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Other Projects => Other Games => Topic started by: nenjin on July 23, 2020, 11:56:29 pm

Title: WH40K Darktide. Despite the power of Chaos, the Imperium stands!
Post by: nenjin on July 23, 2020, 11:56:29 pm
(https://i.imgur.com/TbMrO8Wl.png)

Short trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=84&v=Zp44GNRzvCc&feature=emb_logo

Being made by Fatshark, the same folks who did Vermintide 1 and 2.

For those unfamiliar, the Vermintide games are the equivalent of Left 4 Dead, set in the Games Workshop's fantasy world. Massive hordes of enemies, strings of missions that deliver the overall story of the game organically, best enjoyed with friends or at least other human players.

I'll be talking a lot about Vermintide because it's pretty obvious that this is the 40k version of it, and it's probably easiest to imagine what to look forward to based on VT.

Vermintide is a largely melee focused game set in GWS fantasy universe. And it's a pretty fantastic looking and playing game (I've been playing with friends on and off since release, and have been playing pretty much nothing but it for the last three or four weeks, so it's timely this was announced today.) It's one of the best presentations of the Warhammer Fantasy IP next to like, Total Warhammer that I can think of. So it stands to reason that Darktide will be a more ranged combat focused experience.

As a fan of both fantasy and 40k, I'm really excited for this. Fatshark did an amazing job with both Vermintide games. It's easy to just sorta slap that adjective on to something you like, but the craft and detail and obvious love that went in to making Vermintide warms the cockles of my heart as a fan.

Visually, VT is gorgeous, rich and detailed with visuals that really do look like WHF stuff come to life and have never once taken me out of the game for their lack of quality or attention to detail.

It also has really high quality sound engineering and voice acting, so it delivers a great cinematic experience.

The writing in VT is also really strong, which manifests mostly in the playable characters and the sheer amount of dialog between them that they helps explain who they are and what they're about without getting in your face or getting old fast. (The kind of voice acting that, to me, you don't resent hearing over and over again. Especially when there's so much of it.) And most importantly, it actually uses the WHF world and its lore and shows both a deep understanding of it and a real appreciation for it.

The action of the game is, if not always super precise, very satisfying. I could crush rat skulls and lop off limbs and heads all day in VT, it's the kind of combat that you enjoy for its own sake rather than because it's helping you get through a game. VT is a pretty fast paced and hectic game that's usually about charging ahead into a mass of enemies to carve them up, only to get wrong footed by special enemies and overwhelmed until you get slaughtered. I imagine Darktide will probably follow the same format and I'm largely ok with that, but I wouldn't say no to a slower, tenser gameplay experience either.

All these things, brought in to my favorite IP, and WE FINALLY GET TO PLAY REGULAR ASS PEOPLE IN 40K! Someone finally had the talent and the nerve to do it instead of yet again making a game about Space Marines. (Although that would have been cool too in Fatshark's hands I think.) Plenty of reasons for me to be excited.

That said, despite the name being pretty obvious what it will be about, I'm sure there will be differences besides "now you shoot guns most of the time instead of hit stuff." I can easily see them dialing back the characterization a bit from Vermintide. (Although you can see quite clearly how they're already sketching out the personalities of the playable characters just by their posture and gestures and how they carry themselves.) A lot of what makes Vermintide a challenging game comes from its melee emphasis, so I'm looking forward to what they've cooked up for challenging ranged combat. Also looking forward to "Dark and Spoopy" stuff, because the lighting effects in Vermintide are one of the best parts of the game and exploring a dank, dark underhive with Fatshark's aesthetic sensibilities sounds very enticing indeed. As I mentioned above, people tend to plow through Vermintide maps, especially the more experienced they are with playing them. I'd be interested to see if Darktide, because of darker and more claustrophobic spaces and more ranged combatants, doesn't produce a slower, more methodical kind of gameplay than VT's frantic flailing around to save life and limb.

I also do sorta hope they get away from the "loot box" style of mission rewards and come up with something a bit more interesting. 40k doesn't really do "magic weapons" like fantasy does, so forging and yadda yadda from VT, and how kinda flat that has always been, could stand to have a lot of improvements or just be different. While playing up through VT the crafting and the random drops aren't really bad or annoying, but once you get in to high level gameplay and want specific things out of your gear, the way VT does it starts to get a little tedious and unfun. So I'd hope there's like, some weapon customization and interesting loadout choices you can make.

Or who knows, maybe there aren't going to be strongly defined characters like VT2 that are the "classes" and it will be a more generic, flexible affair. It could easily go either way.

To me there's only one sorta "big AAA-lookin" game out there in the last few years that really nailed the 40k aesthetic, which is Space Hulk: Deathwing. (It's also in the neighborhood of L4D-like horde killin' games.) It is one of the best LOOKING 40k games out there, and it delivered a lot of 40k lore and flavor via that, but didn't do as good a job presenting the 40k universe via characters or making it feel larger than the game it lived in. Fatshark did that with Vermintide I feel, and I think Darktide stands to dethrone Space Hulk: Deathwing for me as the best looking and sounding and feeling 40k game yet made. It's not really a question to me if Darktide is going to be cool and fun, but rather what form it's going to take.
Title: Re: Darktide: Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: EuchreJack on July 24, 2020, 09:51:41 am
Considering how ill-equipped the average Imperial Guardsman is to face most of the monstrosities of 40k, it should be relatively easy to make a decent horror shooter game.  The setting does however lend towards Loot Boxes: Most power ups for Imperial Guardsman come down to finding a decent weapon and keeping it.

To be authentic, that random mastercrafted bolt pistol from ancient times should have a random chance of growing a maw filled with teeth that bites off your arm and mutters murderous thoughts.  Or at least they should have a Chaos path to go along with the Order path.  Individual power versus calling upon the support of the Imperium's allies.
Title: Re: Darktide: Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: Mephansteras on July 24, 2020, 09:54:02 am
Well, in the announcement for Darktide that came as news for Vermintide II they mentioned that it would still be heavily melee based, but with a larger emphasis on ranged. So I guess we'll see what that means in practice.

Good news for me, anyway, since I prefer to play Kerillian as a wayfinder to get bows with 49 or 99 arrows. More shooting will be nice.
Title: Re: Darktide: Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: nenjin on July 24, 2020, 10:21:51 am
Was that the news announcement in Steam?

Heavily melee based makes sense I suppose, Fatshark has built their entire tech stack on that. Although I was kinda hoping for a change of pace from VT2, something closer to how L4D1 played with mostly ranged and some push shoves to earn space to fight. I dunno, was kinda hoping for like a bayonet attachment for doing melee work, because IG aren't really known for their variety of melee weapon options to begin with. It's like, a bayonet, a survival knife or blade, a chain sword, and at the extreme upper end, a power fist or sword. Meanwhile, there's dozens of different potential guns to use.

As I said above, if it's basically just a copy of VT2 for the 40k universe, I wouldn't be mad at all but I'd like them to try some different things. For example, grenades are a pretty big part of 40k combat and it'd be a little weird to have the same "You have one health item slot, one grenade slot, one potion (drug) slot)" in this. It'd work but I feel like it'd be a missed opportunity if it was just a straight carbon copy of VT2's systems.
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: Persus13 on July 24, 2020, 11:07:03 am
The wording of the announcement was
Quote
We’re sticking with what we know. A co-op game first and foremost, with the same tight melee combat that not only are we proud of but also that we’re known for. However, we’ll be giving ranged combat more complexity of its own to really bring it up to par with the hands on stuff. Our hope is that we can really deliver on some truly hybrid combat that’s both accessible yet boasts a high skill ceiling, offering the same opportunity for mastery regardless of whether you’ve got a lasgun or a chainsword in your hands.

So it sounds like melee won't be too different, but they're doing more stuff with ranged combat. I expect it'll probably be somewhere between Vermintide and L4D2 on the spectrum of melee vs. ranged.
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: LoSboccacc on July 24, 2020, 11:12:41 am
trailer: "wishlist now"


goddamn I hate that. fishing for interest with a cheap ass trailer showing zero interactive gameplay always smells, especially when bringing guardsman in a game that's mostly melee
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: nenjin on July 24, 2020, 12:11:38 pm
Could be worse. Could have had a preorder up already. Which is a far worse and less honest way of gauging interest than just asking Steam how many people have it wishlisted.
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: wolf.b on July 25, 2020, 04:15:25 am
trailer: "wishlist now"

goddamn I hate that. fishing for interest with a cheap ass trailer showing zero interactive gameplay always smells, especially when bringing guardsman in a game that's mostly melee

Could be worse. Could have had a preorder up already. Which is a far worse and less honest way of gauging interest than just asking Steam how many people have it wishlisted.

ninjin is right - as a developer it's an important analytical tool in this age of game publication to be able to gauge interest in the project you are developing - for many reasons both developmental and PR related. nenjin is also right (in my opinion), wishlisting is a hell of a lot more ethical than preorders based on a cinematic teaser trailer. It costs you nothing to wishlist and you can easily remove it later on.
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: riki-tiki on July 26, 2020, 08:34:15 am
I used to play this game. Are there any new releases now?
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: MCreeper on July 26, 2020, 09:28:46 am
I used to play this game. Are there any new releases now?
They give alpha access to spambots?  :o
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: nenjin on July 26, 2020, 02:32:22 pm
No. Clearly, they are from the future.
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: Zangi on July 26, 2020, 10:19:13 pm
Currently killing rats and swamp people in Vermintide 2, off and on. 
Reckon I'll give this a try when it comes out.
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: Mech#4 on July 27, 2020, 01:02:13 am
It looks interesting. I hope they broaden the enemies beyond plague zombies. Would these be Guardsmen or Inquisitional Stormtroopers/Tempestus Scions?

I also hope they have a nice variety of environments. One of the downsides of the W40k games is they tend to all be set in industrial or ship settings. With how big these places are it makes sense but having some places set in a jungle or high class noble estates and the like would be neat.
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: nenjin on July 27, 2020, 10:27:28 am
It looks interesting. I hope they broaden the enemies beyond plague zombies. Would these be Guardsmen or Inquisitional Stormtroopers/Tempestus Scions?

From the sounds of it....you're actual Penal Troopers. (Some text bit somewhere I read addressed you as "convicts.") Which is pretty fitting for 40k and why they'd be willing to send in a recon team and expect them to be expendable. Sounds like you're a team formed by an Interrogator seconded to an Inquisitor. So rather than a crack team of hand picked storm troopers or w/e, you're former Guardsmen pulled from some Penal Colony on short notice.

Might also add weight to the idea that the playable characters are faceless mooks rather than strongly drawn characters like the Vermintide cast.

Quote
I also hope they have a nice variety of environments. One of the downsides of the W40k games is they tend to all be set in industrial or ship settings. With how big these places are it makes sense but having some places set in a jungle or high class noble estates and the like would be neat.

Yeah, I was thinking it'd be cool to fight UP a Hive Spire in to the noble areas. While it's true 40k can tend to have a same-y-ness problem with the environments, with how lush the detail in Vermintide is, I'm thinking they have a good grasp how to do variety even within such a monolithic area like a hive.
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: Capntastic on July 28, 2020, 02:37:18 am
Guards.

Quote this or I'll commissar you.
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: Egan_BW on July 28, 2020, 03:55:40 am
nay ser
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: scriver on July 28, 2020, 03:56:19 am
I AM A FREE MAN
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: nenjin on July 28, 2020, 12:04:53 pm
Quote from: Inquisitor Czevak
You are not free whose liberty is won by the rigour of other, more righteous souls. You are merely protected. Your freedom is parasitic, you suck the honorable man dry and offer nothing in return. You who have enjoyed freedom, who have done nothing to earn it, your time has come. This time you will stand alone and fight for yourselves. Now you will pay for your freedom in the currency of honest toil and human blood.
- address to the Council of Ryanti
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: scriver on July 28, 2020, 12:51:44 pm
Quote from: Inquisitor Czevak
You are not free whose liberty is won by the rigour of other, more righteous souls. You are merely protected. Your freedom is parasitic, you suck the honorable man dry and offer nothing in return. You who have enjoyed freedom, who have done nothing to earn it, your time has come. This time you will stand alone and fight for yourselves. Now you will pay for your freedom in the currency of honest toil and human blood.
- address to the Council of Ryanti

Khornite: "Oh neat I happen to have a lot of the latter"
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: nenjin on December 10, 2020, 07:50:00 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-UifdRoC8I

"Gameplay" trailer.

My thoughts in no particular order:

-Man it looks slower than Vermintide. Maybe not in a good way.

-Liking the character diversity. Personal favorite is the Asian female version of Saltzpyr who is double dosin' that holy rage. Ogryn is a hilarious choice contrasted to Bardin in Vermintide.

-I suppose I'm happier with the environments I saw than I thought I was going to be. It's still 40k: monolithic. Industrial. Grey. Kinda samey. Unlike Vermintide which is brilliantly colorful and has quite a few varied environments. But I saw some variety in the trailer so maybe they'll do 40k "right" instead of just stamp moulding everything from the same dozen rivets and skulls.

-Guns look incredibly ineffective. Not surprised, they said it would be melee focused. But there's one shot of the Ogryn clubbing some guys, and then he finishes the last with a shot from his ripper gun?, and my Vermintide player brain went "that shot was completely unnecessary."

-The "Master of Mankind" litany gave me goosebumps.

-I'm ready for this. But it clearly needs a lot of work still.
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: Mephansteras on December 10, 2020, 09:02:32 pm
I don't know about the guns, they mostly seemed to be one-shoting stuff, especially if to the head. I expect limited ammo will be the big issue with that.

Looks fun overall, though.
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: nenjin on December 10, 2020, 10:42:05 pm
I dunno. In VT for the most part, ranged weapons are reserved for elite and special enemies, not the riff raff trash horde. So when I saw some rather conservative shooting at what look like horde guys, kinda led me to make my comment. I expected a bit more spray and pray on all fronts.
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: Folly on December 10, 2020, 11:00:06 pm
In VT for the most part, ranged weapons are reserved for elite and special enemies, not the riff raff trash horde.

Try telling that to Bardin's gatling gun.
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: nenjin on December 10, 2020, 11:15:36 pm
(It's not that great.)
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: Mephansteras on December 11, 2020, 01:31:54 am
I mean, yes, but then I have also seen people in VT just kinda shooting at everything for fun. And it looked about as effective as that.

Maybe ammo will be more common? Or the ability to fire about as much as Kerillian's waystalker does? Shooting riff-raff when you have 100 stack of ammo isn't nearly as much of a big deal.

I do agree that I'd like to see 'shoot stuff' be overall more common when you're running around with las rifles than with crossbows and black powder weapons like you get in Vermintide.
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: nenjin on December 11, 2020, 10:58:48 am
I would also prefer that. But the tension of ammo scarcity in VT2 for everyone but Kerillian, some Saltzpyr builds, a couple Bardin weapons and Outcast Engineer is generally the rule.

Also, just as someone with like 600 hours in VT2....on Legend people that spend their ammo shooting trash tend to be bad players. Kerillian is pretty much the only exception to that.

There was like one weapon in the DT trailer (probably an autogun) where I was like "Yeah, that's what I'm talking about." But having to hit a horde trash mob 3 to 4 times to kill them when there are 30 of them on the screen.....well, we'll see. This is still pretty obviously early work.
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: Egan_BW on December 11, 2020, 11:05:06 am
I was hoping that the lasgun would look more satisfying than that. It sort of just looked like a gun, but with a red muzzle flash.
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: EuchreJack on December 11, 2020, 02:41:18 pm
Well, the whole advantage of a Lasgun is its unlimited ammo.  You just need a campfire every so often to recharge the cells.

It's also supposed to be the ultimate mook shooter.
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: Cthulhu on December 11, 2020, 03:03:08 pm
The pace of the game looked reasonably weighty and satisfying to me, slow but heavy, and I do like the general look of things, not just the graphics but the way things are presented, but man, something about moving backwards and attacking while a bunch of things run at you just sucks the life out of me.
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: scriver on December 11, 2020, 09:42:47 pm
I agree. If I have to be running away from the thing in fighting, at least give me a gun out my arse so I don't have to run backwards
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: nenjin on December 11, 2020, 10:55:00 pm
Fighting while backing up is pretty common in VT2. On the higher difficulties the hordes are large, dense and each guy has more HP. They turn into walls you can't break through consistently, or like some kind of tide....so you have to retreat as you fight until enough have been slain you can start making headway. So it didn't strike me as weird, it was just "yep, that looks like Vermintide combat." Even the hammer the Zealot uses in the video, its attacks are a carbon copy of the 2 handed hammer in VT2.
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: scriver on December 12, 2020, 07:55:39 am
That's how I've always had to do it in the Left4Dead-likes (including Vermintide) and that's the reason I don't like it.

Hell even Mount & Blade footpad combat is like that and that's the reason I always play mounted. It's just so completely undignified. I wish a game where you have to do that could decently capture the feeling of slowly retreating with my face to the enemy rather than panickedly running blind with my back towards where I'm stepping.
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: LoSboccacc on December 12, 2020, 08:09:33 am
idk I got a nice doom eternal feel from the combat presented. we know jack shit of the balance tho, this kind of videos are usually captured with god mode on or the closest scripted equivalent.
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: Kagus on December 12, 2020, 09:35:41 am
I saw playable ogryn and I wishlisted.

Brothers, I am hyped here


I sadly have never gotten around to playing VT2 yet (I have it, just haven't played), but I spent a fair amount of time screaming at violently spinning rat-ogres in the first Vermintide. I expect Fatshark will completely beans up the first several public builds of this new -tide, with incredibly sketchy gameplay and violent crashes.

And I'll still buy and play the thing, because I'm still going to enjoy myself.
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: Cthulhu on December 12, 2020, 06:47:48 pm
That's how I've always had to do it in the Left4Dead-likes (including Vermintide) and that's the reason I don't like it.

Hell even Mount & Blade footpad combat is like that and that's the reason I always play mounted. It's just so completely undignified. I wish a game where you have to do that could decently capture the feeling of slowly retreating with my face to the enemy rather than panickedly running blind with my back towards where I'm stepping.

Mount and Blade is also bad for it yes.  It's a weird thing and I'm particular about it, but I guess it does seem like it bothers other people, but a lot of video games that use large numbers of enemies have AI that's basically zombies, and you get what should be intelligent opponents just moving in a coherent mass towards you and you have to backpedal while shooting or meleeing them to avoid getting swarmed.  I can sort of get past it if it's actually zombies, but a lot of times I find it annoying and it takes me out of the game.
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: Persus13 on December 12, 2020, 11:02:23 pm
To be fair in Vermintide its mostly disposable skaven.

This time around it looks like, crazy chaos cultists? Not sure how smart they're supposed to be.
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: Zangi on December 13, 2020, 12:35:22 am
That's how I've always had to do it in the Left4Dead-likes (including Vermintide) and that's the reason I don't like it.

Hell even Mount & Blade footpad combat is like that and that's the reason I always play mounted. It's just so completely undignified. I wish a game where you have to do that could decently capture the feeling of slowly retreating with my face to the enemy rather than panickedly running blind with my back towards where I'm stepping.

Mount and Blade is also bad for it yes.  It's a weird thing and I'm particular about it, but I guess it does seem like it bothers other people, but a lot of video games that use large numbers of enemies have AI that's basically zombies, and you get what should be intelligent opponents just moving in a coherent mass towards you and you have to backpedal while shooting or meleeing them to avoid getting swarmed.  I can sort of get past it if it's actually zombies, but a lot of times I find it annoying and it takes me out of the game.

In VT2, enemies actively move to surround you if you let them.  But that is mostly due to the slotting system.  Either way, you learn to at least glance around you while giving space.  Situational awareness drastically increases survival chances.
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: nenjin on December 13, 2020, 01:05:47 am
It will also spawn additional guys behind you, if not in and around spawn points around or above you, then just directly in behind you. It tries to breed paranoia about not checking your 6 every few seconds, and penalizes groups that don't cover each other by sending one or two guys at your blind spots fairly frequently. Back is usually the safest direction to move so you're constantly relocating all your opponents to where you can pay attention to them.

