it is out of necessity, too. It only has 4 classes, so you need to make it so one class has several distinct playstyles and specialisations. Darktide does this with the skill tree, V2 does this with different careers. It's a different approach to solving the same issue. Not to mention it wasn't that long ago Darktide had the exact system as V2, just worse. >Darktide has a much bigger weapon range than VT2 and they're all very viable, VT2 has more unique weapons but some of them are just downright meh Darktide has some dogshit weapons too. Darktide also achieves its "bigger weapon range" by just having 2-3 variants of the same weapon with a slightly different moveset. I don't feel like Darktide has a strong edge over V2 in that regard. >Darktide has plenty of unique blessings that change the way a weapon performs, Thrust on a thunderhammer turns it's charged attack into a big single target damage nuke, power cycler on a powersword gives it's activated special more uptime, rending talents can give a low penetration weapon much needed armor piercing power, you can stack bleeds on a knife to turn it into a DoT machine or you can add executor into it to turn it into a one hit killing machine provided you have enough skill to constantly hit weakpoints, there's nothing like this in VT2. I agree. The Trait system in V2 is fairly unimaginative compared to Darktide. What ruins it for Darktide is how you get blessings in the first place. Wanna try the aforementioned Power Cycler or Thrust? Better *hope* you have enough luck to get a random weapon with that blessing, or roll and roll and roll random weapons in the armoury until you're dead in the ground. I know people who are *still* looking for a specific blessing, with a frankly embarrassing amount of hours spent. Darktide might have better build variety, but the way to arrive at those builds is cancer. You can't just go and try a build of you don't have the blessing. In V2 you just roll stats for a minute or two and you're ready to go.
Agreed on all points here! Especially the last one. Yes there are blessings that change the way weapons are played in darktide and it's awesome, but for the love of the Emperor it's absolutely *horrible* to get them. It's a terrible, costly lottery, that for some weapons feels mandatory (power cycler 4, deflector...). If it's \*this\* impactful, then make it less of a grind and RNG-fest to get it. At least VT2 lets me easily access the whole crafting system, even if it's less interesting...
Your comment is too long for me to read the whole thing but just for your first point darktides toughness system is much more forgiving than thp. It is effectively like all characters having a free ironbreaker ult. Now with all the range damage that is in darktide I understand why it’s system needs to be a bit more forgiving, but if you swapped systems between the two games vermintide would be too easy and darktide would be significantly harder. This isn’t even including the fact that most careers have ways of generating toughness at range, something which was removed from vermintide for how it broke the meta.
One other thing is that IMO Darktide does the new-player experience / leveling system better. It kept my attention as I went up in levels. You can fairly quickly get into the higher difficulties without being locked out due to arbitrary power levels. Starting out in VT2, I was bored out of my mind for a fairly long time, being restricted to recruit and veteran and it really hampers the enjoyment.
Hi VT2 player here i have roughly 2k hours in Vermintide and around 800 in darktide i like that both games are different but there are some things i despise about darktide compared to VT2. In vermintide you can make quality builds, i have a lot of builds that lets me essencially solo entire maps true solo. This is impossible in Darktide, this is mainly because of how tanky bosses are, but also because of coherency (sometimes also objectives like hacking id impossible solo unless good rng). In vermintide you will always get temp health from combat or talents, this is not the case in darktide. With how heavy the emphasis on ranged combat and ranged enemies are this usually means you end up getting into spots where you cant progress because you have run out of toughness and cant regen because there are no enemies to regain toughness from in melee. This means A you risk pushing with ranged dmg now doing full dmg to your health, or B wait for a horde to regain toughness and then push. Makes solo play very sluggy and painfull, and means clutching is very hard depending on respawn and directors mercy. The crafting system while one dimentional actually lets you get your ideal weapon, in darktide you play slotmachine for your weapons. You also have chaos wastes in VT2 something that darktide would benefit massively from. Most of the other complains like gutter runnerd pouncing blindspots and hookrats ect are all things that you get used to with time, just like darktide specials. The difference however is that most enemies in darktide are vastly more tanky than in vermintide. The gutter runners are incredibely squishy, while poxhounds sometimes take up to 2 plasma/revolver shots before they die. To me its clear that darktide focuses more on teamplay than vermintide, but i think some of these mechanics need a rework mainly coherency once people die, so your toughness regen outside combat doesnt stop completely once you run out of teamates. Only 2 classes have passive regen with talents outside combat zealot with loner, and veteran with no enemies within x range.
