Warhammer 40K: Darktide (2022) (4-player co-op from Fatshark, the Vermintide devs)

I thought that was a pretty weird fit as well.

This game…
I could play 3 missions without issue. I have to say, the combat is even better than in VT2.

But in another mission I had a second crash, 10 minutes in.
Then upon trying to open the game again to connect to the same mission (if it was possible), it crashed and my computer rebooted O_o
And then I tried game, and I had a crash when clicking on a mission icon on the mission selector??

The loot acquisition in this game is fucking terrible. I wait an hour for the next store refresh and it serves up 7 dueling swords (out of 10 items, I think?). On top of that, I’ve only ever seen one voidstrike or surge staff my entire time playing the game (I’m L17 now). All I get are claw and dueling swords and various guns.

It’s extremely frustrating since those staves kind of define how my psyker plays. I am fine with chasing a staff with a particular set of stats I’m interesting in but not even being able to have one available is seriously getting on my nerves at this point.

This is what I get, refresh after refresh.

And a sample of the next refresh:

I’m angry i have a little over two hours in this thing, so i can’t return it, because it just ain’t finished. Not to mention it reeks of Tencent (forced early release, complete with a custom currency that you have to buy in set amounts) F2P predatory bullshit.

I’ve crashed like four times this morning as well. No subclasses, no crafting system, limited missions, and all that indicate you just might be right. Gotta get it out for the holidays, though! :)

So, by the time this game gets the development time it should have had, it will leave gamepass, I suppose.

Heh, my psyker was 26 before I found the staff that draws the explodey circle on the ground.

In VT2 you could craft any weapon as a gray to try it out, then upgrade it.

You get rewards as you level, right? you would think they would give you different weapons as you do, to try them out. But yeah, being able to create basic versions sounds nice. Or simply having all basic weapon types available for purchase at any time.

Yep. I have a large collection of autopistols thanks to it. I’m about ready to send the Emperor a cease and desist.

That is ridiculous, since that is the first staff you unlock (why the Psyker doesn’t start with a staff I have no idea). The silver lining is that staff is terrible, so at least you weren’t missing much. :D

In theory, this system should be better than the random lootbox system they had before for giving players less crap that they didn’t want, and it’s interesting that almost nobody I’ve talked to, on and off this forum, likes it very much. Maybe just unrandomizing it a bit to ensure you’re always getting more options would fix it? Or maybe letting you reroll for a small price? That would mean less grinding though, so I guess that’s unlikely.

Maybe it’s perfectly designed to be just frustrating enough!

It could be paired with something. Maybe the “Emperor’s Gift” loot pool would be limited to the unique class gear least, maybe even give you an option of a few different ones to pick or something.

The loot chase should be finding the stats, traits, and blessings you want, IMO. I should always be able to find a particular category of item that I want, even if it’s just grey quality.

I have to confess, with a good computer, the game sure looks beautiful. Better than I thought from watching the trailers. I noticed a pair of settings go up to ‘Extreme’ instead of High, and yeah it looks ever purtier, although I wonder how practical it is, because in some maps the fog effects are denser so it hinders your player performance.

Also, it looks even nicer with the auto-hdr from Win11. Try it if you have a hdr monitor.

On the other hand, it seems it has less content (classes, types of environments) than VT2, so it’s going to be less replayable, at least until new dlc comes in.

Yes, seconded. Although as I learned in another thread, how well auto HDR looks is very display-dependent where it can look like butt even on a nice monitor. In my experience, Darktide looks great with it on.

I had a lot of crashes when I first started playing. It was actually so bad I couldn’t make it past character creation. I was about ready to (really regrettably, I loved Vermintide 2) reach for the refund button, but when I launched Darktide for the nth time (after restarting, updating drivers, etc) and the crash forced my PC to restart, I knew the problem wasn’t with the game. I had been getting the odd CTD playing MW2 the past few weeks and had my suspicions, but a full system restart pretty much confirmed it - there was something wrong with my PC.

Long story short, I was running with DOCP enabled in my BIOS and decided to turn that off and (severely) underclock my RAM to boot. Problem gone (yaey! ~ish). While I was there I also realised I hadn’t updated my BIOS in almost 2 years. So I flashed it to latest, re-enabled DOCP and fortunately the problem remained solved, without the sacrifice of any performance.

I wonder if Darktide is just so CPU/RAM/GPU intensive it’s pushing PCs past the point they’re usually taxed and what appear to be otherwise stable systems start falling over. I literally went from non-stop crashes to playing it pretty solidly this weekend without a single issue, all because (apparently) my mobo didn’t want to play nice with my RAM without special… BIOS sauce, or something.

Really enjoying the game, do miss those rattys tho. They had more personality. Future DLC/sequel suggestion: Greentide.

For me, capping my frame-rate to 60 greatly reduces my crashes. So there is something to that, about it over-taxing your system or something.

Could be! Although it doesn’t seem to be taxing my system too much – my computer usually turns into a space heater when it’s being pushed and I haven’t noticed anything like that. I hadn’t had much in the way of crashes until yesterday, but it seems like it’s one map in particular that was the culprit (I don’t know the name of it offhand). Zero problems the rest of my play session.

I want to like this.

The minute to minute gameplay is great but it get repetitive. There are 3 levels. 1) Boss w/shield and knockback. 2) escort the team mate carrying something. 3) use a doohickey to find something. Throw in fighting along the way. I will play a round and then wonder why I want to queue up again.

I feel like I really need “a grind” to push me forward. The grind to collect foozles, or new abilities, or to try new characters or get better loot.

My Darktide Review:

Gameplay: Great
Loot Meta Grind Game: Awful. I ended up playing Battlefield 2042 instead this weekend.

Once upon a time, a horde shooter was just something you jumped in to. There were no grinds for better loot, no better gear (just what you grabbed in the level), and when the level/campaign was done, you got a final scoreboard showing how many mooks you killed and how many your friends killed. Your reward was that you got to brag about surviving the campaign and talking to your friends about those “whew that was close” moments or trash-talking inferior play.

Now it’s all about logging on and sitting around the epic gear shop until it refreshes. Actually playing the levels is all about efficiently scoring equipment with slightly higher numbers. The gameplay is less polished and tweaked because it doesn’t matter - it’s merely a shiny object delivery slot machine.

Guess something got lost on the way from here to there.

With the new update in Gamepass, I stopped crashing upon exiting the game! But I still can crash inside the game!
Progress?