I hope the Ogryn has other melee options than just a knife. While it may be effectively a sword, it'd be nice to wield stupidly big weapons much like the enemies you face in VT2 get to wield against you.
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: Kagus on December 13, 2020, 06:11:04 am
it'd be nice to wield stupidly big weapons much like the enemies you face

Yes, I too am supportive of this idea to pick up our enemies and smack other enemies with them
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: Mephansteras on December 13, 2020, 11:10:26 am
I expect a mix of weapons will be normal for most of the characters. After all, there is a pretty big variety of weapons for all the characters in VT.
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: ThtblovesDF on December 13, 2020, 02:53:52 pm
I want a game that blows my arm off when i fire a plasma gun.
Title: Re: Darktide. Yes, 40k fans, you finally get to play an Imperial Guardsmen
Post by: Persus13 on December 13, 2020, 03:09:23 pm
Seems like you'd only be able to play that game twice.
Title: Re: Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases September 2022.
Post by: nenjin on May 28, 2022, 04:24:37 pm
Week of Skulls (the GWS promoted event where game using their license have a week of STUFF) is just a few days away.

Fatshark has been releasing a series of countdown videos. With release in September, and a recent Edge magazine interview, most are sure that this is the start of the info dumps.

In the article, they talked about a few different things. I haven't dug deep on it yet but the standout thing was customizable characters. There's archetypes, like the Ogryn, the Guardsmen, the Zealot and the Psyker. But instead of being fixed personalities and looks like in VT, they'll be customizable. In addition to the usual Fatshark RPG elements like which weapon loadout you use, you'll be able to choose their gender and details. So like, helmet, no helmet. Aquila forehead tattoos. Female Guardsmen/Male Guardsmen. (Not sure if there are female Ogryns.....) The way your armor looks. It implies as well that there's no fixed team compositions. If you wanna run 4 Ogryns, run 4 Ogryns.

Not a ton is known to me about the Psyker, other than they'll basically function like Sienna from VT2. Except the "overheat bar" is now "Perils of the Warp."

One new feature though that I'm not wild about....overshields. Sorta like most other FPS, you'll have a regenerating shield over your health bar. The stated reason for it is, in a game with enemies that have guns, they felt it would be too unfair to have them constantly chipping away at player health. So the overshield is there to compensate, making seeking cover and letting your shields regen a feature of gameplay. On the one hand, it'll slow encounters down a little and I like that. But on the other, it's a very familiar mechanic from lots of other shooters, AND I don't really like it from a lore perspective. Shield-tech in 40k games is rather high end, it's not something your garden variety guardsmen or even stormtrooper would have.

So I'd be expecting a lot of Darktide news coming in the next couple of days.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases September 2022.
Post by: EuchreJack on May 28, 2022, 04:52:26 pm
Ironically, it's the Zealot that would most likely have the shield, aka Rosarium.

Psychers can also create a mind shield.

Guardsman use Armor only. Carapace armor is at least marginally effective.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases September 2022.
Post by: Kagus on May 29, 2022, 03:52:48 am
Ogryn's just too stupid to realize they should've been hurt.


On that topic, I think they should have the male/female option for ogryns too. ...just, don't actually change anything.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases September 2022.
Post by: nenjin on May 29, 2022, 03:26:52 pm
Ironically, it's the Zealot that would most likely have the shield, aka Rosarium.

Psychers can also create a mind shield.

Guardsman use Armor only. Carapace armor is at least marginally effective.

I've read the justifications. They're "OK." What I would prefer is an actual armor system of some kind instead. Or it being an optional feature of gameplay (find some overshields in game that burn out) or that ranged opponents get the balance that makes overshields not feel necessary. It's not even that I haven't been playing recent games that still use this mechanic...and that's my point. It's an old mechanic, and it feels like a short cut.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases September 2022.
Post by: Folly on May 30, 2022, 04:45:29 am
Meh. I'll take enjoyable action mechanics over lore-accuracy any day.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases September 2022.
Post by: nenjin on May 30, 2022, 02:06:08 pm
Hence why I said "actual armor system."
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases September 2022.
Post by: nenjin on June 01, 2022, 01:25:27 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JUsHpTWVa0

Gettin them goosebumps.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases September 2022.
Post by: Mephansteras on June 01, 2022, 03:22:22 pm
Man, between Chaos Gate and this my year is going to be full of daemon hunting.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases September 2022.
Post by: nenjin on June 09, 2022, 03:48:39 pm
Gameplay my dudes.

Got the hairs standing up on me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR7I2D6ENrA

Really liking the new "Player Outlines." Sure beats VT2's green borders. At first I thought it was a Psyker only feature because that's the kind of thing you'd expect a psyker to be able to do. But it looks like it's all characters, variously in different bits of the video.

And I need that OST. Like, naow.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases September 2022.
Post by: Mephansteras on June 09, 2022, 05:06:59 pm
Looking quite promising!
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases September 2022.
Post by: Kagus on June 09, 2022, 05:14:49 pm
Praise the dakka


Also I'd just like to say that I really appreciated the arched sights on that one gun. Really plays into the aesthetic, I dig it.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases September 2022.
Post by: Frumple on June 09, 2022, 05:46:21 pm
the captions on that thing were a joke

... didn't really look that interesting to me, personally, but someone was having fun with the subtitles on that footage
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases September 2022.
Post by: nenjin on June 09, 2022, 06:05:48 pm
Praise the dakka


Also I'd just like to say that I really appreciated the arched sights on that one gun. Really plays into the aesthetic, I dig it.

I saw that too. It's a nice touch, which, I'm sure I'll be saying that a lot come September.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases September 2022.
Post by: nenjin on June 13, 2022, 02:36:38 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wwmPSwTGUA

No lady Ogryns, sorry folks.

Customizable features include gender, height, skin tone, hair style, flash bits and personality. Each character, male/female, has 3 different personality types per, each with their own set of dialog lines.

The hub for the game, ie. the keep from VT2, is actually a full social hub. So not only will you be there with your own party, you'll be there with all other players too. The devs estimated up to 20 other players. Not...quite sure what the point is or if I like it? Generally I wasn't interested in dealing with VT2's larger player base, some of whom can be trolly and toxic. I get that from an in-game perspective, it's a big massive 40k starship and they've brought an entire penal legion to the planet to deal with the threat. So unlike VT2's cozy 5 person cast, it makes sense that your hub is the ship and you run into all the other penal troopers present. Still, it's one of those things I don't feel I need (with a large group of friends to play these games with) so all it really brings is some atmosphere or novelty for a while. I don't really mind, as long as a) networking problems with other players don't fuck up my hub experience and b) I don't have to deal with obnoxious trolls spamming chat, saying inflammatory things over open mics and/or trying to interfere with what's going on in the hub.

Missions will no longer just be "Recruit/Vet/Champion/Legendary/Cataclysm." Apparently they'll have multiple difficulty variables you can tweak independently as well as random mission modifiers. I'm guessing that's akin to VT's weekly challenge mission modifiers or the Weave modifiers, just used and applied more consistently and hopefully with a good dose of 40k thinking. (Radiation leakage, warp surge, stuff like that.)

Another change is that missions will be queued up for you. When doing multiplayer, instead of just hitting "Quick Play" you'll approach the mission board and choose one of the available missions, with its own modifiers on top of the actual mission objectives. These missions will rotate frequently. The idea is that you'll "always have a mission to do online play with" but I dunno, sounds a little sus. VT players are skilled at finding the path of least resistance and I'd be a little worried we'll see a return to VT1 days, where there's certain missions/combos people just won't play. Remains to be seen how it plays out. I wonder if they'll still have "custom game" missions or not. That said, people have pointed out it sounds similar to Deep Rock Galactic's mission board and I'm cool with that in that game.

I'm a little unclear on level lay out. Previously I got the impression mission areas were procedurally and randomly generated but this video implies something somewhat different. They use the phrase "hand-crafted" a lot which implies VT2's completely hand built maps. Maybe it's a blend of the two. Big rooms i.e. modules are fixed and lovingly hand crafted but the # and way they're connected might differ. You might also view other previous areas you've played through while fighting from a new area...the idea being they're trying to show how this is all happening in the same hive city. Either way, Fat Shark said this will allow them to generate new content faster, and I don't doubt it. Instead of having to hand craft an entirely new level with new visuals etc....they can make new bits and pieces of a level and slot them into the existing rotation of level layouts.

Part of my concern here seems to be coming true: areas from what I've seen so far all tend to look alike, in that everything is "industrial." VT2 had a pretty good range of different environments so each level felt fresh even though you've played them all a hundred times. Just when you're bored of caves, its swamps. When you're tired of swamps, its cities. I wonder if DT's environments are going to wear out their welcome faster since everything is steel, skulls and industrial features.

They're promising a lot more random mini-events within missions, up to and including mini-games you need to perform while under fire. Devs noted that players figured out random events in VT2 with enough play time so they're aiming to have more variety there to keep people on their toes.

Grims and Tomes are back in some form but they're now part of mission parameters so they won't always be present. There's also something called "Circumstances" which will change missions in a "more unavoidable fashion." Wondering if that's like "power failure" or the aforementioned thought of "radiation leak."

So there's mission parameters, random events and circumstances. I wonder if they've done all this to spice up the fact that missions otherwise are going to feel kind of samey without them.

On the gear and progression front.....you'll get loot after each mission and when you level up. There's shops to buy new gear, there's crafting to modify gear as per VT2 (as well as being able to MOVE TRAITS BETWEEN pieces of gear (thank god, an easier system than mashing the reroll button for 5 minutes to get what you need)) as well as contracts that let you target specific gear drops you need. I really hope Fat Shark has learned their lesson about putting animations on repetitive actions the player needs to take dozens and dozens of times per session, like crafting and opening loot boxes. That shit got real old in both VT games to the point mods were created to remove the animation times and Fat Shark even made updates to speed that stuff up. I like me some detailed warhammer-esqe animations but like I said, I hope they've learned from the previous two games to tone it down. Crafting, opening loot boxes and the mission-end loot count up just gets tedious waiting on all these unnecessary animations when you've put hundreds if not thousands of hours into the game.

The same weapon or weapon class will have its stats vary within a range. So two handed hammers won't always have the same exact stats, but rather lightly randomized stats within a range that is still appropriate to two handed hammers. I wonder how deep this goes. VT2 is notorious for having MANY hidden attributes on weapons players never get to see but feel. If they're going to randomize THOSE attributes I hope they do a much better job of showing them and explaining them. The hidden weapon mechanics in VT2 are what I'd call esoteric in nature.....so if you can't see that a given weapon, for example, has an inferior block radius except by using it and figuring it out, I can foree that being an issue.

Class talent trees are back.

The story progression will apparently be tied to level. So rather than just playing through a linear series of missions as in VT2, I'm guessing what missions the mission board offers you changes as you level up and allows you to more organically experience the story as it develops.

There will be a mail box in the hub that developers can send stuff to...including "lost loot" you might have gotten from a game you disconnected from. That's a really nice feature IMO. Not that loot was ever that big of a deal in Fat Shark games but it's a nice touch none the less. No player-to-player mail, however.

Pre-saved loadouts for your character means you'll be able to have different builds and quickly switch to them before and after getting into a group but before the mission launches. This is super nice because I play with one guy who is big into build crafting, and it's not uncommon that he needs 3 to 5 minutes between matches to swap stuff around. Giving him loads out will make his life and our's much better.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases September 2022.
Post by: nenjin on June 13, 2022, 03:49:32 pm
Here's an IGN hands on video that shows the UI.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNF_jEUc9YE

While it looks ok, it's chonky as hell. I think that's owing to the console release, they always tend to have chonkier UIs I assume so it's more readable from the couch. (And Fat Shark's in game UIs have always trended toward large scale on top of that.) One of the best mods for VT2 that Fat Shark eventually incorporated into the main game was the UI Tweaker that, among other things, let's you scale down the entire HUD. It took VT2 like 3 or 4 years to realize it needed that, I hope it's already present or I don't have to wait nearly that long in DT. That UI is already gobbling up way more space than I'd like.

Note the stamina bar for sprinting. Perhaps sliding also? I wonder if blocks consume the same stamina that you use to sprint. The stamina bar is broken up into boxes so I assume that's the case but I don't think I've seen any footage from someone with the UI up actually block. This stuff is all clearly being played on lower difficulties given how most footage is people meleeing into a crowd while getting absolutely diced in return. For everyone that says they loved VT and played lots of it, all the footage I've seen lacks that certain killer instinct from VT you develop. I hope that's more a function of who is taking the footage than any indication of how fast the game plays. I guess what I'm saying is I haven't seen any real practical gameplay yet. Just a lot of unloading a ranged weapon into a crowd and flailing around in melee for demonstration purposes, for the most part.

Can also see the grenade count for the player and what looks like an ammo reload item.

Subtitles are MASSIVE and look like the auto-generated subtitles from youtube. Hopefully those can be adjusted because I don't want to see that on my screen for every bit of character chatter. Because there will be a lot of that.

And confirmed there is no XBox/PC crossplay at launch.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases September 2022.
Post by: nenjin on June 13, 2022, 04:58:50 pm
And here's a full 20 minute mission playthrough, no commentary. Lots of changes to pick out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaBoZkeoook
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases September 2022.
Post by: nenjin on June 15, 2022, 06:01:14 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=minMHWY0fjc

There's some proper skills on display here. No HUD (alas) and no commentary (hurrah.)

Also worth mentioning, the soundtrack slaps because it's being done by Jesper Kyd. The dude has 76 game composer credits to his name. There's every chance that if you've played a major release since 2000, you've played something he scored. I've enjoyed his work since Assassin's Creed 2 I believe, when I was like "who makes this music, they're good." Between Dan Abnett for the writing, and Jesper Kyd for the music, Fat Shark spared no expense in hiring the best talent for Darktide.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases September 2022.
Post by: Kagus on June 16, 2022, 05:29:41 am
"Well, that's me told!"

Also, the momentary confusion in the ogryn reload animation is just... *Chef's kiss*
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases September 2022.
Post by: Folly on July 31, 2022, 04:47:57 pm
Title needs updating. September release has been pushed to November.

But if you're desperate to play, signups for testing are now open on the official website.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases November 2022.
Post by: nenjin on July 31, 2022, 06:50:19 pm
They want a link to your Steam profile as part of signing up, which I found a bit unusual.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases November 2022.
Post by: nenjin on August 23, 2022, 09:35:44 pm
Gamescom 2022 trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF5g4-eOWZw
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases November 2022.
Post by: nenjin on October 11, 2022, 05:54:16 pm
The second wave of closed Beta invites are going out. (Couple friends of mine already got their's, I didn't get ssssshhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiitttttttttttttt.)

Closed Beta round 2 starts the 14th.

So if you registered last time and didn't get accepted, give your email a lookee-loo.

There being a closed beta implies there'll be an Open Beta perhaps. Not gonna lie I'm a bit salty I don't have an invite, but largely I'm ok just waiting for full release to experience it.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases November 2022.
Post by: Persus13 on October 13, 2022, 04:36:51 pm
If you missed out on the beta you can try requesting access to it on the Steam page.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases November 2022.
Post by: Folly on October 13, 2022, 04:45:07 pm
I'm honestly fed up with Darktide at this point.
I appreciate them taking the time they need to release a quality product. But after repeated and lengthy delays, then they expect us to jump through hoops just to partake in an unfinished product for a very short time frame? They can't even arrange for people who already paid for the game to get a guaranteed spot in the tests, we just have to fill out multiple forms and then hope that we win the lottery?

Nope. Imma just wait for the actual release. Until then, my hype for this game is dead.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases November 2022.
Post by: nenjin on October 13, 2022, 06:12:19 pm
Eh. Was going to preorder the game anyways. So I just went ahead and did so, requested Beta access last night through Steam, got it around 4pm today. Preload took like 10 minutes.

I get the frustration but also, betas aren't for most people. I was honestly ok not getting access previously because beta access has often detracted from my appreciation of the final product. It's an unavoidable side effect of watching sausage get made.

I know you know what betas are like. But it'll probably be 3 days of failures to connect to the server, inability to join your own friends for mysterious reasons, disconnects once you're in game, shitty framerates on acceptable hardware and crashes. Just like every MP beta ever. I seriously doubt they're equipped to handle the amount of logins and connects they're going to get. I think there's an order of magnitude more hype for DT2 than VT2, so they're probably going to experience the same shock lots of games do when they let the public in en masse for the first time. But, that's why you have betas.

A friend said they read it's going live around 4am EST on Friday, so that's probably their attempt to stagger the North American logins.

So I think you're better off waiting for full release.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: Persus13 on October 13, 2022, 08:53:34 pm
I think your friend might have been looking at the Pacific time. From what I've seen its going live at 7 AM EST.

Personally I'm hoping Darktide turns out well, but I'm not sure I'll even be able to run the game so I haven't been highly anticipating it coming out to be fed up by it at this point.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: Persus13 on October 14, 2022, 09:49:01 am
Well I played a couple of matches of the beta this morning and I'm more hyped for the game. Played the sharpshooter veteran and was having a lot of fun blasting away at chaos with my lasgun. I wasn't having a lot of connection or performance issues but I also had all the settings on low. I might try to up some settings now that I know my computer can handle the game.

My main complaint at this point is that shooting grey metal enemies against grey metal walls in the dark can be quite annoying, but thankfully the environments manage to avoid that in some of the rooms. The specials don't feel like they stand out as much as Vermintide's do, but that's only after an hour of play, and it feels like its inherently easier to make special fantasy rats stand out than sci-fi chaos specials. Outside of dogs, they're all humanoids with more lights than normal, although I'm starting to distinguish mutants and bombers. Using my special more would probably also help since it highlights them, but I keep forgetting I have one.

Really enjoying the gameplay and atmosphere. Had a classic online teammate moment where another teammate ran around with an ammo pack for most of the level without ever actually dropping it for the ammo hungry sharpshooter.

Edit: Hopped in again before lunch and started hitting a lot more issues. I tried the ogryn and got a couple of server disconnects in the hub, generally had worse FPS, especially around hordes, and had a mission where the next phase of the mission didn't trigger, leaving us stuck in an elevator. Curious if the server load is bigger later on in the day and that's the problem.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: nenjin on October 14, 2022, 01:23:50 pm
My friend played this morning and largely had the same comments. Gameplay is fun, gunplay feels good, there's dips in FPS when hordes spawn, the environments have a sameyness problem compared to VT2, some finales don't seem to end like they expected.

I predict performance and stability will tank once people start getting off of work in the US.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: Dostoevsky on October 14, 2022, 02:19:52 pm
There's 40 minutes / 3 missions of beta footage (with some editing) here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DilruyOG7gA&ab_channel=OperatorDrewski).

More or less matches the above praise and criticisms. I'd also dare to suggest that going with customizable generics loses some of the character compared to the VT cast, but each approach has its own pluses and minuses.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: Persus13 on October 14, 2022, 02:32:02 pm
Finale ending in bugs or ending in a surprising way? I'd say two of the missions had endings that made sense, and the third I wasn't paying attention to the briefing enough to know what the goal was.

Hive city being less varied than farms, woods, forts, towns, frozen wastes, and underground skaven tunnels is definitely something I was expecting. The industrial factory mission/map is probably the most different of the available maps/missions at this point? I felt like CG:Daemonhunters had a similar problem, so I blame the setting for that one.

More or less matches the above praise and criticisms. I'd also dare to suggest that going with customizable generics loses some of the character compared to the VT cast, but each approach has its own pluses and minuses.
Yeah that's about how I feel about the custom characters vs. iconics. Kerullian, Saltzpyre and crew weren't amazing characters, but they allowed voice lines to be more tailored to the characters. Whereas my personally named and customized character is cool, but they're never going to be named by a voice line, just called veteran or ogryn.