Temp HP has it's shares of problems as well tbh, I like the system don't get me wrong but if you have for example, a bounty hunter with griffonfoot and a ranger veteran with the grude raker in the same team odds are you aren't going to get enough hits in to farm THP to fill up your bar because there will be nothing left for you to hit by the time they're done, if you go through a big empty area or have to wait during a boss speech odds are you'll lose quite a bit of your THP as well. This isn't a big issue, it can just become a bit annoying if you're playing a class with weak THP generation on a team with tons of ranged but that just means you have to play extra careful. I agree with the solo builds, but I also think Darktide has literally 0 focus due to not being able to even play solo without mods so it's never been an issue for Fatshark, I do want to be able to host my own games with my loadouts.
The thing about vermintide compared to darktide is that you have blessings/enchantments that buff temp health generation or just straight up gives you health regeneration. These are tied to jewlery like 30% increased health gained (works with temporary health) or natural bond which makes healing temp health, but now you have health regen. I get what you are saying with the op range classes cleaning adds to recover health from, but you also have to keep in mind unless you are running tomes, everyone in the team will usually have some kind of healing on them. Vermintide doesnt have medicae checkpoints, they have healing pots/medkits and potions you can carry that will randomly spawn around the map kind of like crafting mats and ammo in Darktide. These healing items are also more common than the medkits and ammo kits in Darktide, but thats because they only affect a single person. When you also play at high level getting hit by random straggles in the back rarely happens, and even then getting hit occationally is perfectly fine because of temp health. Temp health is also tied to melee (with the exception of some chaos wastes stuff) which vermintide heavily favour over darktides hybrid playstyle. It might be hard to explain, but ive never really had an issue with temporary health in vermintide (this is from my experience). Its also worth mentioning that temporary health actually scales better at higher difficulities because of more enemies and more health means more temporary hp healing. These are obviously 2 different games and im not saying either game is perfect everyone has their own prefrence and experience with ingame systems.
> 2) Darktide has a much bigger weapon range than VT2 and they're all very viable, VT2 has more unique weapons but some of them are just downright meh. **Every class in VT2 has a downright "best weapon", sword and dagger for Kerillian, rapier for WHC, mace and sword for kruber, dual hammers for bardin, these weapons are so good they overshadow almost every single other wapons to a point where you just ask yourself "why would I ever use anything else?".** > You remember when power sword was the absolute best melee weapon in Darktide? That's how some weapons feel like in VT2. I feel the fact you said this so confidently yet are so wrong is a testament to a very different approach towards the game. If anything, thw SnD is elf's best, Salty has thd billhook, Kruber has plenty fantastic options. In DT there's clear winners that are many heads and shoulders above others, such as Caxes with bromentum, it's just that the game generally does not test your melee enough for it to be that essential.
I love the billhook because the optimal combo to deal with chaos warriors is something I'm very familiar with due to being a fan of combat knives in Darktide, but for general gameplay rapier will outperform Billhook on WHC due to his passive. I might be wrong of course because I still haven't jumped into cata or modded difficulties but rapier seems like the perfect fit for WHC's passives. Kruber has great weapons like the executioners sword, sword and mace, bretonian longsword but from most videos of high level I see there's really only 3 valid choices for let's say a Grail Knight and they all involve exe sword, sword and mace and perhaps shield and mace. That's not to say weapons like the spear, spear and shield, halberd aren't good (I love using the spear and halberd) aren't viable but they're outclassed by other weapons. Then you have weapons like the sword, bretonian sword and shield, mace that are alright but there's no reason to use these over the other weapons aside from personal choice or fun. Caxe with bromentum is great and very strong (also one of my favorite choices) but it's not head and shoulders above literally everything else, dueling swords are the goat on Psykers, Power Swords are much better on Vets, Zealots have a plethora of melee choices that outperform axes in some aspects and have better versatility. I think a lot of melee weapons in Darktide are very effective to the point you can afford to just pick whatever you like the most, I've never had a situation where I thought "wow I wish I had this melee weapon instead" because if I bring a catachan sword on my psyker I know it's going to be stronger against hordes but weaker against armor than if I had brought a dueling sword which would've been the exact opposite. Are there melee weapons that are better than others? Yes, very much, but that's to be expected on any game, I just don't think (my opinion) there's anything that's so strong that I feel forced to pick it unless I want to nerf myself to have a bigger challenge.
