Vermintide but it's 40K and not the giant toy soldiers

[DrPillzRedux]

Made by fartshart, the same hacks behind Vermintide. I've never been super big on 40K games because of their focus on the big bois, but we're finally getting something about the smaller guys.

[youtube]Zp44GNRzvCc[/youtube]

Fight together with your friends against hordes of enemies in this new Warhammer 40,000 experience. From the developers of the best-selling and award-winning co-op action franchise Vermintide, Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is a visceral 4-player co-op action game set in the hive city of Tertium.

In the depths of the hive, the seeds of corruption threaten an overwhelming tide of darkness. A heretical cult known as the Admonition seeks to seize control of the planet Atoma Prime and lay waste to its inhabitants. It is up to you and your allies in the Inquisition to root out the enemy before the city succumbs to Chaos.

[Sheodir]

Any project in 40k dealing with non Space Marines has my approval. It's Fatshark, though, so given Vermintide 2's track record I expect a great launch product and middling post-launch support.

PS: The Halo Infinite showcase sucked.

[Omni]

So now we're getting 40k reskin of WHF reskin of L4D?
Future is now, old man!
And it's more boring than ever!

[Kel]

fatshark makes a good concept and ruins it: the third time

[Ayy Lemoh]

So now we're getting 40k reskin of WHF reskin of L4D?
Future is now, old man!
And it's more boring than ever!

fatshark makes a good concept and ruins it: the third time

Haven't ever played any of their games however what do you mean they're ruining it or that it's boring due to being a lfd clone (maybe the w40k one however the warhammer fantasy ones? c'mon - warhammer fantasy games are rare as shit I believe)

[Kel]

So now we're getting 40k reskin of WHF reskin of L4D?
Future is now, old man!
And it's more boring than ever!

fatshark makes a good concept and ruins it: the third time

Haven't ever played any of their games however what do you mean they're ruining it or that it's boring due to being a lfd clone (maybe the w40k one however the warhammer fantasy ones? c'mon - warhammer fantasy games are rare as shit I believe)

historically how fatshark has handled the warhammer IP so far: make a really solid base game, but its content starved. because of this, they promise to continually update the game as time goes on to keep it playable. they don't do this to anywhere even remotely close to an acceptable level. thus, are on permanent life support within a month after post launch. also they have refused to get rid of this shitty awful loot system for 2 games in a row now. nobody fuckin likes this shit but they REFUSE to get rid of it wholesale.

[Ayy Lemoh]

historically how fatshark has handled the warhammer IP so far: make a really solid base game, but its content starved. because of this, they promise to continually update the game as time goes on to keep it playable. they don't do this to anywhere even remotely close to an acceptable level. thus, are on permanent life support within a month after post launch. also they have refused to get rid of this shitty awful loot system for 2 games in a row now. nobody fuckin likes this shit but they REFUSE to get rid of it wholesale.

Ah, alright. Also heard something about a melee focus in this as well. Unless a player voluntarily chooses that, that just ain't right in w40k.

[Armhulen]

Don't tell me I'm playing as an imperial guard

I'll get exceptional expectations and hype only to be let down if true

[DrPillzRedux]

Don't tell me I'm playing as an imperial guard

I'll get exceptional expectations and hype only to be let down if true

Spoiler:

The trailer shows four throw-away scouts. In the actual game, you play as Acolytes of the Inquisition. Not much is known but, based on what Fatshark said on their website, it'll likely have a system similar to Vermintide 2--Individual characters with their own backstories and personalities, then multiple classes for them. In the current logo art, we can see an obvious Acolyte (specialization unknown), an Ogryn, a Guardsman (will likely be a stormtrooper or other elite variant), and what could be an Eldar ranger or Psyker depending on how desperate the Inquisitor is.

The cool thing about how they've set up the plot is that Inquisitors can pull men from anywhere in the empire's forces. It won't be four basic-bitch guardsmen.

historically how fatshark has handled the warhammer IP so far: make a really solid base game, but its content starved. because of this, they promise to continually update the game as time goes on to keep it playable. they don't do this to anywhere even remotely close to an acceptable level. thus, are on permanent life support within a month after post launch. also they have refused to get rid of this shitty awful loot system for 2 games in a row now. nobody fuckin likes this shit but they REFUSE to get rid of it wholesale.