The character creation having special options for Cadians is a nice touch though, and so is being able to play with an all ogryn party. Pluses and minuses for sure.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: Dostoevsky on October 14, 2022, 04:08:58 pm
I guess I was thinking in terms of the endings being a bit underwhelming; the VT1 & 2 missions largely felt like they had more impactful ending sequences for missions, but maybe it's just the difference of playing it v. watching it.

While it certainly did have its faults (it has some positives too) I think the semi-recent Hired Gun showed you can have a pretty good variety of level types within a hive city setting.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: Persus13 on October 14, 2022, 04:19:10 pm
I've been meaning to grab Hired Gun on sale.

VT1 and 2 had some impactful endings yeah, but a lot just felt like "you did the thing now run to the cart/portal now."

Having just beaten the assassination mission that bugged out on me last time I tried it, I was a bit surprised the mission just ends at the last objective instead of having you run for the exit.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: nenjin on October 14, 2022, 09:33:54 pm
Well, short answer is, the game is good and I'm enjoying it a lot.

The reason I'm here saying it though is logging in is currently busted. So there's that.

And it definitely has that beta feel. Lots important stuff missing like mouse sensitivity, keys not being recognized for binding, settings and keybindings resetting every time you close the game. The default low graphics setting the game put me at turned a ton of stuff off, to the point I was questioning wtf with how bad the game looked. I had to go into some graphics settings so it didn't look like an unaliased mess.

Performance wise though, it's doing better than I expected. Nothing optimization can't fix I think. So it performs pretty well for me even on a 1000 Series card.

And it "feels" right. It's got the right heft that made VT2 so enjoyable, the guns feel good. They managed to make the Lasgun, the least sexy weapon in 40k to me, feel great to use. If the game has one problem I think (and surely it has more) it's a readability problem. Specials are hard to pick out from a crowd unless they're big. That's probably just because all this is new, but between the environments, the lighting and the look of enemies, picking out priority ones is kinda tough.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: Persus13 on October 14, 2022, 09:44:52 pm
I'm slowly identifying the specials, but I still have no clue what makes a sniper different from a random chaos guardsman.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: nenjin on October 15, 2022, 02:43:29 am
If the sniper hits you, it's like 3/4 of your health in one shot. Looks more like a gauss rifle than a las shot.

So far the beta has been pretty much everything I thought it would be. Crashes, networking problems, inability to log in at times, plenty of bugs and weird behavior, unstable performance (the game was using up about 95% of my 16 gigs of memory so it's probably leaking like a sieve), desyncs.....

And for all that I still am having a pretty good time. Too fried to expound on it much more right now.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: Egan_BW on October 15, 2022, 02:50:41 am
to be fair if I got shot by a longlas it would probably take off more than 75% of my health
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: Persus13 on October 15, 2022, 07:41:14 am
I more meant appearance wise. Outside of the red line, I've not got no idea what a sniper looks like other than a vague humanoid shape.

I found out the beta is on GeForce Now, so I decided to give that a shot and that's probably how I'm going to be playing Darktide for at least the beta. Medium graphics is a massive improvement and performance is better than for me on low.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: Shooer on October 15, 2022, 11:51:20 am
Snipers look like shorter normal traitor guards with a cloak.  Think they got 3 glowing eyes instead of 2, they'll climb up things to get high to shoot. I think they are supposed to be hard to spot and all that, so not knowing what they look like is kind of the point.

Tried veteran.  Liked being able to just keep shooting for most of the time.  Currently trying psyker, mainly because I never ran into game with another player playing them.

Where the veteran was there to just kill most things from range, the psyker's job is get in the way in melee and to finally help when they chunk off the health of bosses.  Think I was taking off 1/10 the health of the ogryn and the assassination boss with head popper.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: Folly on October 15, 2022, 12:30:58 pm
I heard about signups through Steam. Despite what I said before I decided to give it one more shot. One click, I was signed up, within minutes I got the acceptance email.

I played a lot of games last night. No crashes, generally smooth fps on my low-end PC. Only one instance of lag which was pretty bad but only lasted a minute and didn't get me killed.

I breezed through the first two difficulty tiers, then spent the rest of my night banging my head against difficulty 3 and never managed to finish a mission. Really huge spike in challenge there. Felt like old times in Vermintide.

I kinda hate the visual style they have going on. Darktide is completely loaded up with motion blur, bloom, godrays, fog, shadows, and every other unnecessarily fancy special effect they could find. Even after turning most of them off in the settings, more often than not I still can't see the guy shooting at me from across the room through a murky wall of particles.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: nenjin on October 15, 2022, 12:56:43 pm
Yeah, the sponginess of enemies starting at difficulty 3 is noticeable. But bear in mind, that's basically Champion difficulty from VT2, and we were hitting it before anyone was really Rank 10 even. So that'd been pretty early to attempt Champion in VT2 unless you really knew what you were doing.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: Dostoevsky on October 15, 2022, 01:27:55 pm
I heard about signups through Steam. Despite what I said before I decided to give it one more shot. One click, I was signed up, within minutes I got the acceptance email.

Huh, you ain't kidding. Haven't even pre-ordered, but figured I'd give the steam sign-up a try after reading about this. Got in after a few minutes. Time to download...
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: nenjin on October 15, 2022, 01:34:23 pm
I coulda swore that the marketing material for DT said that levels were randomized in terms of how big set pieces connect.

So far that doesn't seem to be the case in Beta. Levels seem static. Even though in the industrial sprawl it can be hard to tell one set piece from another, after a good hours 6 last night things started to become familiar. I don't know if that's a feature of full release or they had to back away from it or I'm pulling that memory out of thin air.....

But the game already has a pretty big "uh which way do we go?" problem. Yeah there's call outs for "This way!" like VT2 but so far they don't stand out especially well. And I can't remember feeling quite this lost in VT2. Usually it was "Do we go forward or backward" not "Uh.....forward, backward, left or right?" If they randomize these levels in full release, that's going to be even harder. All the normal telegraphing techniques like lighting, call outs, funneling, environmental story telling......seem overwhelmed here. Like yeah, on one of my last games before I crashed out last night, I did notice a pair of double arrows stenciled on to a wall.

But there's no big signs like "Coolant Rod Containment Room" with arrows pointing to it. What might be environmental guidance gets mistaken as grimdark flair half the time.

And yet....just pushing forward still seems to get you where you need to go most of the time. It just doesn't feel like you're really understanding it and it's just blind luck that's getting you there.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: Dostoevsky on October 15, 2022, 04:54:05 pm
Welp, my graphics setting are stuck at ultra-pixelated low regardless of what I set them to (and while I don't have a top-end rig I'm not exactly potato), and have been getting a bunch of crashes. Hopefully useful beta data for them, hah.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: nenjin on October 15, 2022, 05:30:58 pm
I've noticed many settings don't take even if you set them. Like, a lot of the "Toggle to do this action" settings don't seem to get respected. Weirdly my graphics settings have stayed set where most people report both input and graphics settings get reset every launch.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: Persus13 on October 15, 2022, 05:56:29 pm
I coulda swore that the marketing material for DT said that levels were randomized in terms of how big set pieces connect.
From what I recall reading, its less randomized levels and more the levels are big areas with multiple missions set in them and you might go through the level from a different start and end based on what the mission is. And as far as I can tell, the 4 beta missions are on different maps.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: nenjin on October 16, 2022, 02:59:06 am
Starting to feel like this is, as someone on Reddit put it, less of a Beta and more a preview of the final game.

And while I do like it and am enjoying it, I'm a little troubled by what feels like regressions from VT2 in terms of what they learned and applied there, and how some basic 101 stuff isn't in this build for a game this close to release.

I also kind of suspect the game was primarily designed for consoles. It just feels like there's a lot of tells, that might explain why so much of the control scheme is jank, missing obvious functionality and has lots of weird bugs. For example, the lack of mouse sensitivity sliders (while the controller has them in settings) That certain keys can't be read (not exactly uncommon with a lot of games.) That there's no secondary key bindings for keyboards controls. All feels like someone rushed actually doing keyboard inputs for the game, is new to it, whatever. My 360 controller, when plugged in, actually causes the controller button prompts to pop up every once in a while, even when my controller is just sitting there.

And then other little things like....big chunky UI and text that you can see from a couch as opposed to a PC screen. (At least there's the setting for controlling font size, and reducing it by half makes it look mostly like it did in VT2.)

Or that there's many informational bits of the UI that are unlabeled icons with no tooltips, and Fatshark's style of inscrutable mechanics feels even more opaque now.  And the descriptions for weapons traits, in several cases, are completely broken text labels or the descriptions are so vague you don't really know what the trait does. I saw one tonight that was like "Rampage: Increase 15% for 10 seconds after killing an elite (or something.)" Increase WHAT by 15%. There are multiple traits like that. Like there's a keyword variable that is just missing. And the actual traits themselves I've seen, it feels like there's omissions that I hope will be in the full game. Like....no traits relating to more stamina or block cost reduction or....any of that stuff VT2 has?

You'd think with release 1.5 months away, and your second beta test you'd....have cleaned some of that stuff up by now? For a company with this much time and success under their belts? Is this the older beta build from like over a month ago?

The networking and yadda yadda, I can be a little more forgiving on. But this is like basic, "your game is readable and useable" stuff. Is the game going to be basic AND busted at release?

I'm kind of encouraged they're not patching the beta version as things go along. If they were that would really make me nervous that we're playing largely what we can expect at launch (plus additional content of course.)

And again, it's just kind of mind boggling, some of the QoL and smart things VT2 did that are absent from Darktide. Like, a player outlines turned on permanently setting? The current cool but kind of useless x-ray outline is of zero use when you're in a mob of guys, surrounded by flames and can't see your team even though they're 2 feet away. Its only benefit is being able to see your friends through walls or when they get a certain distance away. Maybe true player outlines are absent from Darktide because they felt it clashes with the visual aesthetic....but that was like an automatic "turn that shit on" for every new player in VT2.

Like I said, I'm still looking forward to release but there are some things that are shaking my confidence in how finished and polished of a product we get. I'm really hoping this is just an older build, and not that Fatshark is basically in a rush to finish it and won't be able to get to most of these things until after release. AKA.....the curse of 40k videogames.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: Shooer on October 16, 2022, 08:26:32 am
the lack of mouse sensitivity sliders
I was wondering what you meant because I changed mouse sensitivity as soon as I started playing.  Then I went and looked and the mouse sensitivity slider was missing.  Missing at the character select screen, missing when loaded into the lobby zone, and missing still when loaded into a mission.

It was there when I first launched it in training.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: nenjin on October 17, 2022, 11:15:20 am
So if I had to pick three things to say about the Beta or big takes I agree with, it'd be these.

-The gameplay was a ton of fun.
-This feels like a preview of the final game, and less like a Beta build.
-The "game" around the "game" kind of sucks.

1. I did have a ton of fun in the beta. In-level gameplay is pretty good. I think DT has more interesting pacing than VT2. VT2 pacing was largely "Push forward as fast as you can until you hit a block of enemies too thick to just punch through." DT requires you play more carefully. You can play it like VT2 and it will mostly work. But the ambushes are much nastier in DT than in VT2. You walk into a big open space, start mixing it up in melee, and then get absolutely destroyed by gunners, bombers, las guys and all sorts of stuff that is hiding in the shadows or behind some cover. A small unit of las guys will shred your face off if they start shooting at you as a group. So you gotta move cover to cover and sometimes you just gotta slow down and deal with the ranged. As someone who occasionally found the "all go no slow" meta of VT2 kind of one note, I appreciate how DT manages to do both based on what the situation is. There were several times we just got bogged down and really had to leverage all our class specialties together to succeed. I really enjoyed it and DT had plenty of pants on fire moments of total bedlam. Especially on the last night, where the spawns just seemed to be crazy. We had one run where we came to massive room of walkways suspended over the void. We got no less than _10_ total scab gunners and Ogryn reapers. You couldn't poke your head above cover to look across the chasm without getting your face blown off. There have been times in VT2 where you get enough gunners and gas rats that you felt pinned, but at the end of the day the solution was usually "let the elf kill the gunner and then we all rush in." This was by far and away much tougher to deal with in DT, due to the mechanics and the level lay out. I'd also say that, man, your brain and eyes have to work much harder over the course of a run in DT. In VT2 things stand out very clearly, you don't have to work that hard to know what you're looking at or if you're hitting it. As mentioned above by others, between the lighting and all the post-processing effects, just SEEING something that isn't right in front of you in DT takes additional effort compared to VT2. And the pixel hunting on guys at extreme range (the beta didn't have any scope or anything for your guns), after a couple hours kind of wore my eyes out. Along with that, you just have to be more alert in DT than in VT2. 90% of stuff in VT2 comes running straight at you. But I'd say 40% of the stuff in DT likes to hang back, shadow you, take pot shots at you then hide. It can be REALLY frustrating trying to figure out where enemy las fire is coming from, particularly where you're being shot from above and below. It's a pretty different flow to VT2 at different points of play. You feel like the hunted as often as being the hunter. And having an actual enemy sniper out there feels like you're playing a WW2 shooter, where you don't know where the sniper is and they will for real fuck your shit up if they catch you out in the open.

2. Like I said in above posts. If this is the build where Fatshark was ~2 months ago, then I have some cause for concern for release. There is A LOT of shit that's wrong with the game right now, and it's dumb low-hanging "why is this a step backwards from VT2?" stuff. I work in software. I get that redoing every feature from some previous thing isn't a cakewalk, it's all still work. It's not that I think Fatshark CAN'T do it or anything....they just seem like they needed more time still. All their focus was on the new stuff, the art, the levels, the content, making sure gameplay was great......but returning VT2 players are looking for things that took Fatshark YEARS to finally listen about an add to VT2. Or things that were there from Day 1 in VT that aren't present in DT's beta. To see them missing from DT this close to release makes one wonder if we'll have to wait another few YEARS for them to return. Like, if the release were early 2023 I have no doubt most of my concerns would be handled by then. But time is short, and there's just so much we noticed that seemed wrong or half-baked or just completely absent. Lots of QoL features that VT2 really needed. Lots and lots and lots of bugs. Many instances of work that still seemed in that seemed of "first draft" quality.

3. It should probably be no surprise but, the things they've historically been experts at are great, and the things that are newish aren't. The hub, while I like the idea, I don't need it and it's pretty barebones. There's Armorium for buying new weapons, the Requisitorium where you do weekly tasks and buy yet more weapons, the mission hub, a room where you can repeat the tutorial and I think one vendor that wasn't active that's for modifying weapons. That's it. The mission hub is a big circular area, and then you have two sets of hallways connected to that that contain the rest of the hub area. There's.....just not much there. There's no sitting areas, or places to hang out, no emotes, and no real detail to pay attention to. Are those things completely superfluous? Absolutely. But why do you even have a MP hub at that point, because that shit is 200% superfluous. It's like, if you were going to do it you should have done it well and made it feature complete, instead of something barebones that no one asked for in the first place. Hey, you know what I'd rather see than 60 randos who all look too similar to each other in my hub? MY FRIENDS. And while it's kind of nice to buy gear directly between runs instead of juggling annoying loot crates constantly, it's pretty bland and soulless just going to a vendor menu and buying the same thing you're already using, but better. I hated the loot boxes in VT after a while but at least it had that pizazz, that casino/slot machine factor. I really appreciate the time savings so there's no mandatory 10 minutes of opening loot boxes and fiddling with shit before you can run another mission (maybe that will be in the full game), but it's bland and uninteresting. The UI in particular doesn't help, it's all very flat and again, feels like a 1st draft of a final product. The networking issues, disconnects from the various servers that keep all this going, the little outro cutscenes for missions that look completely janky because the timing is all fucked up......basically everything except the actual in-mission gameplay has issues of one kind or another. Most I'd classify as minor and cosmetic but there are plenty of big ones, and they're all ugly in their own way and very clearly detract from the game's polish.

I know some of this is being a returning player and coming from the highly polished, lovingly iterated VT2. New game, new problems, I suppose. But the # of "solved problems" where the solutions aren't in DT really surprise me and kind of disappoint me.

If the game is any more stable than the beta was by release, all will be well, because gameplay is fun and solid. But I think it's going to be another year after release before Fatshark really sands down the rough edges and glues all the many many features of VT2 to the frame of DT. Weapon balance, UI, all that jazz, is going to continue to be a WIP. Balance in VT2 remained a WIP for many years, while their UI experience only had a few changes not too long ago. But I feel like DT's UI is going to get overhauled more than once.

If I had to condense it all down into one blurb....."While I enjoyed myself a lot, I didn't finish the beta feeling awed or impressed. I'm looking forward to all the content being in, but I wasn't blown away by the beta. There just wasn't enough there, and much of what was there seemed half baked. If gameplay hadn't held up as well as it did, I would have serious reservations about the game."
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: Dostoevsky on October 17, 2022, 11:37:49 am
The hub was also oddly large for how few things there were in there. It was pretty, sure, but VT2's had character while also putting much less legwork between the mechanical items of interest.

I hope they have different weapon types open up earlier for the characters. Having a single gun option with tiny differences in stats as the option for my ~3 hours of playtime was pretty disappointing.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: Persus13 on October 17, 2022, 11:46:33 am
My thoughts on the beta were pretty similar to you nenjin, particularly the bare-bones nature of the hub, not being in the same hub as your strike team, and the gameplay being similar but slightly different.
A firing range on the hub like VT2's dummies feels sorely needed and its my hope that they took out a bunch of stuff for the beta or at least plan on putting a bunch of stuff in eventually.

I hope they have different weapon types open up earlier for the characters. Having a single gun option with tiny differences in stats as the option for my ~3 hours of playtime was pretty disappointing.
They said the weapon selection was limited for the beta and that launch will have around 70 weapons, so hopefully you can mess around more with weapons. I'm pretty sure a psyker teammate had a shotgun in one of my games instead of a pistol, but I didn't play far enough with that class to see one.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: nenjin on October 17, 2022, 12:05:44 pm
And lastly I'd add....

I enjoy the Toughness mechanic. It's not purely "a regenerating shield over your health." Think of it like armor from basic ass DOOM that regenerates. It blocks MOST of the damage that comes in, but not all. Say, 95% of the damage you take gets subtracted from toughness, and the other 5% hits your health. Once you're out of toughness it fully hits your health and that's where the game starts to feel like Vermintide, where a single dude hitting you in the back takes anywhere from 15 to 50% of your health depending on how nasty they are. Toughness gets replenished very minorly by killing guys and a few other things. But by and large it regenerates by staying close to your team. Do that, and your toughness is generally there and protecting you unless you take a big hit of damage all at once.

I like it because it's not regenerating health or pure overshields, it's actually like armor, which is "a lot but not total protection." And that you have to stay in Squad Coherency to get the most out of it,  so it rewards playing tight with your team, which I really appreciate. One of the crappier parts of high level VT2 is when people get so good they don't need their team anymore. They just dodge and melee and race around playing the most self-sufficient and mobile classes, and team play to them is mostly for bosses or when they feel like it. DT can still be like that but it's a lot tougher to get away with it.

So Toughness comes in really, really handy for all those las shots coming your way. As long as you have toughness they sting, but the kind of sting that gets you to take cover instead of setting you back your whole health bar. Now, if you're OUT of toughness.....that's where shit gets immediately real and you can be killed out in the open very quickly. Being targeted by a group of ranged enemies while you have no toughness, even if you're in cover, can get you killed. It's a nice variety of going from feeling invincible to feeling vulnerable quickly.

Quote
A firing range on the hub like VT2's dummies feels sorely needed and its my hope that they took out a bunch of stuff for the beta or at least plan on putting a bunch of stuff in eventually.

This was such a WTF moment for us. When you were waiting for people in VT2, testing your build on the dummies was THE thing you did. In a brand new game, with tons of weapons with special behaviors and yadda yadda, DT needed those training dummies EVEN more.

I can see a couple reasons for their absence though.

#1. With 60 people in a shared hub, you can't have all of them firing their weapons and throwing grenades and what have you. It'd be bedlam, people's frames would tank, it'd be noisy and crazy.
#2. The numbers behind things are all probably bullshit right now so it's probably best not to show them.