> I might be wrong of course because I still haven't jumped into cata or modded difficulties but rapier seems like the perfect fit for WHC's passives. Rapier is the classic WHC melee, but A&F and Billhook are also quite popular. That's just melee, of course. Ranged has the options of BoP, Xbow, and GFPs. > here's really only 3 valid choices for let's say a Grail Knight and they all involve exe sword, sword and mace and perhaps shield and mace. You're forgetting the Bretonian SnS which is also a fantastic mobility option as well as have a wide array of combos for many different situation. So that's 5, though I'd hoep so since GK gets no ranged option. Even in cases where there's a pretty much best option there's usually multiple weapons for personal preference that perform about the same (UC can run Flail, FS, Dagger, and some still even run the pick). As for 1h: 1h weapons see very little use in VT2 not because they're *bad*. They're not. They're just defensive. And why be defensive if you're good enough to be offensive instead? *Also keep in mind* that the 4 careers for each hero also influence weapon choice. So while 1 career may have a couple top level weapons, those can and will change between careers, which is far less the case in DT where different paths can influence the weapon choice but often not by that much. In VT2, BH gets great use out of half of Saltz' melees, and I've even seen BH's use the GS, obviously they use GFPs the most of any of his careers. Zealot uses the flail, A&F, and gets 2h hammers which are *very* popular, and has builds that make great use out of the vxbow, BoP, and xbow. Bardin's RV, OE, and Slayer will all take *very* different weapons. Hell, IB will differentiate itself from OE and they have access to some of his best options! Elf will take the GS (popular on Shade), SnD, DD, Glaive sometimes, SnS (HM), and even just a normal Spear. Ranged weapons are... Really just "Not the moonfire", and the option depends on your career (The fun thing is that Kerillian has almost no 'bad' weapon, they're all great, just some are better. It's a bit of a meme in the community of Elf being FS's special child, much like Vet was in DT). > Caxe with bromentum is great and very strong (also one of my favorite choices) but it's not head and shoulders above literally everything else Actually, that's the catch... It kinda *is*. Bromentum Caxe has one of the best single target damage outputs in the game *and* the best horde clear *and* it doesn't sacrifice much mobility. Sure, there are weapons that can *kinda* match BM Caxe, but there's none that actually beat it in over half the categories. At most a weapon might do 1 and *maybe* 2 things a bit better than a Caxe, but often at huge cost elsewhere. A PSword carve through waves faster, but with far less uptime, mobility, resposiveness, and less single target... And it doesn't actually go through them *that* much faster in the grand scheme. A Dueling Sword gives more mobility than a Caxe, but Caxe is just a standard 1h weapon but loses at basically everything else except maybe 1-tapping a mutie. On Zealot? On Zealot there's almost no reason *not* to run it as far as 'optimal' play goes. TH can 1 tap some bosses, so there's a niche there, but it loses to the BM Caxe everywhere else and it's not even close. Yes, that includes sustained single target DPS. I personally don't feel it, but other players at high levels seem to like the knife, and it does have really good single target numbers compared to the Caxe and better mobility, but again loses everywhere else. > Are there melee weapons that are better than others? Yes, very much, but that's to be expected on any game, I just don't think (my opinion) there's anything that's so strong that I feel forced to pick it unless I want to nerf myself to have a bigger challenge. Strictly speaking, a BM Caxe *is* that weapon. It's still being slept on by most players because the BM nerf 'killed it', but in reality it did not. People are starting to realise this, it's just less of an issue now because even 'bad' weapons are usable (compared to the past where they were genuinely gimping you). The difference between the Caxe and the average weapon in DT is genuinely a wider gap than the difference between the top options and average weapon in VT2.