It's not that they abandon the game post-launch, it's that their updates are stupidly slow and often don't solve issues people want solving. They hardly ever listen to their community, leading to expansions making swathing changes no one asked for or wanted (stagger system and horrible balance changes with Winds of Magic; weaves doomed to becoming dead content). They literally disregarded all feedback from the Winds of Magic beta and made basically no changes.

Right now they're holding a balance beta for VT2. All of the changes come from a fanmade balance mod. All of them, sans the tweaks they've added to some. That is how stupid they are about these things.

Does this make me think Darktide will be a shit game? No, it'll probably be fucking rad just like Vermintide was and still is. Does it mean they'll probably keep pulling the same shit? Unable to balance their own game? Updates only every several months? Yeah, probably.

I'll still play it for several hundred hours.

So now we're getting 40k reskin of WHF reskin of L4D?
Future is now, old man!
And it's more boring than ever!

Any FPS game is a clone of another by that logic. Vermintide has far more depth to it.

[Qbmax32]

let me play as a krieger and im sold

[Coconutwarrior97]

The environments look very nice, so hoping it'll be like spacehulk deathwing's environments but better combat. Im a sucker for any warhammer game tbh.

[Omni]

Pillz, OG vermintide had even exact same enemies as L4D games, the only difference I reckon was that there was loot aspect to the game, and classes I guess. Though second game has probably improved in that aspect, I haven't touched it.
I hear Space Hulk: Deathwing was quite good game about similar premise.

[DrPillzRedux]

VT1 didn't have classes, but weapons restricted to certain characters. Also, I don't recall L4D having an equivalent to Stormvermin, or blocking, or satisfying melee combat.

Two is vastly different.

Deathwing was absolute shit in terms of gameplay and everyone acknowledges that.

[Sheodir]

So now we're getting 40k reskin of WHF reskin of L4D?
Future is now, old man!
And it's more boring than ever!

I feel this is a fair bit unfair. The only thing they have in common is "4 player coop vs horde" which totally deserves to be a genre rather than be limited to a single series.

Special enemies in the first game were similar because they were rather braindead choices (area denial, guy who splits the party, etc) but there was also much more appeal in the large scale of levels, bosses, no focus on weapon switching, the impromptu puzzles in levels, etc - and 2 greatly expanded the number of specials, added the Classes and abilities that'd add way more longevity and build variety to the game, and the 2 default levels are honestly massively impressive. Vermintide more than has its own place under the sun.

However, as said before, Fatshark has a bad habit of taking way too long to release follow-up content, insisting on dumb gimmicks and mechanics that either nobody asked for or are tailored to a very small subset of the community (stagger was supposed to make Legendary less braindead to the 0.1% of players who found it too easy with Handmaiden Kerillian dodgespam, now it's still braindead but made the game worse for everyone else) and also fucking weird obsessions with making a coop game competitive somehow. The Weaves were an infinite level thing where the mechanics were not only asinine (can only join if you last left off on the same "level" of weave, splitting friends and parties and reducing queues further) but they kept pushing the LEADERBOARD aspect which nobody fucking gave a shit about.

Ah, alright. Also heard something about a melee focus in this as well. Unless a player voluntarily chooses that, that just ain't right in w40k.

This was in the context Vermintide has a melee focus, where it makes sense since it's a Warhammer Fantasy game. Given in the Darktide trailer everyone's wielding guns I don't think that'll be an issue.

[DrPillzRedux]

Fardshit stated on their website that melee combat will be equally as important as ranged.

They also made the following comment to PCgamer.

"Players will not be able to hide behind lethal ranged weapons," explains Fatshark's press release, "they'll need to combine both FPS and melee skills as they get up close and personal in visceral clashes between Imperium and Chaos factions."

[Sheodir]

Fardshit stated on their website that melee combat will be equally as important as ranged.

They also made the following comment to PCgamer.

"Players will not be able to hide behind lethal ranged weapons," explains Fatshark's press release, "they'll need to combine both FPS and melee skills as they get up close and personal in visceral clashes between Imperium and Chaos factions."

This seems... confusing. I sure hope they don't just plaster over Vermintide's loop over this, I agree it wouldn't fit.

[Ayy Lemoh]

"Players will not be able to hide behind lethal ranged weapons," explains Fatshark's press release, "they'll need to combine both FPS and melee skills as they get up close and personal in visceral clashes between Imperium and Chaos factions."