That said...they have the Psykhanium. Like, an instanced place for you to test your shit before you play, and work on basic game handling without the pressure of being in the level. That was the NO DUH place to put an instanced training room. But they didn't. It's just one more in a pile of things VT2 did that I immediately noticed the absence of in DT.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: Shooer on October 17, 2022, 12:08:10 pm
The hub felt very incomplete.  Like features were turned off for beta.  There were definitely characters there who you should have been able to interact with, my guess is they'll have more stores and the crafting when turned on.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: nenjin on October 17, 2022, 12:13:03 pm
I think it's just the weapon modding station. (I don't think there will be crafting like in VT2 but I guess that remains to be seen.) That station with the servitor was the only thing that clearly looked like it was turned off in the beta.

The only other thing that I think might be in full release at some point but wasn't in beta....private quarters. It was a thing sort of VT2, and it'd make a lot of sense for DT. (Since there's no keep to decorate, either your character is your keep....or they'll give you some private quarters to spruce up. I think some of those doors might be where you access them, at some point.)
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: nenjin on October 17, 2022, 07:13:48 pm
Another thing that really got me about the beta, and was the first big hit to my confidence in release....were the cute mission ending cutscenes that last maybe 4 or 5 seconds. They're supposed to be cool and dynamic and show your characters moving or doing things like standing at the ramp of the Valkyrie or running as a group.....and I swear, I haven't seen in engine cut scenes this janky since the early 2000s. The timing is so off I though my game was lagging the first couple of times. But no, it's just super choppy and janky. The way the cutscenes are "editted", the action seems to cut scene to scene randomly at times. Like in one shot your guys are running and then it abruptly cuts to them standing in the 4 corners of the troop hold inside the Valkyrie. That one was funny because it made it look like the first thing our characters did after evacing was getting as far away from each other as possible.

One common shot I saw a lot of was from inside the Valkyrie looking out the ramp. You can see one character on the right standing by the ramp, and to the left is another sitting on a bench. It's hilarious to go from a desperate, bass-pumping scramble to reach evac, to immediately cut to a character sprawled out on a bench with their arms crossed over their chest, looking like a bored teenager.

The cutscenes were so rough they were kind of laughable. The small one at the start of the mission is mostly fine but it's just one shot of them walking 4 abreast. The more complicated evac cutscene though.....phew. If they don't clean that up before launch, they best just make a black screen that says VICTORY or something. It would be less embarrassing than what I saw in beta.

(This post is really just a cry for help. I wish they'd left the beta up for longer. Despite all the problems, I just wanna get back to Tertium and cleanse the hive.)
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: Folly on October 17, 2022, 08:02:31 pm
My two biggest gripes from the beta, janky weapon swapping and transparent barriers.

I vaguely remember having issues with weapon swapping from Vermintide. When I'm shooting at a distant enemy, notice another enemy snuck up behind me and I need to switch to melee quickly to respond but my guy just keeps fiddling with his ranged weapon as he's getting his face beat in; that irks me every time.

Almost every short-wall that we're intended to take cover behind has huge gaps, often being made up of nothing more than thin metal bars, and yet they seem to completely block projectiles and skills. It took some getting used to before I realized that I could be safe crouching behind these walls despite the huge gaps. But I never seem to get used to enemies doing the same, and me being unable to shoot them despite having a huge opening.

But yeah, overall I'm still very eager to get back to the cleansing.

-An orbital bombardment would cost more than all the lives in this hive are worth!
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: nenjin on October 17, 2022, 08:21:42 pm
Weapon switching outside of being hit actually felt really smooth and responsive for me, surprisingly so. To the point I started trying to switch too early too often and bungling myself up. But I agree the derpiness during taking damage is a little frustrating. I seem to remember the same behavior in VT2. It's just here you've got an actual weapon with actual amounts of ammo that you actually use, so we're probably feeling it more.

Quote
Almost every short-wall that we're intended to take cover behind has huge gaps, often being made up of nothing more than thin metal bars, and yet they seem to completely block projectiles and skills. It took some getting used to before I realized that I could be safe crouching behind these walls despite the huge gaps. But I never seem to get used to enemies doing the same, and me being unable to shoot them despite having a huge opening.

I feel like I had the opposite experience. I routinely felt like I was getting shot through gaps, like no half cover was actually good enough. And I felt like I could shoot enemies through multiple pieces of cover (with the lasgun anyways) as long as it looked reasonable. I remember only one specific piece of cover I tried to shoot through, between two concrete barricades, where it ate all my shots. Otherwise....I constantly felt like I was getting nipped through holes in cover, or was getting the top of my head clipped, or something.

And I do recall on the last night we were spending an awful lot of time in an event area, where there's the spiral staircase surrounded by chainlink fence and you gotta hit a button and wait for the door to open? I was sniping from up there and killing guys (again, lasgun) while my friends reported they couldn't. I was shooting through chainlink and sometimes even the platform they were standing on and getting hits on the guys on the very bottom floor. And the enemies for sure are able to shoot up through the floor and chainlink, which is super obnoxious in every level they can do it.

At best it seems inconsistent, buggy or who knows what. Maybe there's actual projectile penetration that varies by weapon, completely unmentioned. (How nuts would that be?) My general feeling though is their meshes are pretty fine, and things that look like you can shoot through them but can't are in the minority.

Another bit of jank I felt were my push block animations. I tend to aggressively push block in VT2 and here it just...looked weird and didn't feel right, like push block attempts just kinda mushed together, and my recovery seemed super slow....just weird and janky.

But yeah. Legitimately excited to play more. My appreciation for the setting and environment work kind of grew more by the end of the beta. If you'd have told me this was a Necromunda game I'd have been like "Nailed it." I think our expectations and experience from Vermintide has biased us a bit for what we expect levels to look like as you progress through them. After the 100th time, will we start recognizing DT levels the way we do VT2 levels? There's a few spots in maps from the beta where we got our clocks cleaned that very clearly stick out in my memory.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: Persus13 on October 17, 2022, 09:21:51 pm
Weapon swapping being awkward was mainly noticeable to me on the Psyker, since you're regularly swapping between three different weapons and its harder to quickly swap over to your psychic abilities. I think its the only class I don't feel comfortable with my ability to play as at this point.

It was frustrating that some weapons claimed they had a bayonet special attack, but all the special did was turn on the flashlight. Shoving back with a ranged weapon to then switch to melee feels like what they were aiming for, but I never pulled it off.

I'm excited to play more, but also excited to get the soundtrack whenever it is available.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: nenjin on October 17, 2022, 10:06:26 pm
Quote
I'm excited to play more, but also excited to get the soundtrack whenever it is available.

Have this link while it lasts. (Fatshark or someone has been DMCA'ing them.) Arguably the best track in the beta IMO. I noticed the music and appreciated it over most of the game. But as many people have reported, this track stopped them in the middle of the fight to notice it. By the Throne, it slaps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5gPRWYC-As

Quote
It was frustrating that some weapons claimed they had a bayonet special attack, but all the special did was turn on the flashlight. Shoving back with a ranged weapon to then switch to melee feels like what they were aiming for, but I never pulled it off.

I can't tell if it was saying it DID have a bayonet or it COULD have a bayonet. Either way, it goes to my gripe about unlabeled, icon-driven information with no tooltips about game mechanics. It was annoying in Vermintide and it's annoying here.

And yeah, a bayonet stab would have come in real handy. Multiple times in the beta I would be unloading at a guy running toward me, see I wasn't going to kill them in time, dodge backward out of the way of their attack and it would still hit me even though I can freaking see the head of the weapon out in front of me. I feel like after this many years of VT I can feel when something ain't right, and that sure as hell looked wrong to me every time. If I'd had bayonet I would have just stabbed them in the face as they came in.


Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: scriver on October 18, 2022, 06:46:16 am
I have to areas of interest I'm wondering about:

1, How is the different "classes", or whatever they call them?

2. Character Customisation. I believe they promised it, what is it like?
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: Persus13 on October 18, 2022, 08:15:34 am
I'm not a good judge of balance at this point, so my main impression of classes is how they felt to play. I enjoyed the 4 different classes, with the possible exception of Psyker. Psyker I need to play more to learn how to use their magic abilities. I'm just not sure what the Psyker's crowd control abilities are, because their revolver and their psyker abilities mainly seem to be focused on single-target kills. There was a game I played with 3 psykers and a zealot and that was the one time I felt like the party composition increased the difficulty. But popping the head of a mauler with a psyker was incredibly satisfying.

Most of my playtime was the Veteran Sharpshooter because blasting away with a lasgun and grenades was pretty fun, and their F ability highlighting specials is nice for finding and killing the sniper or whatever your teammate is calling out. A grenade in the middle of a horde is so much fun to see.

Two of my friends were having a good time having the ogryn knocking down enemies for the zealot to come in and kill while I took out guys at a distance. Obliterating a group of ranged guys with the ogryn's shotgun, knocking a horde down with the ogryn's F ability or dashing in as a zealot to bash a special all felt great.

Character customization could refer to a couple of different things. When you make a new character there's a character creator where you choose what planet your from, why you're a convict, what voice personality you'll have, and customize your characters appearance, normal stuff like hair, skin tone, etc. but also stuff like tattoos and scars. I liked it and got characters I was pretty happy with but it wasn't as extensive as some other character creators I've seen.

Then in game there's cosmetics for what gear you're wearing, stuff like headgear, torso, pants, weapon appearance, stance, etc. However the beta didn't drop a lot of cosmetics, at least at low-levels, so outside of getting a cool jacket and seeing other people in the hub with some cool gear, I didn't engage with this aspect.

Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: nenjin on October 18, 2022, 10:28:48 am
Classes differ by:

What weapons they're able to use (many overlap.)
What Class Special Ability they get.
What Class Talents they can unlock.
Appearance options and voice acting.

I feel like classes aren't as dramatically different from each other as they were in VT2. But it's early days yet.

Zealot is mostly a melee rush down survivalist. I think they were the most popular class during beta, due to the mobility of their class skill and that it replenishes their toughness when used.
Veteran is a ranged specialist with auto-replenishing grenades (if you choose to spec that way.) Gave Zealot a run for their money for most played class.
Psyker is a psyker. Mostly for exploding single target's heads or creating a little warp explosion using their staff. They were IMO the 3rd most played class.
Ogryn is big, and is somewhat akin to the Zealot for their rush attacks. While I saw a lot of Ogryns the first day of the beta, by the 3rd day I'd almost forgotten they were in the game because it had been many games since I'd played with one.

Customization is, as mentioned, headgear, chest and legs. Then you also have a portrait frame you can set, and "insignia" slot that wasn't available in beta, one other slot that wasn't clothing that I can't remember the title of, your idle stance animation. You also get to pick your face, hair style, skin tone, model size, eye color(s), and answer some basic RPG background questions that may or may not affect what kind of responses your character gives when the characters are talking to each other. You can pick from one of three voices per character.

And then you can also customize your gun with different attachments, color patterns and charms you can hang off them.

I think that's most of what's coming.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: Shooer on October 18, 2022, 11:09:43 am
I'm not a good judge of balance at this point, so my main impression of classes is how they felt to play. I enjoyed the 4 different classes, with the possible exception of Psyker. Psyker I need to play more to learn how to use their magic abilities. I'm just not sure what the Psyker's crowd control abilities are, because their revolver and their psyker abilities mainly seem to be focused on single-target kills. There was a game I played with 3 psykers and a zealot and that was the one time I felt like the party composition increased the difficulty. But popping the head of a mauler with a psyker was incredibly satisfying.
The psykers crowed control power was it's F ability.  It creates a shockwave that throws most enemies to the floor and it has a good range too.  It also removed your build up of perils of the warp so you could keep head popping.  Also, the revolver has strong pass through and can take out multiple enemies in a line.

I liked the psyker most of the 4 classes, but hated weapon swapping between sword and head pop.  Headpop needs to be on 3 or a mouse button and not G(and only G).
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: Persus13 on October 18, 2022, 11:20:18 am
The shockwave ability was useful for clearing out your peril, and knocking down things is nice but just delays the problem. I think if I had a better melee weapon on my psyker I'd like the shockwave more. Because my melee attack felt wimpy even compared to my Sharpshooter's.

In the trailers they also showed an AoE psyker ability, but I wasn't sure if that was based on a particular weapon or something else.

Zealot is mostly a melee rush down survivalist. I think they were the most popular class during beta, due to the mobility of their class skill and that it replenishes their toughness when used.
Veteran is a ranged specialist with auto-replenishing grenades (if you choose to spec that way.) Gave Zealot a run for their money for most played class.
Psyker is a psyker. Mostly for exploding single target's heads or creating a little warp explosion using their staff. They were IMO the 3rd most played class.
Ogryn is big, and is somewhat akin to the Zealot for their rush attacks. While I saw a lot of Ogryns the first day of the beta, by the 3rd day I'd almost forgotten they were in the game because it had been many games since I'd played with one.
Interesting. I felt like I saw sharpshooter the least, but that may have been because I was playing one myself.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: nenjin on October 18, 2022, 11:23:20 am
That's because "Head Pop" is considered a "Tactical Ability." For the Veteran, Zealot and Ogryn, their Tactical Ability is their grenade.

The "Tactical Ability" button actually screwed me up a lot. In most games, you hit your grenade button and it just throws a grenade and swaps back to your weapon. And in other games, your grenade is just a weapon slot you switch to, and switch back from.

In DT, hitting Tactical Ability takes out your grenade and primes it, but you still have to press left click to throw it.

So what I did all throughout beta was hit my Grenade key, throw my grenade and then reflexively weapon switch. So if I was on my sword before I threw my grenade, I'd end up swapping to my gun after my grenade was thrown.

Right near the end of beta I finally mentally programmed the pattern of "throw your grenade and don't hit weapon switch" and it would put me back to the weapon I swapped from immediately after the grenade was thrown.

Quote
Interesting. I felt like I saw sharpshooter the least, but that may have been because I was playing one myself.

There was always one per run in every game I played. That said, most of my games were with my friends. But when we needed a rando, it was almost always a Zealot or Veteran.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: Shooer on October 18, 2022, 12:01:10 pm
The shockwave ability was useful for clearing out your peril, and knocking down things is nice but just delays the problem. I think if I had a better melee weapon on my psyker I'd like the shockwave more. Because my melee attack felt wimpy even compared to my Sharpshooter's.
When I was playing psyker I was almost always running ahead of the group.  Group of enemies around the corner, knock them down, heavy swing the first and go around finished off the rest while they get up.  Could usually kill most of an enemy group(cultist horde or traitor guard squad) before allies even catch up, and then I'm off running again.  Only slowing down to snipe head pops onto specials.

I think the starter melee for psyker's had weak multi-target and the veteran's had good multi and good armor pierce.  I got a forcesword and it helped against armored enemies and damage overall.  Went multiple missions never pulling out my revolver.

Though the default psyker build's job isn't crowed control, it's single target decimation.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: Folly on October 18, 2022, 01:26:28 pm
It's not described in the tooltip, but I swear that Psyker's shockwave does more damage scaling with peril. At least every time I shockwaved a group of enemies with full peril, much fewer of them seemed to get back up.

Once I got the staff, which shoots projectiles at the expense of Peril instead of ammo, I enjoyed shooting at approaching hordes to thin their numbers while building up Peril, then unleashing a shockwave to finish off any that got close to me, then using my newly empty Peril pool to resume shooting at the next wave. It made a nice clean cycle.

I was skeptical of the axe at first, because the head-pop is already amazing for taking out heavily armored enemies, and the axe doesn't cleave on it's basic attack. But the axe's push-attack does cleave, and proved extremely effective at holding back swarms when I found myself surrounded without a shockwave ready. Also the second tier of axe has a sweep on it's first heavy attack, which I love opening with.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: nenjin on October 18, 2022, 03:17:30 pm
The axe is pretty versatile but I always gravitate toward melee weapons with cleave on their light attacks. When shit is hitting the fan and is up close and personal, I don't have time for heavy attack timing. Which is why though I love the 2 handed hammer in VT2, it was not my preferred weapon because once you lose that charged attack rhythm for cleaves, shit goes downhill very quickly.

By contrast the sword in DT has a light attack combo that cleaves, and the charged heavy attacks also cleave and also do more damage and armor pen, and chain nicely into each other. May not hit the hardest but at least you're rarely throwing attacks that aren't doing anything meaningful.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: nenjin on October 18, 2022, 06:00:55 pm
Still thinking about the beta experience, cause I'm in Day 2 of the post-beta sulk. Part of me wants to go play Vermintide to console myself, and the other wants to avoid it as a false panacea and bad primer for Darktide. If I'm honest, while I appreciate Vermintide's pace because it's kinda fixed and that's neat, Darktide is way more my speed now. Despite all the things it lacks, little things like actual sprinting and mantling over stuff just feels so much better than VT2. I get stuck on shit constantly in VT2 and I hate it. In DT I can actually move through cover and terrain efficiently instead of having to time bunny-hops off low-lying geometry.

(Ghad this is going to be a looooonnnggg month.)

Did anyone get the full read on what the color of the hit markers was?

My assumption was that:

White = Damage applied.
Blue = Friendly Fire or a hit absorbed by armor.
Yellow = Weak Spot and/or Critical Hit.
Red = Killing blow.

I was trying to figure out which attacks were or weren't armor piercing against the Maulers and I did not find the coloration helpful in answering it. My brain expected a more forceful notice like VT2's armor symbol but it seems more subtle than that. Like, armor doesn't actually deny any attacks anymore, but it does absorb most/all of the damage.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: nenjin on October 18, 2022, 09:52:16 pm
And maybe it doesn't need a new post but fuck it....

My favorite feature of Darktide is a simple one. Your grenades have collision and even cause some enemies to react to getting hit. It's was pretty damn gratifying to be headshotting heretics with a grenade and having it blow up at eye level.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: Shooer on October 19, 2022, 01:14:05 am
To be fair that is 100% all that the ogryn's default grenade ability is.  Them throwing a box of grenades as a blunt object.

Probably one of the reasons people didn't play much ogryn.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: Dostoevsky on October 19, 2022, 12:54:34 pm
I don't care how meta it is, it's amazing that is a thing.

(I wonder if somebody shooting the box would set it off.)
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: Persus13 on October 19, 2022, 02:36:48 pm
Unless normal pickups explode it won't go off, but if you miss the throw I'm pretty sure its a grenade pickup.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: scriver on October 19, 2022, 05:03:00 pm
Thanks for the answers folks!
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: Dostoevsky on October 20, 2022, 08:38:01 pm
Unless normal pickups explode it won't go off, but if you miss the throw I'm pretty sure its a grenade pickup.

My brainspace idea was shooting it mid-air to see what happens, but probably nothing.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: Shooer on October 21, 2022, 12:49:14 am
I don't remember seeing it stick around, and I never used it more than twice, since it uses an entire grenade pickup per throw.  I would rather have the veteran or zealot get several grenades that can hurt/kill a swarm than a rough single thrown weapon.


It might stick around, I just never cared to check.  Would be good if it did, would mean as an ogryn you can stockpile grenades for the rest of the team.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: nenjin on October 21, 2022, 12:46:09 pm
The soundtrack for this game....sweet Emperor on the Throne, it slaps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5ozcKqF4E8
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Play as a Guardsmen, blast heretics. Releases Nov. 30th, 2022.
Post by: nenjin on October 22, 2022, 04:23:26 am
Well lads, looks like we'll be going back into the Hive sooner than we thought.

https://www.playdarktide.com/news/darktide-closed-beta-thank-you-and-whats-next/

Quote
Many of you have joined us in the technical tests and closed beta. We have found these early tests extremely helpful in addressing issues. Ultimately this will help make our game better.

So, with that in mind, we want to invite anyone who pre-orders or has already pre-ordered the game an opportunity to play Darktide as part of a pre-launch Beta period starting November 17th.