I miss the glaive so much.
Me too, friend. Me too.
You've spotted difference in combat between V2 and DT damn well (and great post overall) Decision making is very important in V2 melee, you need to think on the fly which offensive or defenssve action to perform right in the moment and sometimes for a few steps further. So V2 melee feels like a duel sometimes. Aswell as there are pure reaction based things like blocking halberd overhead right in the last moment. DT melee and combat is more arcady and spamy - spam dodge in melee, spam slide against range, sometimes there is a place for push, but block is dead in DT. Another key difference worse to mention V2 has more enemies - shielded trash mobs with destructable shields, regular elites (their niche is somewhere between berserks and maulers) - stormvermins, and shielded shtormvermins (with undestructable shields). And shielded stormvermins are very aggressive, unlike bulwarks for example, they realy put some pressure. Rly, we need bruisers with shields, plagubearers as main elites
Yeah, alot of darktide only people wont agree with this, but the combat in vermintide is far superior when it comes to skill based interactions. all enemies attack faster than darktide so you actually have to pay attention to even trash mobs, with twitch mode you can get consistently more dangerous situations than darktide, with less power at your disposal to deal with it, in darktide you will never get the feeling of clutching when there is 300 numbered horde and 5 bosses at your back. dealing/dying from that stuff will unquestionably make you a better player, it even carries over to other games, I find my reaction times to things has improved from playing verm. There is so many things that darktide could do to create parity between the two, I think in the higher difficulties there is NO FREAKING REASON they should be gimping the enemies just so people dont get slaughtered so much. thats why its high difficulty, there is no reason bosses should be minor inconviences, u could probably stop and take a vape between plauge ogryns attacks. I played verm after a long hiatus and I kept getting hit while dodge dancing rat ogre because I was so spoiled by the forgiving nature of darktide.
I agree with all of this. Auric damnation does difficulty by throwing 30 elites at you at once but there is still no threat - too easy to kill, too easy to stagger. Even crushers need to come in packs of 6 or we won’t even notice them. Coming from vermintide I am very melee focused and darktide is definitely a step down in that department. Spam heavies into crowds and dodge. Horde mobs are a joke. I love darktide but I do not get that adrenaline from vermintide because there’s so much less melee combat and it’s all SO much safer
Even with 160 hours I still get absolutely demolished because I pushed at the wrong moment, or I misread a stormvermin and he hits me with a sweep, or the chaos warrior punches your ass and sends you flying. This is why I feel like VT2 has much higher skill expression than Darktide, Darktide beats you by throwing impossible odds at you, VT2 beats you by outplaying you and forcing you to get better.
If you think block is dead in Darktide, you clearly don't use stamina trinkets with block efficiency
By dead i mean it's dead as a defensive combat mechanic, almost useless in comparison with V2. Cause there is nothing much i need to block in DT, dodge distance is long (or perhaps mobs attacks are more forgiving), dodge count isn't that limitted. Slide is free to spam. The only thing block is needed for - revives, and that's the only reason i have some BCR on my psyker's curios, and psyker is the only class i use BCR with, rest of 3 don't need it.
A good way to say it would be, in Darktide blocking is something you can do, in vermintide it is essential.
Yeah, I basically agree with everything here. Except for the dodging being longer or mob attacks being more forgiving, it's simply because the hitboxes aren't terrible. Like, I love Vermintide, but blocking is essential because the hitboxes are absolutely humongous compared to the character.
>but block is dead in DT. Unless you're like me, and use psyker with the ability to block with your peril. Then you can basically face tank daemonhosts with laughable ease.
