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

Can it be more my DEATY?

Disguised
Early
Access
of
The
Year

Because the core is good, but the fact they had a delay and later they decided to not release the console version now and wait for later gives you a hint. This is a Early Access release on PC. The lack of crafting at release, the very few maps, all the buginess, the lack of solo play (confirmed now it’s coming later), it’s clear the game wasn’t ready for final release.

Agree 100%. To me it’s clearly an Early Access title, just not labeled as such. Kind of shitty of them, honestly, but whatever. If I just look at it in a vacuum and not compare it previous titles they’ve launched, it’s an okay (if buggy) $40 game.

… or Gamepass expt :)

This is why we often return to L4D because that’s literally all there is.

The latest update decreased substantially my crashes, from 75% of the missions to something like 25%.

In fact, now I could play more these last two days, I have one comment to do:
Apart from lacking in variety of maps and environments, the game is lacking some epicness that was in VT2. The graphics, atmosphere and big mobs needed are there, but it is missing some missions with cool set pieces like Righteous Stand, Screaming Bell or of course, Skittergate.

Man, few times, few times I’ve seen a game which such dichotomy:

Good:
-the core gameplay, moving, shooting and killing is so good. World class. Both in feel and in nuance.
-the graphics, atmosphere and art are also great
-music rocks

Bad:
-Repetitive, few levels (it should have near double of what it has)
-As said above, it’s lacking some good, epic set pieces as finales, and some decent bosses.
-Character variety is poor (only 4 classes, no subclasses)
-Crafting is barely in there, pure EA in that regard
-Very slow loading 3d game hub, a simple 2d menu without other players moving around would have been SO much better. Somehow, even changing class character will make it load again, despite already being a in an online session on the hub.
-Item acquisition is so bad. You can’t create weapons, you have to buy them at a store that refreshes every (real time) hour, and the variety is super limited. For example, I want to try the power sword, I want to buy one of them, never mind one that is good, but I couldn’t in the last three hours. It has not appeared in those three tries.
-Difficulty level gating should be higher. I’m tired of failing missions at the third difficulty because a level 4 noob entered, not knowing that difficulty 3 of 5 doesn’t mean 'normal ’ difficulty like in other games, you are supposed to start from zero and rise up slowly.
-The stability at the start was horrible, although I think in a pair of weeks it will be finally fixed.

Holy shit, that’s ridiculous. Thanks for saying that - I was searching the thread trying to figure out if this would be fun for my co-op buddy and me but “forced to play with randos” is exactly the opposite of how we want to spend our evenings.

This does run below 60fps for me fairly often - upgrade excuse!

@TurinTur NB the following isn’t an attempt to pick your post apart specifically, but you echo a lot of general complaints and this is my take on them.

I think it’s fine, though more is always better. There’s a bit more going on here than I’ve seen in other games. I think yesterday like 60% of available missions had the ‘dark’ modifier (no lights obvs, also more demonhosts I think?) which honestly changed the feel of them drastically. I was the only one packing a lasgun with a torch on it, it made me a central part of the team which was actually sorta cool. It was unique, and refreshing.

I don’t know how many of these modifiers they have up their sleeves but I’d love to see more!

Skittergate was almost universally hated by the the Vermintide 2 community. It was the biggest, longest level by far coupled with the biggest risk, and no additional rewards. Even the other boss fights in V2 were punishing to newbs. It didn’t quite get to the ‘you must watch youtube videos to be able to play this’ stage, but it wasn’t far off and I think that’s terrible design.

That said, there’s probably a better middleground than what happened here; the two assassination levels have identical finales. The minibosses (nurgle thingy, plague ogryn) are nowhere near as threating as the V2 ones. I’d agree they swung too hard in the other direction from ultra-hardcore to ultra-accessible.

There’s a lot of gameplay to be had out of those 4 and I feel that if you haven’t hit max level on all of them (and I haven’t, not even close! Though I’ve admittedly been chasing penances on my sharpshooter) I think this is a complaint for the sake of complaining. I kinda feel they did a better job here of make each more distinct than in V2, the Ogryn especially is such a delightfully different experience in many ways to anything else on offer, and that’s just great.

I don’t feel like it’s so bad, though if they were a bit wiser they probably should’ve left off those ‘coming soon’ buttons. V2 was all about the 3x grimoire completion for best chest rewards and honestly that mechanic really sucked.

The perks and such are kinda nice but I don’t feel they’re make or break, really. It’s not a looter shooter, but it is a bit irritating to have gear you’ve unlocked hidden behind some weird time gating mechanism.

On the one hand, yes, 100%. On the other, my level 4 zealot clutch saved a bunch of L26+ idiots on malice difficulty through a horde, several specials and a bunch of elites. The ‘holy shit’ in the chat window when I finally got to rezzing someone, I absolutely adore moments like that.

They’re adding private mode (for min 2 players) ‘soon’. A weird omission, but eh, what’s the worst that can happen with randos? Some creep hitting on you repeatedly until you block him because your bolter* skillz are blessed by the Emperor himself? (¬︿¬)

(That aside, I think you’re missing out on some amazing Ogryn RP. Seems nearly everyone really leans into that role and when it happens it’s always amazing - “Grug is help”).