I can only think that #1, this is due to people that pre-ordered and somehow didn't manage to get into Beta complaining, and #2, the feeback they got on the old Beta build and the worry that generated prompted them to do another preview of the latest build before release to build confidence back up.

Although people are saying they did the same thing for VT2.

Regardless, Praise the Emperor and pass the ammunition.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Preorder Beta starts Nov. 17th. Full release on Nov. 30th.
Post by: nenjin on November 10, 2022, 08:09:41 pm
Welcome to the Imperium of Man. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0Z53bk4lvc)

Just one long week til. Not going to lie, I took time off of work for it. (I'll be unavailable when it releases.) I just pray it isn't one and a half days of a total clusterfuck.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Preorder Beta starts Nov. 17th. Full release on Nov. 30th.
Post by: Mephansteras on November 10, 2022, 09:44:23 pm
I didn't end up doing the demo, but super looking forward to this based on the gameplay I've seen.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Preorder Beta starts Nov. 17th. Full release on Nov. 30th.
Post by: Persus13 on November 10, 2022, 11:05:19 pm
That's probably the coolest depiction of warp travel I've seen. Also nice callback to the first ever trailer.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Preorder Beta starts Nov. 17th. Full release on Nov. 30th.
Post by: EuchreJack on November 11, 2022, 03:04:45 pm
Awesome trailer!
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Preorder Beta starts Nov. 17th. Full release on Nov. 30th.
Post by: nenjin on November 14, 2022, 07:20:53 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwuL58xeyv0
milkandcookiesTW video showing off, I think, a build between the one we're getting on the 17th and the publicly available Beta 2 build.

Shows off several new weapons, levels and content but it's more a new player introduction video than a feature showcase for those having played Beta 2.

Still, there's lots of great stuff in there for old eyes to see. The Psykhanium as a training ground/weapon testing center is improved from its VT2 counterpart. You can spawn actual enemies from the game, swap equipment around and a few other things. Unclear if you'll be able to activate the AI and actually fight them there, but it still beats shooting at two different kinds of target dummies. Not only did this allay one of my biggest concerns from Beta 2, but it also means you can actually ADMIRE the models in these games without needing to get a 3rd party tool. I still couldn't tell you the finer details of many VT2 enemies because I've only ever seen them at the end of my sword. But now you can stop and smell the uh.....well, maybe stop and gaze at all the.....ewwwwww. You get the drift.

The video showed off the Bolter, the Eviscerator, the Plasma Gun and several other weapons that weren't in Beta 2.

The video also said that the Pre-Order Beta won't feature all content that release will have (obviously.) But that updates to the Preorder Beta will introduce new content in the two weeks leading up to release. Kind of.....strange that. Two weeks isn't much time to identify and troubleshooot a whole game worth of bugs. Kind of makes me wonder if we're testing half this stuff for the first time in the Preorder Beta.

Anyways, just 2.5 more days until the purging begins!
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Preorder Beta starts Nov. 17th. Full release on Nov. 30th.
Post by: Mephansteras on November 14, 2022, 09:00:51 pm
I predict that this release will be a hot mess. But hopefully a fun hot mess.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Preorder Beta starts Nov. 17th. Full release on Nov. 30th.
Post by: nenjin on November 16, 2022, 12:27:29 pm
Preorder Beta Download times:

US East Coast: 1 pm EST
US West Coast: 10 am PST
UK: 6 pm GMT
Europe: 8 pm CEST
Japan: 3 am JST (November 18)
Australia: 5 am AEDT (November 18)
New Zealand: 7 am NZDT (November 18)

Per PC gamer. There will be no preload for this one, alas.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Preorder Beta starts Nov. 17th. Full release on Nov. 30th.
Post by: Folly on November 16, 2022, 04:53:44 pm
Some details about what to expect throughout the beta:
https://www.playdarktide.com/news/pre-order-beta-what-to-expect (https://www.playdarktide.com/news/pre-order-beta-what-to-expect)
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Preorder Beta starts Nov. 17th. Full release on Nov. 30th.
Post by: nenjin on November 16, 2022, 06:54:58 pm
Well since you beat me to posting that, I offer this instead:

https://www.playdarktide.com/news/dev-blog-performance
(Skip to the bottom section if you want a detailed breakdown of pretty much all the graphics options, what they mean and what kind of performance impact they have. I may not read the dev blogs for a lot of games I'm going to play, but this seems like going above and beyond.)

The wait is killing me.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: nenjin on November 17, 2022, 03:02:57 pm
Cool prologue. Very 40k appropriate. A little hammy in some places but overall great.

Sadly I'm getting backend errors now and can't log in.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: Iduno on November 17, 2022, 03:55:32 pm
If it's Vermintide-like, I'll want to play it, but not enough to pay more than 20%. Vermintide is a great game until 3 hours in when you've done everything.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: Dostoevsky on November 17, 2022, 04:21:32 pm
It'll be in the xbox/pc microsoft gamepass subscription thing, so if you don't mind potentially being 'stuck' on that storefront you could do a single month subscription to play it.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: nenjin on November 17, 2022, 06:22:30 pm
Depends on what you consider seeing it all is. All the levels in 3 hours? Maybe? Each run is 20 to 25 minutes even on the lowest difficulty. If you're talking weapons and cosmetics and yadda yadda, then serious hours. At least 40 for the weapons for one class I would think.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: nenjin on November 18, 2022, 05:35:30 am
Welp, after about 12 solid hours of purging....

It's great.

They fixed or touched on most of the things in the last Beta that had me concerned.

-Your strike team members show up in your own lobby.
-You can dodge with guns now, they just kinda have crappy dodge compared to melee weapons.
-It's a little easier to compare weapons to each other now.
-Relatively few crashes or disconnects all said and done.
-Good weapon testing ground now.
-Better looking UI in a lot of places.
-Some but not all basic settings added in.
-Some of the in-game cutscenes are cleaned up.

And there's more content now like Okri's Challenge-style achievements with cosmetic rewards at the end of them, somewhat more cosmetics, more weapons, a few new missions types. Cutscenes roughly every few major levels to clue you in to some new thing you unlocked. There's a currently busted/unfinished barber for your changing your appearance.

Overall the game feels a bit harder. We spent a lot of hours at Rank 1 difficulty. It wasn't overly hard but it was still engaging. There's no shortage of enemies at that difficulty so you get to do plenty of killin. And you can get in trouble if you fall asleep at the wheel. But there's a lot of things that don't show up that that difficulty like secondary objectives and some enemies.

But Rank 2 is noticeably harder while not worth a ton more coin and xp than Rank 1. Rank 3 is a pretty big jump up from Rank 2 in pretty much all areas.

We did get through some Rank 3 missions tonight. I've hit Trust Level 15 and I think the game's difficulty is pretty heavily dependent on the power rating of your weapons versus the difficulty level you're attempting and not much else. Unfortunately they don't do a good job of explaining what your overall power level is like in VT2, and what that affects. It seemingly is like VT2, in that the three extra charm/trinket/what have you slots carry a power level, implying it contributes to some overall pool.

Progression seems kinda slow. Because what weapons you can buy easily only change about every 45 minutes, progression kind of lurches along in fits and spurts. Especially if you're sticking with a weapon you like. DT is perhaps a little stingy with gear. There's no crafting system that I've seen so far, so weapons you don't use you just recycle into money to buy more weapons with.

One somewhat annoying thing they still haven't fixed though is various settings literally getting changed mid with the player not doing it themselves. Mouse-sensitivity, input settings, HUD settings, they just change mid game. I noticed it with my HUD scaling because the HUD would start getting all buggy with where it was displaying stuff, often pushing my lifebar off the screen. If I pop into options and change even 1% scaling, it snaps back to true.

All in all I'm enjoying the hell out of it. It's a very satisfying "Tide" experience. Looking forward to more stuff getting added to the beta in the next few weeks.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: Mephansteras on November 18, 2022, 10:59:04 am
I only got in two missions last night, but my initial experience was pretty good. A bit of lag on the second mission for some reason, but overall no major issues.

I was doing 1 bar difficulty missions, but we still lost against a boss on the first mission I did. So that slowed my progression, but I did get to loyalty level 2 after the next mission that we succeeded on.

Psyker is...ok? Did not like the starting gun much, and the Brain Blast ability feels a bit hard to use sometimes, but the knockdown wave is very handy and I generally felt perfectly capable in fights overall. I was able to buy a much nicer autogun before logging off, so I'm hoping my next run I feel more effective.

I may enjoy the Veteran more, I'll have to try that out. But I think I'll give the Psyker a bit longer before I sink time into another character.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: nenjin on November 18, 2022, 04:39:22 pm
Well today has started off a bit rockier. Got one game in before matchmaking stopped working, and after restarting, now there are no hub instances to connect to.

The Tech Priests are hard at work, I'm sure.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: Folly on November 18, 2022, 06:14:43 pm
Psyker felt pretty terrible day 1, compared to Closed Beta. Peril built up more quickly and purged more slowly. Both of those things were addressed in the hotfix today, and it feels better now. Though the Push having no damage and zero effect on heavier enemies still irks me.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: Mephansteras on November 18, 2022, 10:28:22 pm
Got in one more match with the Psyker. Still not sold on it, but it was better this time. New gun helped considerably, since I felt I could actually contribute at range rather than just annoy enemies with the pistol. The starter sword is ok, but I am looking forward to trying out my new dueling sword on a mission.

Powers still feel a bit weird as a combo. I'm supposed to be looking for specials/hard targets for my Brain blast ability, but my force wave is only good for hordes, but I still feel super squishy in melee. I did do better this time around, mostly trying to be a support shooter/special watcher but rushing in to help with hordes as necessary. Also went down a bunch from getting ganged up on, which wasn't so great.

I don't know, I really like the Elf from Vermintide for taking out specials, but she makes it easy. The Brian blast is very, very slow so it's easy to get hit by a special before it goes off or get interrupted by a trash mob. It's strong, but just isn't easy to use. And a lot of specials really need you to act fast on.

We'll see how my opinion changes as I get higher level.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: nenjin on November 19, 2022, 03:21:57 am
Brain Burst is incredibly useful for things like Crushers, Bulwarks, Maulers, Ragers, Reapers, etc...They're good at taking out big beefy elites rather than specials. Brain Burst will usually kill them while the rest of the melee is wailing on them. In situations where there's just too much shit to going on to focus on the Super Heavies, Brain Burst really shines because you can just kite them while they die.

That said, Brain Burst is good for Bombers, since if you tag them, they run off and get squished. The Special killer really does seem to be Veterans. But you have to work for it, unlike Kerillian's Career skill.

Got the Recon Lasgun, and I'm really enjoying it. It doesn't do a ton of damage per shot and has no stopping power, but it throws out rounds so fast that when you're getting headshots guys just liquefy. It's also really accurate from the hip, and dead accurate even at high range when aiming down sights. The standard Lasgun still has better time to kill a single target, especially elite and up, but the recon is just a good all around versatile weapon and feels good to use.

Also got the Power Sword, and I'm kinda in love. It has the same attack pattern as the Catachan sword. But the weapon special makes it go through armor like butter, and has unlimited cleave while active, it feels like. If you just need to flail against the horde to clear guys out it's good, and if you really want to slay horde and/or armored, it's good too. Pretty much invalidates the other sword IMO. I think it'll end up being my preferred melee weapon for Veteran. The knife, axe, chainsword, shovel and chain axe don't really do it for me.

Still looking forward to seeing the Boltgun, Plasma Gun, Flamer and maybe? Melta Gun. I'm finding I like DT's guns the same way I liked VT2's melee weapons. And vicea versa. I was never too wild on VT2's missile weapons, and many of DT's veteran melee weapons kind of underwhelm me.

Also, protip on Maulers: only their head is carapace armor. When facing them if you just unload all your shots into their torso, melee or ranged, they go down much faster.

Looking forward next week to when they add more missions, and probably functional content updates like the Barber coming online.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: nenjin on November 19, 2022, 04:15:04 am
Game soundtrack. It's 2 hours long.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olqaqM21Dro&t=7s

I won't say everything in there is a gem to put on your everyday playlist....but it may be one of the best 40k soundtracks I've heard since Dawn of War.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: nenjin on November 20, 2022, 04:52:51 am
Finally reached rank 30 with the Sharpshooter. I got the achievement for completing 50 missions as Sharpshooter on the same mission...so give or take a few missions and different difficulties, it's probably 40 missions to reach 30 on a character.

Got to finally use the Plasma Gun and Boltgun. The Boltgun is great, but it has a ton of disadvantages, like a small magazine, small ammo capacity and a pretty punishing ready up animation for a game where you weapon swap about 100 times per run. It hits like an absolute truck, does a lot of splash damage and only marginally cares about carapace armor. But its unaimed shot is a double shot which isn't super accurate, and when there's a ton of trash between you and the priority target that needs to die, its rounds in the mag really hurt it.

The Plasma Gun though may be my favorite Sharpshooter weapon. It also absolute wrecks whatever it hits, is incredibly accurate and has a charged shot that can do even more damage. It puts down big guys in a hurry with the Sharpshooter Career skill. But it's an overheat weapon, and there's a limit to how many times in a row you can shoot it in addition to an overheat meter that will blow you up. Using it really makes you slow down and consider what's worth shooting rather than just shooting what's in front of you, like you do with a lot of the faster firing weapons.

We almost beat a Heresy difficulty mission. They're pretty tough but doable with a good group with Rank 30 gear. The game really slows down at that difficulty, making you take each area and group of enemies tactically. Unlike Vermintide where the answer is almost always just "kill harder", Darktide requires you to make smarter plays. If you're surrounded and there's a bunch of other guys shooting you with this that and the other thing, you need to break out and fall back to a space where their numbers mean less and you can shoot back at anyone that's shooting you.

The game has some glaring issues at this point though they really need to get cleaned up.

-Crashes and networking problems are still happening for lots of people.
-Progression is pretty slow. You're pretty much wholly reliant on an hourly list of rotating weapons and curios for any new gear. When what you like using isn't coming up, it starts falling behind in damage.
-You rarely is ever get gear rewards for completing missions. Out of 50 successful ones, I maybe got a post game reward 8 to 10 times.
-For the end game players, the only way seemingly to get access to purple and orange gear is through the Requistorium. But what it offers you is also random, both in type and rarity. You might get blues rather than purples and oranges, and they may not be weapons you're interested in. That offering rotates every 24 hours, and the gear is expensive enough you need to several hours of play to complete the contracts that reward the currency you need, and those recycle every 3 days.

I know there's going to be weapon rerolling and yadda yadda, and that will help. But it's not a smooth layout of gear offerings as you level up. 50% of everything on offer for Veteran is an autogun or lasgun. The rest is split among all the other weapons they use. And of those, only a certain number are a certain rarity.

Without all the content the game has to offer there it's probably unwise to come to too many conclusions. But there's something kind of stingy and uneven about the way Darktide gives you rewards. Ironically almost all of the cutscenes you get as you level up amount to some character telling you that you "need to do more, show more, fight harder." The parallels are rather ironic.

What we were saying during the first Beta seems to still stand. The gameplay is great. But the game around the gameplay is kind of iffy.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: Knave on November 20, 2022, 10:12:43 am
Picked up the game and played a couple games as an Ogryn last night.

Had fun but man that starting ogre gun (basically a 1 shot mega shotgun) is soooo slow to reload. Do I really have to wait until level 11 before the store unlocks to buy more weapons?
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: Mephansteras on November 20, 2022, 12:09:08 pm
Picked up the game and played a couple games as an Ogryn last night.

Had fun but man that starting ogre gun (basically a 1 shot mega shotgun) is soooo slow to reload. Do I really have to wait until level 11 before the store unlocks to buy more weapons?

No, the primary weapon store unlocks at level 2.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: Knave on November 20, 2022, 02:24:35 pm
Oof thanks for that!  :o
Weird that the basic weapons are off to the side, probably wouldn't have noticed for a while!
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: Shooer on November 20, 2022, 06:53:44 pm
As soon as you hit level 2 it gives you an objective in the lobby to visit the armory.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: nenjin on November 21, 2022, 05:55:39 pm
Today's planned content update putting in new maps and other features...delayed until tomorrow.

I'm going to be brutally honest: I'm having a ton of fun in Darktide. Despite the small map selection, bugs, crashes, things not being hooked up, I'm still having a lot of fun.

But if you're not sure about this game....wait until after release. Give it a few days to see what's actually finished and what's not. I can't really predict what release is going to look like, but if I use the beta I'm currently playing as an example of what's going to be in the full release....it's going to be rough. Inconsistent networking (there's just short but but noticeable periods of the day where you can't reach the hub in good order, join a strike team or launch missions), inconsistent performance (as the person with the oldest hardware of my group I'm experiencing the fewest crashes.....), and unfinished content (progression balancing has issues, gear stats not tracking to reality, obvious bugged features) all add up to stuff that isn't going to magically be fixed by November 30th.

There's just lots of things yet to be hooked up for the full release, and if the stuff that was already hooked up prior to this beta still has issues, it wouldn't be reasonable to assume that unvetted content is "just going to work."

Like....you can attach little cosmetic items to weapons. Most recently I just tried to do this and it simply didn't work for the newest weapon I bought. Went in, played a mission, came out....and now it's attached.

If cosmetics are having synch issues like that, I can only imagine that the actual Forge for changing weapon stats and traits will have similar issues.

It's not that I don't believe in this game or am not having fun. But I think they're very behind schedule and that will be felt by players on release. If you don't have the tolerance for your typical big budget AAA release "get it as close as you can then clean it up after release" model, then I would give it some more time.

Truthfully if the gameplay weren't fun no amount of 40k trappings would allow me to recommend it. I may like 40k but I'm not going to simp that hard when there's so many glaring issues.

But the gameplay is super fun and crunchy and the flavor is 200% there. It's just the GAME around the GAME that is creakier than a beached ship in the Sahara. So this is my Caveat Emptor.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: Folly on November 22, 2022, 03:34:12 am
I love the Lightning staff. Great support tool. Instantly stagger anything smaller than a boss, especially dogs and bursters, making them easy targets for allies. Hits groups of enemies with no need to aim or worry about friendly fire. My biggest complaint is that it is very easy to overcharge and explode, which sometimes seems to happen instantly without allowing a chance to vent.

Currently using Voidstrike staff though. It shoots a bolt with huge piercing, and when charged enough will 1-shot a scab. Get them coming through a narrow hall and it just mows down entire crowds. Very effective.

The level 20 perk allowing me to purge while moving at full speed has really been a game changer. So much more casting when I can purge on the move without falling behind.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: nenjin on November 22, 2022, 12:20:44 pm
I really like what I've seen of the Psyker attacks so far. Warp Lighting not only works really well, it looks fuckin' cool.

That said, the Warp Charge class mechanic seems dumb. Having to Brain Burst every 25 seconds to keep Warp Charges up for a measly 12% damage increase at max is just silly. I hope they rework that particular element of Psyker because it's dissuading me from even trying it.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: nenjin on November 22, 2022, 01:03:54 pm
So we've started playing Heresy difficulty....

The shit is wild. You want that experience from Saving Private Ryan, storming the beaches of Normandy into the teeth of enemy gunfire?

Play Heresy.

It's hard to describe just how differently it plays from the lower difficulties. Sedition through Malice, the game is still largely about rushing. You take a few hits from lasgun, ignore it and wade into melee. Or stand there and return fire and eventually kill your opponent.

Not on Heresy you won't.

The lasgun and autogun squads absolutely MURDER you. A single foe with a lasgun can strip your toughness in a few shots. A squad of lasguns can take you from full toughness and health to dead in a single concentrated volley.

Multiple times now we've ended up completely pinned in cover by these las squads. We're barely able to peak out of cover without getting our faces shot off. And that's before you even get to the increased enemy health, the increased horde sizes, the increased # of elite spawns attacking you at once, and all the extra specials.

So Heresy difficulty as a whole means you have to play much slower and much much tighter as a team. You have to start using all your abilities in conjunction with each other to have a chance at breaking through. Some of the levels with bridge approaches are just murder, with spotty cover (that doesn't seem to work well) and long distances for the stupidly accurate AI to shoot at you.