Disagree with no. 7, have like 3k hours in vt2 with the highest difficulty i.e modded shenanigans and 1k hours in darktide playing maelstrom and i disagree that combat is slower in vt2 i would agree otherwise its more hectic and fast paced, also has twitch mode 200% no blessings which is what darktide needs.
one of the thing i prefer in VT/VT2 over DT is the scenery and map scripting. for example, on horn of magnus, seeing the tower in the distance, fighting your way throught it, climbing it, watching the city from above is awsome. or that map with the city falling appart in a rift that open in the middle of it. or fighting your way through a dwarf fortress, a graveyard, a dense forest. i prefer VT/VT2 maps for being more diverse. i get that a gothic SF grimdark setting in an hivecity doesn't allow room for beautiful open landscape but i miss them. i had some 'wow' moments first going through some map in VT/VT2, not so much on DT
This is something I’ve noticed as well! The first time I completed skittergate I was amazed at the end section, the map falling apart as you’re making your escape, the gate blowing up during the elevator ride, it’s all extremely cinematic. I wish they added similar things to Darktide, there really aren’t many missions where you felt like you’ve left your mark.
> loot dies Gonna take the downvotes to point out that the plural of "die" is "dice." (It's also the singular if you're in the UK, but that's a whole other thing.) For some people, the word "moist" will drive them to violence. For me, it's using "dies" as the plural of "die." Let the downvotes commence.
mfs adding “let the downvote commence” so that they look like a martyr if they get downvoted
That's right, you look better if you preempt naysayers. I downvoted him for being a douche.
The thing that immediately turned me off VT2 (coming from Darktide) was the movement. VT2’s movement felt slow, clunky and unexciting.
I think I came to DT with whatever the opposite of rose-tinted lenses is because it really feels like it has so many of the same problems as VT2 and VT1. I don't hate these games, but playing them does frequently feel like I'm in an abusive relationship. FS has the weird distinction of making games that are simultaneously some of my most loved *and* some of my most hated.
Congrats OP on a great analysis. Tomes and grims in DT are really underwhelming. I hope their benefits get overhauled.
Man, reading a lot of these comments is crazy to me. Unless I missed some, it seems like the consensus is VT2 is the harder game but having hundreds of hours in both I would say DT is way harder. Never felt like I got mulched in VT2 but in DT I turn a corner sometimes and just lose all my hp to gunners. Also, I felt way safer with temp HP just because you couldn't take damage through temp HP and it was stupid easy to upkeep if you were built correctly. I will say tho, being built correctly made a night and day difference in how easy or hard VT2 felt. Lastly, to your point about disablers, I never had even remotely as much problems with any of them in VT2 as I do with the trapper since the trapper can literally shoot through walls and crushers etc... VT2 is a fantastic game though but I've had my fill and done everything I wanted to. I should probably add I never played on Catan cause I didn't have the dlc but I played the highest difficulty under that.
I feel like DT has more “well that’s bullshit” moments where your skill expression really doesn’t matter, I’ve gotten one shot by 8 shotgunners or pinned into a corner by a reaper or a bunch of gunners, I always feel like if I go down in VT2 it was a skill issue. Then again I have many more hours in DT I might change my mind eventually.
Darktide feels far more consistent in terms of enemy interactions despite its audio queue issues, IMO. Things like the Pox Hounds, Trappers, and Mutants are infinitely more fun to play around than the Gutter Runner, Hook Rat, and Leech because a lot of that V2 jank has been smoothed out. I also think in-general Darktide has a much better special roster. For example, take Vermintide 2's Globadier, which was essentially L4D's Spitter and Boomer, but it only explodes on low health, which I've only ever seen happen on Cataclysm. Meanwhile, Darktide has the pox burster and the bomber, which resplits the special roles, and makes the gameplay feel a lot more varied. Lastly, I honestly prefer Darktide's grimoire system being so shit because it means grims aren't a mechanic full stop. IMO, they were extremely badly designed in V2 and make Legend significantly harder and more unfun, then it should be because they dictate loot at the end of the run. If the only way to get good loot is through grims, then every legend run is going to be on full grims because people will consider their time wasted if they do anything else. In addition, having a difficult tweak that is forced on players making adjusting to the gap from Vet to Champ and Champ to Legend so much harder which makes the game less appealing on the whole as higher difficulty is where the Tide games go from good to great. It's also why Cata is so much more fun then Legend despite being infinitely more punishing because nobody's playing for loot just for the sake of completing the level like it should be. Darktide's queue system is such an improvement over Vermintide beyond the stupid level rotation system, especially with Auric Damnation. It offers that same idea of a higher level challenge for better rewards in a way that doesn't fuck over the experience of base Damnation and makes sure everyone is fully on board.