As for my main complaint: sprint sucks. So many people fall into the trap of sprinting everywhere and getting pwned cause they can’t block, can’t shove, can’t rez without interrupt, etc.

V2 didn’t have a sprint, but then it didn’t have a lot of incoming ranged damage either…

* The bolter in this game is, by far the best implementation of the concept I’ve seen. 10/10 would shoot the du-du-duh duh duh opening from the Terminator 2 theme again.

I’ll revisit if that actually comes to pass, certainly.

I play co-op games as much to have something to do while I catch up with friends as anything else. Beside that, playing with random assholes is not, and never has been, any fun. It’s a source of anxiety in a hobby I indulge in for relaxation, 'nuf said.

OMG. We had a epic comeback on a level, where two of the players were down just on the last hordes, the extraction goal appears, I was going to rescue them but they type ‘run’ in the chat, so I decide they are right, but the Ogryn player goes for them and in the end the three players, limping along, get to the lift that I was holding against a horde of enemies… and the game crashed on my desktop one or two seconds before someone click the button of the lift. We had three scriptures.
This is it.

I will try again in a month or two when it’s more patched.

That sucks. ☹️. Unlike in Vermintide, there’s no penalty for ending the level with deaders.

Very true. The meta game just makes me worry that I’m missing out on content because I don’t care for grinding and crafting, it’s boring. I just want to shoot stuff I also detest lobby hubs. I rather quickly choose a campaign from a menu and get playing. I think that’s not what people want these days.

It seems Quick Play will dump new players into those missions as well. My very first mission I hit quick play and was joined a session with people L28-30. They were surprisingly patient considering I had no idea what I was doing, didn’t know that map, etc. The first thing I ran into was a daemonhost. Very good onboarding experience!

It doesn’t. You will only ever join missions at the difficulty level you have selected prior to clicking quickplay. At trust level 1 that’s either difficulty 1/2 (sedition/uprising) - you can’t select the others.

Difficulty Required Trust level
1 (sedition) 1
2 (uprising) 1
3 (malice) 3
4 (heresy) 6
5 (damnation) 12

The reason you are seeing L28 players in such low difficulties is likely for the more grindy achievements penances. For example, I’ve done all of these on my sharpshooter except the various tiers of ‘complete missions as a sharpshooter’ - and difficulty doesn’t matter for that. So playing on easy carries a lot less risk.

(Here’s my rough looking Sharpshooter decked out in all her tryhard cosmetic glory. I’m enjoying the character customisation in this, despite the microtransaction bullshit. I think she looks a bit… Lucy Lawless, via Tank Girl. Pitch perfect for the setting, really.)

Interesting. Now I’m wondering if something glitched or what was going on or if that was changed with the release patch or something? Because in no way did it feel like a difficulty 1-2 mission. I haven’t had anywhere near the trouble in any other mission I’ve run since then and I don’t think I suddenly completed ‘git gud’ after one one session where I was mostly dead waiting to be rescued. When I manually started selecting difficulty 1-2 missions they were significantly easier.

No idea what may have gone on there, but in any case I’m glad they do have gating in place to prevent that from happening! It was not an awesome first experience. :)

Seems likely you joined a ‘high intensity’ mission, which is a modifier that throws a lot more enemies (hordes, elites, specials) at you than is typical.

Yeah, it would have to have been something crazy because at this point I’m level 20 and have been running missions with those modifiers quite a bit. That first mission was just brutal in terms of how much damage everything seemed to do. That’s why I assumed it was a higher difficulty.

In any case, I’m glad there’s the gating system in place because my first game I was “that guy” @TurinTur was complaining about, hah!

This drop introduces a new map, two new weapons - one for the Zealot, one for the Ogryn, the new Refine option in the crafting menu, the inclusion of private games, and the addition of three new conditions!

  • In Comms-Plex 154/2f, it is up to you and your strike team to gain access to the Comms-plex. Get to the roof of the HL-19-24 Archivum and transmit a message to your allies in the Imperium.

  • To support the launch of Comms Plex, we will enable several conditions during this mission over the next few days.

  • Two new weapons:

    • The Indignatus Mk IVe Crusher, a two-handed Power Maul for Zealots

    • The Achlys Mk I Power Maul, a one-handed Power Maul for Ogryns.

  • Private Play is now available when starting a mission from the mission board for Strike Teams of 2 to 4 players.

  • Refine is now available in the Shrine of the Omnissiah.

    • You can now choose to refine a single perk, which will lock other perks.

    • Perks in the item card view will show their Tier through the number of ♦ next to the perk ranging from 1 to 4.

    • Each Refine action taken on the perk will see a cost reduction for resources.

  • Two new conditions:

    • Hunting Grounds: Rejects will have to fend off increased numbers of Pox Hounds.

    • Assault: More ammo, less healing, more enemies. Prepare to run.

So a new map and two new conditions, in addition of the new weapons? Niiice.

Although for me the more important part is

  • Fixed several cases that would generate GPU crashes.

There have been a few people in this thread who turned away from the game due to the inability to queue with bots, so that’s great news for them. @vinraith