Our last mission we played, there's a small hallway leading up to a much larger and longer hallway, where you have to jump down from where you are. We got there and had several teams of lasguns waiting for us. We tried everything; all our grenades, target marking, everything we could think of. And as someone would step to the ledge or corner of the wall to see what they could do, the lasguns would open up and frag their toughness before they'd even gotten a look around the corner.

The shit is brutal and obviously needs a balance pass. That said, it's kind of the 40k experience I've been looking for. Up to now, Darktide has more or less played like VT. You just push, push, push and shoot specials when needed. But on Heresy, you start having to move cover to cover and use flanking. Rushing just gets you killed. There are those on the forums who say they don't like this style of gameplay but frankly it's exactly what I've wanted coming from VT2. More thoughtful and mindful gameplay instead of just turning your brain off and endlessly cleaving hordes.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: nenjin on November 22, 2022, 02:58:17 pm
Full patch notes from today:
https://forums.fatsharkgames.com/t/1-0-7-update-expanded-patch-notes-balance-tweaks/58673

And a video where someone starts trying to explain what the various weapon attributes actually mean or do:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSXV4PxC8Ys
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: nenjin on November 23, 2022, 08:19:17 pm
(https://i.imgur.com/KZPUed6l.jpg)

Whatever else I feel about Darktide, the drip is on point. Legitimately looking forward to the (earned) cosmetics after launch.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: Persus13 on November 23, 2022, 08:49:28 pm
I didn't realize you could make Homelander in the character creator.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: nenjin on November 24, 2022, 02:23:33 am
Finally got my official Imperial Guard grunt helmet.

(http://i.imgur.com/YdrNaknl.jpg) (https://imgur.com/YdrNakn)
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: nenjin on November 24, 2022, 03:10:57 pm
An update just released that added character cosmetics to the Armory, and the Forge for modifying weapons.

The character cosmetics are mostly palette swaps but they move around a few details as well. Weapon skins are both recoloring and different models in some cases. The Forge currently only allows you to upgrade the rarity of an item, but more features are coming soon. Crafting requires materials found in levels, which are shared across all party members. Finally, something else to look for in crates besides ammo and medikits/ammo crates.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: Folly on November 26, 2022, 04:59:05 am
Official communication on the Discord seems to confirm that there will be no reset.

Quote
Service Update!
A wise man once said "Our enemies may rest but rust never sleeps". Now I say to you "The heretics never rest, but progress doesn't reset".

Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: nenjin on November 26, 2022, 06:57:30 pm
Wow, so they added the Witch from L4D.

They call it a Daemonhost. Which as a 40k nerd, is both fitting and pleasing to me. Not sure I actually miss the Witch mechanic from L4D though. But Darktide is shaping up to different in a lot of ways from the VT2 formula.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: Persus13 on November 28, 2022, 03:03:06 pm
Got the game. Not too many issues compared to the beta a few weeks ago, only my last two missions the game crashed in the rewards screen.

I also ran into an amusing bug where a 4th player joined, but the bot they replaced stuck around.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: forsaken1111 on November 28, 2022, 03:14:11 pm
The last 2 days I have been entirely unable to play. The game crashes when I load to the hub, or as soon as I load into a mission. Previously I was able to play hours without issue. Frustrating...
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: Shooer on November 28, 2022, 03:41:35 pm
I also ran into an amusing bug where a 4th player joined, but the bot they replaced stuck around.
Accidental temporary pet class.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: nenjin on November 28, 2022, 05:29:44 pm
My friends are reporting increased crashes of late too. So far, I'm still 95% crash free.

Clearly it's an interaction with advanced features on new cards, which is why I'm probably ok.

NGL, Fatshark is going to be eating a big, steaming slice of humble pie on release day.

Sadly for myself, I'll be on a work trip until like the 3rd. But maybe I'll just be dodging most of the ugliness and server woes.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: Kagus on November 28, 2022, 06:39:23 pm
NGL, Fatshark is going to be eating a big, steaming slice of humble pie on release day.

I mean, it's Fatshark... They're lovable, but good lord are they goofs when it comes to releases. Or updates. Or fixes to other catastrophic issues that somehow introduce new, shinier catastrophes.

But they do their best to make a game fun and to eventually fix the bugs they can, and that's why we just let them have their flopping and flailing around on release day.


I'm not sure I'll ever quite get the image of that rat-ogre violently pirouetting down the corridor towards my team. I wasn't expecting psychological warfare in my co-op slasher.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: nenjin on November 28, 2022, 06:52:15 pm
They definitely seem to do their best work and thinking when they're not under the gun. I don't know if it's just they're overly ambitious or if they have a design philosophy of "release a first sketch and we'll really think about it after release."

What's embarrassing for them, I think, is the lessons from the other two games that they didn't make the time to implement in DT. It's like they have to relearn many things all over again.

Which, from someone in software development, is pretty normal. But like.....letting weapons roll traits which they can't actually make use of? Forget passing testing like that, how did it pass design? Did someone create a mega-spreadsheet of all traits and just said "let the melee weapons roll all melee traits, let the ranged weapons roll all weapon traits, we'll figure out if it makes sense later." It's not even the lack of polish that bugs me per se. It's the lack of obvious stuff that has made it all the way to release now when it's painfully obvious its wrong.

Probably just the age old story of "big dreams, short deadlines and not enough hands." Although I have to wonder how much of that comes from Fatshark internally, and how much is being driven by 10 Cent wanting a profit now. (They have a controlling stake in Fatshark and have for the last couple years.)
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Preorder Beta starts Nov. 17th. Full release on Nov. 30th.
Post by: Mephansteras on November 28, 2022, 06:53:11 pm
I predict that this release will be a hot mess. But hopefully a fun hot mess.

I was definitely right about this.

And it is a fun hot mess, at least.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: nenjin on November 29, 2022, 01:30:22 am
One of the Fatshark devs posted in Discord that not all of crafting is going to be live at launch. I guess it was in the Crafting post update and I didn't read far enough down.

Man. Sometimes I think AAA 40k productions are fuckin' cursed. They have such a great game that's like 75% complete, I wish they had delayed into 2023. You never get a second chance to make a first impression, and the impression they're going to give everyone is that the game is half-baked.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: ZebioLizard2 on November 29, 2022, 10:56:46 am
Still better then the Vermintide 2 release by far at least, and that one turned out good afterwords with a strong population.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. All Convicts to the Embarkation Deck. Releases Nov. 30th.
Post by: Folly on November 29, 2022, 08:06:00 pm
I got my Psyker to lvl 30, and the perk that sacrifices head-pop stacks to set enemies on fire with the push is a real game-changer. I never realized before just how far the push reaches. Most of the small-to-medium rooms in most maps, I can walk into the doorway, unleash my push, and watch literally every enemy in the room ignite; then I duck back behind the doorway and wait for the survivors to come after me so I can chop them down as they round the corner.

Combine this with the perk that gives free head-pop stacks whenever nearby allies get kills, and now I'm unleashing the push pretty much off-cooldown for lots of easy damage, where before lvl 30 I rarely used it at all.

Last week after I finished all my weekly contracts on my Psyker I started playing a Zealot. Coming back to my Psyker this week, I realize that there are a lot of game mechanics I did not really appreciate before playing the Zealot. Like how ranged enemies stop shooting when a player gets close, so it is often better to take a few steps forward and hack away at enemies rather than trying to dodge and shoot them at medium range. And how these enemies are easier to deal with if I don't alert them with a head-pop from across the map, instead letting my Zealot allies sneak up on them first.

I tried the Flamethrower staff, and I don't love it. Compared to Voidstrike, Flamethrower has a wider cone and unlimited pierce, and applies a damage-over-time effect. Flamethrower has a much shorter range however, and takes much longer to kill enemies. I think Voidstrike's ability to instantly kill enemies at any range is the more valuable option.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins!
Post by: nenjin on November 30, 2022, 09:50:55 am
Voidstrike Staff seems to be the winner. Trauma Staff seems to be the weakest. Voidstrike does what Trauma does (knocks guys down) except Voidstrike just kills them too, while Trauma just seems to annoy them.

The CC on the Surge Staff is good but I feel like it doesn't hit enough targets. Hitting 6 guys in a horde of 50+ is like.....again, why not just use Voidstrike and nuke everyone in front of you?

Have enjoyed Psyker more than I thought I would based on other's descriptions. That said, man, I get my ass kicked a lot. It's like playing VT2 but never taking out your melee weapon. So you constantly get backstabbed or ganged up on in the middle of your casts.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins!
Post by: nenjin on December 04, 2022, 02:48:41 am
So, generally speaking....

I think things have been "ok to good" with the release. There's still plenty of bugs, crashes, failures to connect to the server here and there but it's mostly improved across the board for my friends and I.

Perhaps the two biggest black eyes of release are:

-The full crafting systems isn't like yet.

-The cosmetic cash shop is.

People are giving the game shit for two reasons. Firstly, that a core component of long-term gameplay progression (optimizing your gear) isn't live by release. And with the Cash Shop being functional, it rightly seems like their priorities are out of whack. And secondly, people are pissed at the design of the cash shop. Classic MTX currency with a pricing schema where you can't quite afford what you want in one package, timers on available cosmetics to buy, triggering people susceptible to FOMO impulse buying.

Fathshark responded to the criticism here: https://www.gamesradar.com/we-got-that-one-wrong-darktide-devs-promise-to-tighten-microtransactions-amid-player-backlash/

Basically saying that a) it wasn't their intent to be predatory and b) that one specific currency package wasn't in the game by mistake that fit in the current scheme to give people fairer options.

I have two thoughts on this whole thing.

First off, it is a pretty bad look to open your cash shop for business on release day when you're missing core parts of your game still. Should FS punish themselves financially for the sake of saving face? I think so. While it's only mollifying a small % of their playerbase that has an opinion about it, I think it would have acknowledged that, yeah, maybe the game has other priorities right now other than selling cosmetics.

To the second issue, how those cosmetics are being handled, I think people are largely getting bent out of shape over very little. I may not like these practices but they are bog standard, even for a game you have to buy first. Carnival money MTX currency, timers on available, pricing packages on currency that are obviously structured to get more out of you....for items that are purely cosmetic. Sea of Thieves has this same model. Warframe, a F2P game, has had all this for like 8 years. Grimrock Deeprock Galactic has a huge offering of both free and MTX cosmetics, many of which I've never even bothered to look at.

So they definitely have the egg on their face that I was expecting, and then some more to boot. The game currently keeps vacillating between positive and mixed ratings.

Personally, I know that given time, the game will finish with the core outstanding items fairly soon, and then from there it has a lot of room to grow in many directions. After some balance changes to toughness and ranged and spawn behaviors, Heresy is hard as balls but a ton of fun. You really gotta work as a team and take your time or die screaming. Runs are anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes depending on the level and your team.

I'm really excited to see where the game can go from here. But for now, they absolutely have to get the crafting finished and working, not first pass buggy BS, soon. I'm just stockpiling resources and crafting materials against the actual release, but it basically means I have nothing to really currently look forward to as I play. Which is fine, most of Vermintide 2 is and was like that.

Just a damn shame really. I'd have easily been happy to wait until 2023 for the game. It's a great game and has a bright future, I think. Just would have been nice to not punch itself in the face like this.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins!
Post by: Dostoevsky on December 04, 2022, 03:04:00 am
DRG's handling of cosmetics is far, far better than this, but DRG is in general better than this so...

The core gameplay of Darktide is pretty solid, but. The balancing is rather jank, it's fairly buggy, the process for getting new gear is straight up bad, and there's basically nothing but the core gameplay. The rando experience (the only way I've played) is very 'pick up and play', but ultimately I'm not sure if that's actually a better experience than DRG's setup.

Man though, the way of getting new items. In my process of leveling up psyker I had situations where I'd unlock a weapon and not actually get my hands on one until 5+ levels later. That, plus the stat system on gear + gearscore, is just a massive crapshoot.

Also no cheer button. At least I haven't really run into any toxic groups yet.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins!
Post by: Egan_BW on December 04, 2022, 03:05:55 am
DRG's handling of cosmetics is far, far better than this, but DRG is in general better than this so...

Hey look, someone said what I was thinking! :D
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins!
Post by: scriver on December 04, 2022, 04:09:04 am
I'm thinking "what is DRG"?
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins!
Post by: nenjin on December 04, 2022, 04:12:48 am
Deep Rock Galactic.

DRG has a fairer cash shop. But I think it's not exactly fair to compare a game that's been out for years in terms of breadth of content and options. The future just depends on the split the end up with between free content and paid.

lol, did I really write Grimrock Galactic? >.>
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins!
Post by: scriver on December 04, 2022, 05:09:32 am
That's a double lol on me because I knew it was called Deep Rock but when I went back over the last coupla posts to find any hint to what DRG could mean it still didn't register
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins!
Post by: Mephansteras on December 04, 2022, 10:03:47 am
Personally, the cosmetic cash shop doesn't really bother me since those require no balancing and are just art assets. I doubt the art team has much to do in the way of correcting the stuff that's still a bit broken or in implementing/balancing the upgrade system.

But I get why people might be a bit bent out of shape about it.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins!
Post by: Dostoevsky on December 04, 2022, 12:37:49 pm
Deep Rock Galactic.

DRG has a fairer cash shop. But I think it's not exactly fair to compare a game that's been out for years in terms of breadth of content and options. The future just depends on the split the end up with between free content and paid.

lol, did I really write Grimrock Galactic? >.>

Even straight on release DRG's cosmetic shop was pretty solid. There were... 2? 3? paid DLC packs each of which offered a set of models & skins for all 4 classes for roughly the price of one of the high-end armor sets for a single class in Darktide. Given the different styles and whatnot I don't think a straight price comparison there is very valid -- but DRG also had, on release, a wide variety of free (well, in-game currency) customization options both as you leveled up and at endgame. The free seasonal model they adopted in the last year (or two?) helps fill that out even better, though that was a pretty far post-release sort of thing.

Really what bothers me about the cosmetic shop is the pricing structure (i.e. the classic fake currency with bad conversion rates) and the potential FOMO (have they even said what happens after a week? I assume they'll rotate, but...). But even then the cash shop is more a salt in the wound thing given the overall state of the release and some of the backsteps from VT2.

All that said, I'm still having some fun for now with it. Just... once I've had a chance to try out the various weapons, I don't think there will be much more to hold my interest for a while.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins!
Post by: Folly on December 04, 2022, 08:30:13 pm
I've settled on the Heavy Sword for my Zealot, even though it seems to be by far the least popular option.

Knife is the common choice for bleed-builds. But I'm just really underwhelmed by bleed dps against bosses; and on common enemies, if I'm engaged in melee then I really want them to die when I hit them and not just tap them and hope they go down before they have time to hit me back.

Eviscerator seems the second most popular choice. The cleave against crowds is really underwhelming in my opinion. The special attack is decent against armored enemies, but not great, leaving Evi feeling like a versatile weapon that really doesn't impress anywhere.

Hammer just feels like it's knocking everything down without killing much. I'd rather not risk enemies who appear dead then standing up behind me and stabbing me in the back.

Heavy Sword gets bonuses to cleave damage and cleave targets, meaning that it can sweep through crowds without stopping and most targets stay down. Also the highest tier of Heavy Sword can chain horizontal heavy strikes forever. To me this feels like the ideal option for melee-focused Zealots who love being in the middle of hordes.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins!
Post by: Dostoevsky on December 04, 2022, 10:13:33 pm
Based on discord discussions, when it comes to psyker it's basically 'spam staff, non-force sword melee backup when needed, Brain Burst (BB) is useless above hazard 3'. Which is honestly kind of bland, but make sense based on my experience at hazard 3.

BB is pretty amazing on difficulty 1 & 2, but its power isn't quite sufficient at 3 and up, especially given the charge time. And shared Peril (the winds of magic thing from VT2) between staff and BB means you're generally better off using the staff abilities to begin with. Force sword is... kind of crummy, unfortunately, as the non-Peril attacks are mediocre and your Peril passively decreases much faster if you equip a non-Peril weapon. So ideally you want at least one non-Peril weapon on hand, but staves are far more useful than the force sword.

Meanwhile the staves (well, some of them) are quite solid. So one builds around the staff at this point, despite many/most of the feats centering on BB. Which is... a problem.

Since I'm only playing at difficulty 3, which feels like a decent setting for rando pub play, I can enjoy using BB + gun gameplay, but I can definitely feel it's non-meta.

As for zealot, I've seen most running heavy sword or Eviscerator. Supposedly there's a crit chance + knife build that's viable? Which could be neat, since I do very much like the feel of the knife animation set.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins!
Post by: candlebury on December 04, 2022, 11:42:36 pm
Yeah I love this game. Plasma gun is amazing.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins!
Post by: nenjin on December 05, 2022, 01:35:49 am
Based on discord discussions, when it comes to psyker it's basically 'spam staff, non-force sword melee backup when needed, Brain Burst (BB) is useless above hazard 3'. Which is honestly kind of bland, but make sense based on my experience at hazard 3.

BB is pretty amazing on difficulty 1 & 2, but its power isn't quite sufficient at 3 and up, especially given the charge time. And shared Peril (the winds of magic thing from VT2) between staff and BB means you're generally better off using the staff abilities to begin with. Force sword is... kind of crummy, unfortunately, as the non-Peril attacks are mediocre and your Peril passively decreases much faster if you equip a non-Peril weapon. So ideally you want at least one non-Peril weapon on hand, but staves are far more useful than the force sword.

Meanwhile the staves (well, some of them) are quite solid. So one builds around the staff at this point, despite many/most of the feats centering on BB. Which is... a problem.

Since I'm only playing at difficulty 3, which feels like a decent setting for rando pub play, I can enjoy using BB + gun gameplay, but I can definitely feel it's non-meta.

As for zealot, I've seen most running heavy sword or Eviscerator. Supposedly there's a crit chance + knife build that's viable? Which could be neat, since I do very much like the feel of the knife animation set.

BB is plenty useful in 4. 4 is where "one hit should kill stuff" stops being true. That's just the nature of the beast in FS games.

BB kills ragers, snipers, bombers in one hit. They finish off dogs easily. The right trait gives the enemy +15% damage from all non-psychic sources for 5 seconds, which is basically the shrapnel trait from VT2 except on command. When the entire group is pinned by range guys, both rifles, elites and heavies, it's real nice to have an ability to pop in and out of cover with and deal damage without even having to look at your target. Behind an Ogryn with a shield up in a doorway, you can blindly spam BB and pick off targets more or less safely. It staggers and interrupts important targets that you can't kill in one hit. It has a lot of uses beyond "it just doesn't kill in one hit." I don't think it's the perfect ability. Way more should play off it for AoE type effects. But it remains useful even when the game scales up. It would just be nice if it's damage did too in some way.

The Force sword is a single target weapon through and through. Its Special attack will wreck most things including Mutants in one charged attack. Maulers in 2, Ogryns in 3 usually. I can duel Bulwarks and Crushers on Heresy thanks to that move. You just have to be mindful of the timing on hitting them because of the channeling portion of the attack. But it's still fast enough to stick and move.

I don't find Quelling Peril an issue as long as I have the Quell While Moving trait. Even average quell speed means it takes like 2 seconds to Quell enough Peril to go to town again.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins!
Post by: Dostoevsky on December 05, 2022, 09:15:38 am
BB kills ragers, snipers, bombers in one hit. They finish off dogs easily. The right trait gives the enemy +15% damage from all non-psychic sources for 5 seconds, which is basically the shrapnel trait from VT2 except on command. When the entire group is pinned by range guys, both rifles, elites and heavies, it's real nice to have an ability to pop in and out of cover with and deal damage without even having to look at your target. Behind an Ogryn with a shield up in a doorway, you can blindly spam BB and pick off targets more or less safely. It staggers and interrupts important targets that you can't kill in one hit. It has a lot of uses beyond "it just doesn't kill in one hit." I don't think it's the perfect ability. Way more should play off it for AoE type effects. But it remains useful even when the game scales up. It would just be nice if it's damage did too in some way.