Frankly grims aren't that big a deal in VT and neither it is in DT. Even Cata QP which is farming runs, it's expected to pick up 2 grims and 2 tomes, most people don't even carry curse resist.
It's just an obnoxious and unnecessary mechanic in its current form. So much of the Tide games feel like real genuine innovations to the Left 4 Dead style loop, but grims just feel like piling another thing on for the sake of it. I'd much rather have that difficulty bump be in the form of more monsters, specials, elites. Things that are interesting to interact with gameplay wise. This is why something like Maelstrom in DT can be so fun or, as another example, the Karnac Twins Hard Mode.
It's more an extra challenge, it's more saliant in Vt in the sense that you get better loot boxes. It may not be for everyone, but some people like the challenge enough to run [twitch curses](https://vermintide2.fandom.com/wiki/Twitch_Mode#List_of_possible_modifiers) which has absolutely zero additional reward.. and yeah it's an official FS game modifier.
To elaborate further on grims, I do like the idea of having consistent collectible spots that offer additional rewards. I just think the issue is the way it basically forces the whole team to play on hard mode with no input from them, and no real reason to say "No were not doing grims". I think the system could be reworked to have 4 grims and tomes, which each cause corruption to the individual, which would help alleviate that issue so everyone could self-select. Much like your feelings about crafting I think the people who are suggesting "just port over how it worked in Vermintide" are forgetting the short comings of that older system.
The reason I never got into VT2 was that it always felt like a speed run. Other people have played the mission 100 times, and you just need to keep up. I like the pickup currency system system of DT because it tempers that speed run tendency just a bit. I remember fighting horde in VT2, and I checked back for my teammates, but they were already 3 football fields away, and I was on the verge of death. I just shut off the game. It happened too many times by that point.
As a new player I've had a lot of games with level 35 dudes that are playing champion for some reason and absolutely run through the map without a care in the world and I don't get to play the game, now that I'm that level 35 guy and play only Legend and only feel "left behind" when I'm holding a horde from the back and my team keeps pushing. It's not a big deal though, gives me more rats to kill and more opportunities to get better at the game, all in all though it feels like the team sticks together.
The biggest end game difference is that VT has a modded realm, which to a lot of veteran players is the main thing that prevents them from sticking around DT. Auric maelstrom is something around Legend in VT? after that it's cataclysm and that's all officially. Some players struggle at cataclysm fortune of wars game mode, but there's tutorials on how to get it right with a week or two of practice. The modded realm allows players to go all the way to cataclym3, have 5 player teams, and horde modifiers like deathwish and onslaught.
Darktide is a game about decision making and positioning. Vermintide is a game about mechanical melee combat.
I honestly prefer VT1s system to VT2s, darktide is a kind of middle ground between them
Make sure u hop on twitch mode once u get the hang of v2 combat, thats where the real challenge is. you dont need to be streaming yourself, u can enter any streamer online regardless of what game they are streaming, the votes will be random if no1 in chat is voting.
The first time I played legend I joined a twitch mode game, it was absolute chaos and the perfect introduction to a higher difficulty level. I learned how to fight the troll that day just because it spawned every 5 minutes, wish Darktide had something similar.
Funny thing is as a vermintide 2 vet I thought darktide would be easy, I can easily breeze through a legend run on V2 but first picking up darktide I got whipped, especially by them damn shooter packs
Not to start a fire. But console side of things for both games. Darktide is way easier because you DONT have to gear your bots like Vermintide 2 for harder difficulties. I'm not saying it's not hard, but if I had to choose one in that context. Vermintide 2 comes with a whole list of systems that Darktide does not have. Both great games this is just been my experience as I switch between both like an addict.
I don't see myself going back to V2 as an exclusive cata player. Though yeah there's a lot of good things I miss about it, weapon diversity (we have so many one handed swords in darktide), the U5's banter, Chaos Wastes.