I do agree on most of these points, which is why I picked the class and still find some fun from it.

The Force sword is a single target weapon through and through. Its Special attack will wreck most things including Mutants in one charged attack. Maulers in 2, Ogryns in 3 usually. I can duel Bulwarks and Crushers on Heresy thanks to that move. You just have to be mindful of the timing on hitting them because of the channeling portion of the attack. But it's still fast enough to stick and move.

The single-target damage feels really unreliable to me? I dunno, it works fine in the testing arena but in an actual game I've had mixed success at best using it against elites. I'd rather just stick to BB and pick a more generally useful melee weapon.

Supposedly there are more force swords that haven't been released yet, so hopefully that'll make the sword v. staff debate a bit more substantive.

I don't find Quelling Peril an issue as long as I have the Quell While Moving trait. Even average quell speed means it takes like 2 seconds to Quell enough Peril to go to town again.

Maybe it's the rando pub experience, but in my experience I only have time to quell if there's no pressure - if there are mooks nearby, being able to quell while moving is going to get me clobbered just as much as quelling while shuffling. Additionally, every second of helping handle hordes helps and it's good to do something during all the peril recovery periods.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins!
Post by: nenjin on December 05, 2022, 11:00:16 am
It's just about finding the space to do it. I'll usually be right behind my squad with Voidstrike. I'll get off maybe 5 or 6 half charged blasts, quell for a few seconds and go right back to blastin'. It's not feasible when you've got your back to a wall pinned by melee, but otherwise it does me well.

I don't know if there's more patterns of Force Swords to release or not. I kinda doubt it?

The Weapon Special on the Force sword works as long as you don't back out of range too far after it connects. The blade has to hit then you have to wait about 1 second before he does the little palm gesture. It's essentially just BB, does about 1000 damage. But in essence faster than an actual unbufffed BB.

All that said, I'm struggling on Heresy some days. I just seem to end up taking way more damage than anyone else. Toughness gives you the illusion of durability in combat but all those little hits to the back really add up. It's not uncommon for me to look up from a fight and see I'm missing half my health. Grims also really push me to the limits of my survivability.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins!
Post by: Dostoevsky on December 05, 2022, 02:20:47 pm
Staff quelling is generally fine if you've got a competent team, yeah, though the perk doesn't make too much of a difference there (granted, it's still better than the other perk choices). More than force sword where the lack of passive quell hurts.

The Weapon Special on the Force sword works as long as you don't back out of range too far after it connects. The blade has to hit then you have to wait about 1 second before he does the little palm gesture.

Ah, that probably explains it. I juke, dodge, dive, and wiggle frantically in a given melee.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins!
Post by: nenjin on December 05, 2022, 03:24:42 pm
You can still side dodge and circle strafe while the Force Sword is planted. Just can't get back too far.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins!
Post by: nenjin on December 05, 2022, 10:11:30 pm
Just played through Heresy 4 with my friends on a Rank 7 Zealot. Didn't even break a sweat. The way they handle in combat is a night and day difference to Veteran and Psyker.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins!
Post by: Dostoevsky on December 05, 2022, 10:24:45 pm
On a more positive note, goodness this soundtrack is up there with Mechanicus for best 40k IP game OSTs. Most of the tracks really fit the gameplay, with the auspex mission theme being the only major outlier (in my pub experience it's almost invariably the most difficult, and yet the little ditty is much less intense than the others, hah).
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins!
Post by: Dorsidwarf on December 06, 2022, 07:50:31 am
I've been having an absolute blast with this game after a friend bought it for me.

My only real vicious unhappiness with the game is the fact that you sometimes can't switch weapons during the start of some animations, making it hard to quickswap say, as psyker after you force-blast (which auto-swaps you to brain pop, which is really not what I want in most situations where I'm using force push)

Lunging into elites with a force sword special stab is unimaginably satisfying to connect.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins!
Post by: scriver on December 06, 2022, 08:26:35 am
Just played through Heresy 4 with my friends on a Rank 7 Zealot. Didn't even break a sweat. The way they handle in combat is a night and day difference to Veteran and Psyker.

I've only played Zealot so far (still very early game). It plays like a hot combat axe through heretic butter
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins!
Post by: Folly on December 07, 2022, 02:53:16 pm
Okay, my Zealot found a hammer with decent stats and I decided to give it another chance. I'm coming around.
I still hate how slow and clumsy the hammer is when trying to deal with hordes. But against monstrosities and daemons, hammer is absolutely broken. Charged heavy blows chunk around 20% of their health per swing, ending the fight in mere seconds.

Meanwhile my Psyker has gone back to lightning staff. Voidstrike is good for clearing hordes, but the lvl 30 perk which sets pushed enemies on fire is so much better. Voidstrike just doesn't get used when I can clear entire rooms of scabs and dregs with one button.
The lightning staves ability to stop hounds, bursters, and mutants in their tracks is just way too handy. Also I regain Toughness by purging peril, so lightning staves ability to quickly gain peril actually becomes a boon. I can walk into a group of elites, zap them a couple of times to fill my peril, then dive in with my rapier while they are stunned and trust that if I do get hit, it will be recovered by my naturally purging peril.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins!
Post by: nenjin on December 07, 2022, 03:41:25 pm
Did they patch the Hammer? Last I knew it was doing like.....8% extra damage on a headshot, demonstrated by someone in the Psykhanium. It seemed so woefully underpowered against lighter enemies that all it really did was knock them behind you so you could either spin around to finish them...or get stabbed in the back.

It's been kind of eye-opening playing a Zealot. I've been going into Heresy way under ranked and taking out elites and specials with an axe. And it's weird how my survivability overall seems way higher playing zealot, even though it's ostensibly the class taking more risks than Vet or Psyker. Dunno why, but everything feels faster and smoother on zealot. But as soon as I swapped to the Catachan sword, I suddenly felt weak and fragile. It may just be the axe delivers that hard.

Also I had a moment of pure, undistilled rage at the game last night. We were just starting an auspex scan on Heresy when a pack of las rifles spawned pretty much right in front of me. I immediately backed off and sought cover, but they all opened up on me. Toughness instantly vaped. So I keep dodging, keep trying to get to cover. Meanwhile, I see my teammates around me dealing with horde and what not....and the las squad just KEEPS targeting me. They finally down me.

Then to add insult to injury, once I'm rezzed and we call the elevator, a sniper spawns. And since we had a grim and I had one wound left....guess who the AI decided to target?

I swear there is predatory behavior among the AI, where ranged spawns and specials will preferentially target the weakest person. Whoever is lowest on toughness or health, the AI seems to make a beeline for them. Particularly with Pox Burster spawns.

It's happened to me enough that I seriously think that's the case. It's not like Vermintide AI wasn't predatory....but it also didn't spawn whole squads of guys with perfect aim that could strip your health and/or toughness off you with a single attack.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins!
Post by: Dostoevsky on December 07, 2022, 03:59:48 pm
But as soon as I swapped to the Catachan sword, I suddenly felt weak and fragile.

That was your first and last mistake.

More seriously, the catachan sword is just terrible. The only real thing it has going for it is a large stamina bar for blocking, which...

It's happened to me enough that I seriously think that's the case. It's not like Vermintide AI wasn't predatory....but it also didn't spawn whole squads of guys with perfect aim that could strip your health and/or toughness off you with a single attack.

There's been a few videos floating about of enemy sniper shenanigans, including instagibbing a grimoire-holder in the moment between everyone getting in the escape craft and the exit screen.

I've had a few rude experience of turning a corner only to find a dozen ranged enemies milling about 10 feet away, whereupon they open up and basically vaporize me.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins!
Post by: nenjin on December 07, 2022, 04:13:24 pm
Quote
More seriously, the catachan sword is just terrible. The only real thing it has going for it is a large stamina bar for blocking, which...

It's an anti-horde weapon. Which generally in Tide games, are my preference because the hordes are really the things that kill you.

But DT has so many additional elites and specials that single target feels more appropriate here.

But yeah, taking an underpowered horde weapon into Heresy, you're going to feel the pain. The Axe barely seems to notice it since it doesn't care about armor at all, so it's really just the raw HP differences. Which come out to.....one or two additional swings.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins!
Post by: Dostoevsky on December 07, 2022, 04:17:35 pm
Eh, for psyker at least I prefer knives or chainswords (or even the force sword!) over the catachan sword. The animation is slow for the damage, the combo is meh, it struggles against even basic carapace armor enemies...

In other news, Fatshark released a teaser thingy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eE-MPnuM-A&ab_channel=Fatshark) that... well I dunno, says basically nothing and is meant to generate hype about probably a weekend event. They're also aiming/hoping to release a first 'response to the community' thing later this week.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins!
Post by: Folly on December 07, 2022, 04:23:54 pm
I've had a few rude experience of turning a corner only to find a dozen ranged enemies milling about 10 feet away, whereupon they open up and basically vaporize me.

That's the moment to run forward, not back. If you can close the distance and get close enough they switch to melee, and you can manage their melee attacks much more effectively. If you see their muzzle flash before you get close enough, just slide safely under their bullets.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins!
Post by: Dostoevsky on December 07, 2022, 04:30:34 pm
There's usually also a horde amongst them, hah. But yeah, I'm not an expert at the game.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins!
Post by: nenjin on December 07, 2022, 04:59:00 pm
I swear I heard "Khorne" mentioned in that vox recordings. Probably wasn't, but man how wild would it be for them to introduce another God in some capacity already?
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins!
Post by: Mephansteras on December 07, 2022, 06:19:20 pm
I swear I heard "Khorne" mentioned in that vox recordings. Probably wasn't, but man how wild would it be for them to introduce another God in some capacity already?

That would be surprising, but I'd be down.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: Folly on December 07, 2022, 08:00:00 pm
VT2 had rats, northlanders, and beastmen. So it would not be unprecedented for them to add entire new factions to keep things interesting.

But it's a bit early for that kind of big drop.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: nenjin on December 07, 2022, 10:53:27 pm
It'd be reckless. Any ways, for a name I thought I heard in the burble of Chaos static it's not worth dwelling on.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: scriver on December 08, 2022, 09:49:30 am
I'm not sure how efficient they are, only tried them once, but the Heavy Swords got both "mass appeal" with their multiple-hitting swift attacks and focused target heavy attacks. Might be a good compromise?

So far I prefer axes, though - it just feels like you're stronger when you take down one enemy per swing even if you only hit that one enemy, as opposed to the swords hitting several enemies but taking 2-3 hits to kill even unarmoured mooks.

Also, about the Zealot's invulnerability -- I am not sure if all classes regenerate Toughnes by melee attacking or if that is a Zealot only thing (I've basically only played Zealot) but I'm guessing that that has a whole lot to do with it. Offense truly is the best defense when offense regenerates your defensive shield.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: Dostoevsky on December 08, 2022, 10:09:36 am
If I remember right other classes get toughness only on melee kills (or being in the circle of teamwork).
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: Persus13 on December 08, 2022, 10:12:05 am
Every class gets toughness back on melee kills, but every class's level 5 feat choices give them other ways to regen toughness too. Zealot's unique buff is they also becomes invulnerable to damage instead the first time they go down, so I imagine that helps as well.

The class I find the easiest to regen toughness reliably is Ogryn, since I have the level 5 feat where doing a heavy melee gives 20% toughness.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: Cthulhu on December 08, 2022, 10:46:37 am
Zealot feels weak.  The concept seems to be melee who can just dive in and take a bunch of hits and not worry about them, but the sheer volume of attacks you're gonna be seeing, especially at high difficulty, I dunno how that's supposed to be successful.  The grenade is strictly worse than the sharpshooter grenade, it's the exact same thing but it doesn't kill them.  The charge needs a shorter cooldown. 

It's still fun, I just got the eviscerator with a trait that increases damage on cleaves, and it's fun, but doesn't seem very good.  I never tried the heavy sword, I saw how low the damage was and kind of wrote it off.  I feel in general like the play for zealot is going to be massive single target melee damage, a melee veteran, and the heavy sword even the heavy attack is nothing compared to axes.

Sharpshooter on the other hand is insanely good.  With the kantrael semi-auto laser (the mark 12 i think, with high damage/reliable) you can one-shot most specials with your active, and even the unarmored ogryns only take two or three, and it's got great accuracy and range.  Sharpshooter walks behind the ogryn in corridors and kills anything that slips around him, and then in open spaces you just go wild killing every special the instant it spawns.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: nenjin on December 08, 2022, 10:56:09 am
Zealot grenades aren't totally useless. They're superior to Sharpshooter grenades when someone needs rescuing because the AOE is huge and the stun is lengthy. On Heresy and up, you often need that kind of space to rez someone in a horde. Heresy DT is right back to where VT2 was a while ago, where you'd get rezzed in a horde and instantly get killed again on being picked up.

So while it'd be nice to have another true offensive grenade, the Flashbang has its role.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: nenjin on December 08, 2022, 01:01:25 pm
https://forums.fatsharkgames.com/t/community-update-5-week-2/67057

Coming next week:

-Private sessions.
-Ogryn Weapons.
-Rerolling traits on gear at the Forge.
-Some emotes.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: Dostoevsky on December 08, 2022, 01:04:25 pm
And they seem to turn down the idea of a cheer button. Come on, that's one of the better parts of DRG!
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: nenjin on December 08, 2022, 01:07:52 pm
Guaranteed it's the burden imposed by the voice acting requirements. There's like what, 12 voice actors that would have to record new lines. So that's not a short-term ask.

Then again, someone making a hardcore 40k game that DIDN'T budget some "For The Emperor!" lines probably needs to be made into a servitor.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: Dostoevsky on December 08, 2022, 01:14:00 pm
Guaranteed it's the burden imposed by the voice acting requirements. There's like what, 12 voice actors that would have to record new lines. So that's not a short-term ask.

Then again, someone making a hardcore 40k game that DIDN'T budget some "For The Emperor!" lines probably needs to be made into a servitor.

I feel like they have enough existing assets to make generic cheers (not 'for the emperor' specifically), though that's just a feeling.

Anyhoo, on the whole this is a kind of disappointing update to be honest. At least they're putting in 2400 and 100 premium currency options, hah, not that I see myself spending more money on this game anytime soon.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: nenjin on December 08, 2022, 01:26:03 pm
I haven't even spent my Aquilas from the Imperial Edition yet. Not going to until I've seen more of their offerings. I'll probably buy some Aquilas at some point, but not for a good long while.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: Persus13 on December 08, 2022, 08:31:58 pm
Tried the heavy eviscerator for the first time, and compared to the combat axe, I am not a fan. I enjoy the chainsword on my veteran a lot, but its bigger cousin doesn't seem to gel with me as the combat axe for the zealot. The impacts just don't feel as responsive.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: Dostoevsky on December 08, 2022, 10:15:16 pm
For the most part I really like the chainsword, but the push attack doesn't quite gel with me. I keep bouncing between different melee on my psyker because none of them quite feel right. Knife probably closest, but I'd rather be able to attack a bit less for the sake of my wrists.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: nenjin on December 08, 2022, 11:16:40 pm
Well the Eviscerator is actually a horde weapon, with a single target weapon special. So yeah, compared to just wood chopping people's domes with the Axe, the TTK a single target isn't the same. It's horde focused with an emergency single target weapon special. Kind of how the Power Sword is a horde weapon with an emergency "Everything Dies" weapon special.

Just depends on where your priorities are.

Heresy is starting to feel comfortable. We have the occasional wipe and I still usually get downed or killed at least once a mission. There's still plenty of clusterfuck spawns. But our small group is now getting through it without a ton of problems. Although that may be due to how different each day can feel, when on Monday it's "High Intensity Engagements" and Tuesday it's "Low Intensity Engagements."

They really need to cut down the Special Condition Timer and put the Low Visibility and Blackout conditions back in. They were out for like one day near release and haven't been seen since. I wonder if they discovered yet more problems/tweaks it needed.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: nenjin on December 09, 2022, 01:34:30 pm
Friends and I finished the Zealot penance last night where you have to beat a Heresy run with < 1 health bar for 75% of the run in under 20 minutes.

Finished it in 14. Honestly was way easier than we thought it would be.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: Cthulhu on December 09, 2022, 01:57:00 pm
I haven't done that one yet.  Abhor the mutant is pretty annoying, you have to kill a mutant with a melee attack while charging, before the charge ends.  Basically you let your allies shoot it a couple times, charge it while it's throwing someone, and hit it with a heavy melee before you collide with it.  90% luck, but I got it.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: Folly on December 09, 2022, 04:54:04 pm
I actually found the mutant-charge penance educational. After doing it, I started using mid-charge attacks all the time, and found them highly effective.

The Zealot penance I found annoying was the one that required hitting a sniper with a grenade from 40m. Just finding a room with that much space and throwing accurately was difficult enough, but then I have to deal with allies picking off the snipers the instant they appear.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: Cthulhu on December 09, 2022, 05:07:06 pm
That one was easy for me, one spawned on an unreachable vantage in the mission where you have to take and hold the train
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: Persus13 on December 09, 2022, 05:25:43 pm
I haven't gotten abhor the mutant either. I seem to keep killing it after the charge instead of in the middle of it. There's a couple of times though I could have sworn I killed it mid charge but nothing popped up.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: nenjin on December 09, 2022, 07:19:03 pm
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2894619510&searchtext=types

Useful data here. HP totals and damage for enemies. But also some good tips and facts.

Like an Ogryn Charge or SS Grenade will make the Beast of Nurgle spit someone up.

And the one I found most interesting....not many enemies inflict actual corruption damage to your health. But the big one that will do it is one of the weeniest enemies in the game....Infested. You disregard them because they're horde and one of the weakest enemies in the game. But I'm guessing that's where the lion's share of corruption gets generated, outside of a Pox Burster.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: scriver on December 10, 2022, 06:29:40 am
POX BURSTA
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: Zangi on December 10, 2022, 12:24:03 pm
POX BURSTA
Don't sadly zealot charge doesn't work well at pushing them.  Surprisingly, simply pushing them works well, even mid jump.  (Same deal for dogs.  Feels much more forgiving/easy then pushing sneakrat/gasrat in V2.) 
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: Persus13 on December 10, 2022, 01:26:28 pm
What the Zealot Charge is good for is getting out of the blast zone after you've triggered their detonation animation.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: Madman198237 on December 10, 2022, 02:27:39 pm
Been really enjoying this game, playing a Zealot mostly. I'm loving the Baby Space Marine combo of bolter plus heavy eviscerator chainsword. The chainsword carves everything lightweight to bits and revving it up lets you pretty much just remove specials on Malice difficulty and below.

The bolter is just the funniest nonsense, what with how comically large, heavy, and slow it is, plus the immense amount of damage and recoil it puts out. The incredibly authoritative sounds of reloading and racking the bolt just make it worth it.

Not played enough to get up to Heresy yet, I play with random allies and see a lot of squad wipes on Malice. All it takes is one unlucky spawn of two dogs or a dog and a mutant and suddenly the team is out.

Well, that and the seeming love of every teammate of poking the daemonhosts because "THIS TIME it'll definitely go better than last time who cares that we don't have an Ogryn to take aggro and haven't cleared the area of other enemies it'll be fine!"
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: nenjin on December 10, 2022, 03:39:24 pm
I'm torn. On the one hand, don't poke the trap bear. It's a trap.

On the other hand.....whether it's zeal or stupidity, you have to admire their refusal to let Heresy go unanswered.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: Madman198237 on December 10, 2022, 04:32:06 pm
Even better when, earlier today, a *bot* triggered the stupid Daemonhost after the rest of us made it past. It then tried to get me, but luckily my invulnerability kept me alive *just* long enough for us to take it down.

I didn't like the power hammer but I've started to figure it out...and boy did it do great damage to that daemonhost when the bot triggered it. Every charged hit was doing almost 10% of the thing's health. It was just a real nightmare to land said hits because of how slow the hammer is and how reluctant it is to hold the charged state for more than a quarter second.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: Persus13 on December 10, 2022, 04:36:04 pm
That's how I feel when using the bolter on the daemonhost. When I land it does great, but hitting the damn thing is the tough part.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: Dostoevsky on December 14, 2022, 02:36:20 pm
Patch notes (https://forums.fatsharkgames.com/t/community-update-6-signal-update/68741), planned for tomorrow.

One new mission, two new weapons (one zealot one ogryn, so not both ogryn), scattered fixes and some balancing. Lucius lasgun, headhunter, eviscerator, thunder hammer, force sword and revolver all buffed (some more than others), while power sword is nerfed a bit and plasma gun & bolter are sort of sidegraded? Kind of surprised there are no changes to class abilities.

Also the next tiny bit of crafting mentioned earlier.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: nenjin on December 14, 2022, 02:57:38 pm
I knew the Power Sword nerf was coming. The nerf seems somewhat reasonable though. Still not exactly thrilled, it's the only veteran melee weapon I feel didn't suck balls.

The Plasma Gun changes by and large look like a buff to ammo and heat management. Charged shots penetrating cover now is also very welcome.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: Dostoevsky on December 14, 2022, 03:35:31 pm
Ah, I just read the plasma line wrong and thought it was a nerf to ammo capacity while buffing the other stuff.

Veteran is the one class I haven't played at all, so can't really speak to it, but did hear the plasma gun was too fiddly to be useful.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: nenjin on December 14, 2022, 03:57:07 pm
Nonsense. It's God Tier on Malice. It's still good on Heresy, the increased HP on enemies means that you'll wrestle with overheat a lot more.

But even on Heresy, it's generally a 1 shot kill for trash, a 2 to 3 shot kill on human sized elites, a 3 to 4 shot kill on some select specials, and a 5 shot kill on Ogryns.

And that's before the Charged Shot. The Charged Shot cuts all those numbers in half, and will knock down anything still alive after the shot hits.

No, it won't sustain fire against an entire horde for very long. But that's not its role. It's a sniper rifle that penetrates cover. Or a railgun is perhaps more accurate. If someone wants to run and gun, yeah they'd describe it as fiddly compared to the bolter or autogun or lasgun. But if you're hunting priority targets, it is second only to the Bolter.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: Persus13 on December 14, 2022, 04:04:58 pm
The boltgun having a nicer equip animation sounds good. Swapping to it was always a massive pain.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! Scrap Code Edition
Post by: nenjin on December 14, 2022, 04:07:08 pm
The boltgun having a nicer equip animation sounds good. Swapping to it was always a massive pain.

It was the reason I stopped using it and went to the Plasma Gun. Dealing with that animation 100 times a mission was just too much.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! The Emperor Expects Edition
Post by: Mephansteras on December 14, 2022, 05:06:30 pm
I'll have to mess around with the Plasma Gun after this patch.

My issue with it was that it was always secondary to the Bolter. Fun gun, but ultimately just marginally better at taking out elites/specials while being worse in most other situations. I'm hoping the buffs make actively better than the Bolter is some situations to really make it worth taking.

Though, in fairness, I haven't gotten any really good Plasma Guns, so I may be comparing mediocre to decent as far as weapon quality goes. But it didn't do well enough to make me want to hunt down a better one.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! The Emperor Expects Edition
Post by: nenjin on December 14, 2022, 07:17:28 pm
The Bolter is good, don't get me wrong. But it has shit ammo capacity and has no better horde sustain than the Plasma Gun because of that. I hate the double shot primary fire, it feels like wasted ammunition half the time. The Bolter is however an ADS murderer of elites and armored targets, sans the knockdown and sans the heat management. I don't know if the two can truly be compared, but in my mind they're so close that it comes down to a flavor decision. After the bolter ready up animation rework, my opinion may change. But for my money, the Plasma Gun is just the cooler weapon.

Also I cannot understate how good the combination of pinpoint accuracy and cover penetration is. On Heresy when everyone is bogged down by ranged fire and doesn't want to stick their head up for fear of it getting blown off, the ability to just aim at obnoxious enemies way the hell away in cover and frag them with a single shot makes it superior to the Bolter and basically all other ranged weapons. When las and autogun squads typically spawn in packs of 12-14 guys and hunker down in cover, I can kill about half of them before the Plasma Gun needs to cool down. It's a slower and more methodical ranged weapon than anything else the the Veteran can use. It makes you ask "what's worth my time to shoot." And that starts to matter a lot on Heresy difficulty. Sniper all the way across the room taking cover behind some crates? No worries. Sharpshooter Special, then aim for the center of the yellow guy and kill.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! The Emperor Expects Edition
Post by: Madman198237 on December 15, 2022, 01:48:49 am
I'm still on team bolter :P . Your per-full-ammo-load damage is through the roof, your per-magazine damage is frankly silly, every shot staggers (and damages) MULTIPLE enemies if you hit them with it, to the point that if you spray a 15-round mag into a horde you'll kill 15-20 targets and leave the rest stunned on the ground, single target fire lets you just wipe the floor with anything no matter how much armor it's wearing, and if you're in trouble or just get up relatively close to a tough target or boss you can just depress the giggle switch and watch your troubles disappear in a hail of minirockets and heretic-flavored shrapnel.

Plus, I love the feel of the bolter and its slow and authoritative reload animation and sound (admittedly mine has an absolutely garbage 27% reload rate which plays into the feel). Also thank goodness that I might not have to rack the bolt every time I arm the bolter...because that's not how guns work and it really bothers me, even if I do understand and agree with the idea that the bolter shouldn't be a fast weapon to draw.

And yeah, the bolter does struggle a bit, theoretically speaking, with hordes, but I mostly play Zealot right now and so I only use it on hordes when a teammate needs time to recover since, again, it will stagger/knock down everything in the horde with a good burst. Everything else is just heavy eviscerator melee.

I really like the idea that the plasma gun might become a more specialized antimateriel weapon that just wipes out single targets even behind cover but doesn't do as much to hordes. Hopefully they continue to lean more and more into differentiation rather than by-the-numbers balancing.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! The Emperor Expects Edition
Post by: nenjin on December 15, 2022, 10:39:37 am
I think the Bolter tends to have a bit too much splash damage while I think the Plasma Gun lacks some it deserves. Other than that I think the two weapons are in good places.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! The Emperor Expects Edition
Post by: Cthulhu on December 15, 2022, 10:53:46 am
My vet still just uses high damage/reliable kantrael lasgun. Maybe at Malice and higher it falls off but in heresy it can still pop most specials and elites in one headshot from across the map.  I didn't like bolter on vet, the bigass ironsights made it hard to line up headshots and it had too much recoil to easily kill with bodyshots outside close range
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! The Emperor Expects Edition
Post by: nenjin on December 15, 2022, 11:11:33 am
The Kantrael is super solid, always surprised using it even on a non-vet how effective it is.

But it lacks the materiel penetration which, when 5 guys are shooting at you from cover and then ducking back, you don't really have the time or toughness to line up shots.

I think the lack of any real sights for guns is why I gravitate toward the Plasma Gun still. You just don't really have to try that hard to aim it, because it has almost no shot deviation over any range, so it makes for great snap shots which only become more necessary the higher up in difficulty you go.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! The Emperor Expects Edition
Post by: nenjin on December 15, 2022, 11:12:39 am
Also chatter on the forum is that several things from the patch aren't live. After it was pushed back a day. Apparently the 2400 Aquila package they said they'd add still isn't there. Not that I was looking for it, but if something that simple got flubbed.....

Gotta say too. Fatshark "Fans" are absolutely ruthless in their forums. People say Steam is a cesspit and while the volume of garbage to quality is better on their own forums, I honestly think there's way more venom from the core fans than the average playerbase.

I know they deserve plenty of shit for this release, but some of the posts make me question why people are even bothering at this point.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! The Emperor Expects Edition
Post by: Dostoevsky on December 15, 2022, 12:40:17 pm
The discord's subchannels (e.g. the different class channels) are generally okay, but the general chat is just a cesspit of corruption.

Anyhoo, psyker either got 'stealth nerfs' or a bunch of bad bugs in their class relating to peril and some other bits and pieces, and the new vfx for the lightning staff is reportedly eye-searingly problematic. Edit: the peril changes are confirmed as bugs, thankfully.

Edit: Actual patch notes (https://steamcommunity.com/games/1361210/announcements/detail/6608500565535251977). Force sword buff is mysteriously missing (edit: reclassified to a vfx change only, which is kind of odd since it's a vfx for something that doesn't really happen?), thunder hammer buff acknowledged as accidentally left out, heavy sword buff instead of eviscerator buff.

Edit edit: and purge staff got stealth-buffed? The more I look at the discord discussions the more it seems like things are just sort of all over the place.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! The Emperor Expects Edition
Post by: nenjin on December 15, 2022, 02:56:24 pm
The frontlines in the War for Tertium against Chaos is apparently in the Fatshark studios.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! The Emperor Expects Edition
Post by: Astral on December 15, 2022, 05:01:08 pm
Definitely enjoyed the bolter over the plasma gun for veteran, and the fix to the animation makes it even better.

Running plasma may be good if you don't have a dedicated anti-armor person, but I feel it basically turns you into an ammo-using, worse version of a psyker. It just felt... not great to use, even if it was thematically appropriate and ridiculously powerful in certain situations.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! The Emperor Expects Edition
Post by: Folly on December 15, 2022, 05:41:37 pm
the new vfx for the lightning staff is reportedly eye-searingly problematic

Yeah...I don't suffer from seizures or know much about them, but I feel like the danger levels increased about 10x with this patch.
Aside from the flashing lights, they've added heat-distortion around the lightning, as well as flair at the edges of the screen for peril and corruption. In a game where it was already difficult to see anything due to all the graphical special effect overload, I really do not appreciate them piling even more on top.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! The Emperor Expects Edition
Post by: Iduno on December 15, 2022, 06:15:31 pm
I remember that Vermintide 2 had an option to turn off those visual effects. I left them on to make the game more thematic, then turned them off after I managed to cover ~80% of my screen with blood splatters and couldn't tell where I was going.

I assume they carried that option forward.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! The Emperor Expects Edition
Post by: nenjin on December 15, 2022, 10:29:29 pm
Even if they did....Darktide is an assault on the senses. Dark environments, high contrast colored lighting, smoke, fog, shadows, gunfire, explosions, whatever you'd classify its music as (industrial gothic?).....seriously after like 4 games of Heresy, my eyes burn and my reactions are shot. For me there's always been a gradient of performance over time on VT2. I personally can't stay dialed in at Legend and Cataclysm for hours on end, my brain just gets lazy and tired after a while. Darktide for me is that, but even moreso. Especially after the High Intensity modifier on Heresy where I think I forget to blink for minutes at a time in a 50 minute long mission.

And then they add a strobe light to it. I did one run where someone was using the staff and didn't notice it too much. But when I did I really noticed it. I can't even imagine using the staff.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! The Emperor Expects Edition
Post by: Dostoevsky on December 15, 2022, 11:37:09 pm
Just hopped on and tried it, and... to be entirely kind of honest, I kind of like the new surge vfx? But I have the brightness turned kind of low. Though the UI effects for the user make things really mushy.

Headhunter buff is sort of nice - the gun finally has actual reasonable handling and feels decent to use, but stat-wise it's still pretty much inferior to using a lasgun.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! The Emperor Expects Edition
Post by: Persus13 on December 15, 2022, 11:46:01 pm
My ogryn switched over from the billy club to the added power maul and I think I prefer using that. I actually use the special on the power maul and the single hit light and sweep heavy works pretty well for me.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! The Emperor Expects Edition
Post by: Dostoevsky on December 16, 2022, 12:15:02 am
I take it back, used the surge staff in an actual mission instead of the simulator and... sometimes it looks great, sometimes it looks unchanged, and sometimes it's absolutely terrible and awful. Seems to depend on the nearby lighting. When it's awful, it's... hard to play with, hah.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! The Emperor Expects Edition
Post by: EuchreJack on December 16, 2022, 12:37:31 am
I take it back, used the surge staff in an actual mission instead of the simulator and... sometimes it looks great, sometimes it looks unchanged, and sometimes it's absolutely terrible and awful. Seems to depend on the nearby lighting. When it's awful, it's... hard to play with, hah.
What did you expect from the Warp?
When you die from Friendly Fire, do you get the Achievement "Saved by the Commissar"?
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! The Emperor Expects Edition
Post by: Folly on August 09, 2023, 03:45:47 pm
Bumping this for crafting update that just dropped.

Firstly, all crafting materials and currency are now shared between all characters. I don't know why it took this long to get a feature that the previous game had before this one was even conceived, but I'm glad it's here now. Very convenient with the new crafting stuff.

Second, crafting now allows you to change 2 things on each equipment piece, either 2 Blessings, 2 Perks, or 1 of each. Perks can simply be selected from the list, pay a small fee and it's yours. Blessings still require a sacrifice of another weapon, which can get pricey if you really want to maximize your gear.

The update also included some small changes to mission selection map, making high-difficulty mods less common in low-tier missions, and vice versa.


I went through all my characters, tested their weapons against different enemies in the Simulator, identified which enemies they were struggling against, then crafted new weapons with Perks to reinforce their strengths and weaknesses as needed. Burned my entire savings, but I'm looking forward to replenishing my various currencies using these new weapons in missions.


On another note, I took another pass at my Video Settings and got them to a better place. FXAA seems to have absolutely no effect in Darktide, so I had to turn it up to SMA and all the jaggies vanished with minimal performance hit. But increasing my LoD seemed to have the most profound effect, greatly reducing the movement-blur I was seeing before. I also turned the number of persistent corpses down to minimum, which takes a lot of immersion out of the game, but I consider is a worthwhile trade to not have tons of bodies on the ground with no idea which ones are dead and which ones are just waiting to stand back up and stab me in the back.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! The Emperor Expects Edition
Post by: nenjin on August 09, 2023, 07:10:37 pm
I confess I haven't played in months. I'll need to do some penance.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! The Emperor Expects Edition
Post by: Farce on August 16, 2023, 04:28:42 am
Yeah I jumped straight into a Maelstrom mission after several months of just not playing and uh we wiped.

To be fair we got pretty deep in, we were descending that one massive shanty shack cliff thing in the spire map and 5 mutants bumrushed us.  I got yote off the side but survived until the flood all came down to whoop me a second time.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! The Emperor Expects Edition
Post by: Folly on October 03, 2023, 07:05:31 pm
The big Class Customization update arrived today!

I've only played around with 1 class so far, but my initial impression is that this update has been an overwhelming success at what it set out to do. There are now lots of options for tinkering with different class upgrades, and very distinctly different playstyles are possible as a result.

I'm currently toying with my Zealot in a knife-throwing and relic-wielding loadout. The relic is very clutch, granting my team temporary invulnerability and toughness regeneration; ideal for boss fights and burster/mutant rushes.
The knives worked great in the testing area, doing huge damage to unarmored specials and being fairly easy to sustain ammo. In actual games they feel a bit underwhelming. Guns can honestly do the same thing almost as well, and with less ammo concerns. I'm considering switching over to immolation grenades and seeing if that is any more useful to me.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! The Emperor Expects Edition
Post by: Persus13 on October 03, 2023, 08:56:38 pm
Glad to hear the change went well. Does progression carry over from the old system?
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! The Emperor Expects Edition
Post by: Folly on October 03, 2023, 09:36:38 pm
Glad to hear the change went well. Does progression carry over from the old system?

Yes, all progression is retained. You just need to redistribute your points in the new trees.

Though I honestly kinda wish they had done a reset of some sort, just so that we would have some way to progress again. For people already at max level and with all pursuits completed, this patch does not bring anything new for them to do beyond playing around with the new skills a bit. At best they might find that the new trees require a new type of weapon that will require them to farm resources and craft.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. The War for Tertium Hive begins! The Emperor Expects Edition
Post by: Ozyton on October 03, 2023, 10:37:13 pm
I have not played since launch week/month and my biggest complaint was the painfully long loading times for everything, even on an SSD. If they've fixed that then I'd be happy. I also think there was some monetized thing for upgrades? I can't remember, but that would be kind've dumb if it is and should just be patched out to keep the monetization to cosmetics.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Despite the power of Chaos, the Imperium stands!
Post by: nenjin on October 04, 2023, 09:58:00 am
IIRC there was never any P2W. Mostly people were mad that they were rolling out paid cosmetics while the game was in such a shaky state. They kyboshed paid cosmetics for a while as they improved the game but I think they're back on track. They also added quite a few non-paid cosmetic unlocks.

I'll be playing tonight. It's been too long since I've purged the heretic.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Despite the power of Chaos, the Imperium stands!
Post by: Farce on October 04, 2023, 02:41:20 pm
The Ogryn's frag is fucking intense.  16m radius seems to work out to 'screen clear'.  Also if you build it right and get the right circumstances the psyker can become an infinite tesla coil.  It works really easy in the Meat Grinder testing thing, but it's a little iffy in actual games, at least on babymode Difficulty 3.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Despite the power of Chaos, the Imperium stands!
Post by: Folly on October 04, 2023, 10:10:25 pm
I've had the privilege of witnessing the ogre grenade from a distance in some of the larger tilesets. It actually creates a mushroom cloud! Looks like a small nuke!
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Despite the power of Chaos, the Imperium stands!
Post by: nenjin on October 05, 2023, 09:50:22 am
I definitely think this update is taking the game in a better direction.

The Toughness changes are kind of bonkers. I play Veteran exclusively, and prior to this update, taking a hit from a melee enemy on Heresy or Damnation would be like, 20% of your toughness bar easily. Even from a lowly infested. You were on average 3 to 4 hits from getting downed.

Now, I've had guys hit me multiple times and my toughness barely moves on Heresy. The only things that shred my toughness are fire and heavy weapons.

So games are humming along nicely then a flamer gets in the mix and everything goes to shit immediately, everyone starts panicking because they're taking actual damage.

But I like it. It's both fulfilling the power fantasy while keeping the tension up as soon as people start taking health damage. Especially because they took half the medicae stations out of maps. Now you're starting to feel a little sweat when the entire team is down 50% HP and you know there's probably 0 to 1 more medicae stations before the finale.

All in all, it's good. I'm not completely impressed with the Veteran skill tree but there is some cool stuff in there. Nothing quite as bombastic as the Ogryn Tactical Pocket Nuke though. That said it is super satisfying to smoke 3 Armored Ogryns and a couple Maulers with a single Krak grenade. Between those and my beloved Plasma Gun, elites, unyieldings and bosses get absolutely fucking wrecked.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Despite the power of Chaos, the Imperium stands!
Post by: Dostoevsky on October 05, 2023, 10:19:49 am
Psyker's feeling pretty good right now, though it's amusing to see the reddit vigorously debating whether Assail is horribly overpowered, completely useless, or both.

(Myself, it seems kind of overpowered but Brain Burst and palpatine lightning arguably have better group utility.)
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Despite the power of Chaos, the Imperium stands!
Post by: Persus13 on October 05, 2023, 03:46:38 pm
Haven't messed with the new psyker much but I love the look of the darts ability they get. Made me feel like I was playing with Yondu when I had a teammate using them.
Title: Re: WH40K Darktide. Despite the power of Chaos, the Imperium stands!
Post by: Folly on October 05, 2023, 06:12:48 pm
I'm appreciating Assail as a counterpart to my Lightning Staff. Staff melts heavily armored enemies, while Assail melts unarmored hordes. The only thing I struggle with is monstrosities, but I'm experimenting with some different melee weapons for that...

But what I love about Assail is that it's kinda random. At best, I might shoot out one dart and watch a dozen mooks die halfway across the map. At worst, I might shoot 5 of them at a single infested right in front of me and have him just walk right by the darts to slap me in the face. They are very powerful, but unreliable, and I often need allies or a melee weapon to clean up the lucky few who survive.
Certainly an interesting change of pace from the old Brain Burst.