Unless you choose to bust out the chainsword, the only melee weapon you should need is a bayonet on your flashlight.

[Sheodir]

"Players will not be able to hide behind lethal ranged weapons," explains Fatshark's press release, "they'll need to combine both FPS and melee skills as they get up close and personal in visceral clashes between Imperium and Chaos factions."

Unless you choose to bust out the chainsword, the only melee weapon you should need is a bayonet on your flashlight.

I mean, to be fair, from promo art we seem to be getting a diverse bunch. There are way more melee options in the setting, specially if we're getting an Ogryn boy, it's just weird to have it JUST AS MUCH as the ranged game in a 40k game. Who knows, could be done alright.

[DrPillzRedux]

Check the screenshots on the Steam page. Pretty clear how it'll play based on those.

[Kassori]

Lemme be a krieger!!!

[terranaut]

whats wrong with the giant toy soldiers spacehulk is really fun

[Sheodir]

whats wrong with the giant toy soldiers spacehulk is really fun

Saturation
I love the tonkerboys but they're everywhere and it's a big universe

[HommandoSA]

I have a love-hate relationship with Vermintide. I believe Fatshark can make another good Warhammer game, but I don't expect the game to stay good for long.

[SkeletalElite]

I've played vermintide 1 and 2.

Vermintide 2 was basically just an improvement over 1, with more enemies, more mechanics, and better gameplay. The class system with it's perks/abilities rather than just weapon restrictions added a lot to the gameplay.

The looting system they have is okay. The idea is your're supposed to start on a lower difficulty and play on higher difficulties as you get better gear/abilities which then gives better loot which then enables you to play on higher difficulties. You can repeat this process on each of the different classes. I think what people don't like about the system is the RNG and I really disliked the RNG in vermintide 1 but in vermintide 2 the RNG felt better.

The main complaint about the game is usually the lack of missions and how much the game relies on repeating existing missions on higher difficulties for it's content. I think relying on repetition for longer term content is okay because theres a bunch of different classes to do it on, but there needs to be enough different missions that you can mix it up and you don't get tired of the same maps over and over again. If I remember correctly there's a bit randomness that makes those same missions a little different every time and it goes a long way to help with mostly same assests and just a little bit of effort and I hope they do more of that.

Basically if they improve on the things that were bad in vermintide 2 I think this game will be great. Even if they don't improve much over what they did in vermindtide 2 (and dont make anything worse) it will probably still be okay enough that it would be worth picking up on sale as long as you have some friends that are willing to get it as well.

[Sheodir]

I've played vermintide 1 and 2.

Vermintide 2 was basically just an improvement over 1, with more enemies, more mechanics, and better gameplay. The class system with it's perks/abilities rather than just weapon restrictions added a lot to the gameplay.

The looting system they have is okay. The idea is your're supposed to start on a lower difficulty and play on higher difficulties as you get better gear/abilities which then gives better loot which then enables you to play on higher difficulties. You can repeat this process on each of the different classes. I think what people don't like about the system is the RNG and I really disliked the RNG in vermintide 1 but in vermintide 2 the RNG felt better.

The main complaint about the game is usually the lack of missions and how much the game relies on repeating existing missions on higher difficulties for it's content. I think relying on repetition for longer term content is okay because theres a bunch of different classes to do it on, but there needs to be enough different missions that you can mix it up and you don't get tired of the same maps over and over again. If I remember correctly there's a bit randomness that makes those same missions a little different every time and it goes a long way to help with mostly same assests and just a little bit of effort and I hope they do more of that.

Basically if they improve on the things that were bad in vermintide 2 I think this game will be great. Even if they don't improve much over what they did in vermindtide 2 (and dont make anything worse) it will probably still be okay enough that it would be worth picking up on sale as long as you have some friends that are willing to get it as well.

As someone who played 2 enough to comfortably run the highest difficulty and have optimized builds for every subclass, the issue is less the repeated content and rather how they handled post-launch content development. Instead of focusing on more missions, which I think everyone agrees is the obvious thing (and maybe subclasses), they focused on really weird additions to the game that nobody asked for that only split the playerbase into smaller chunks with stuff like Weaves and the upcoming Versus. They spent years of work and manpower to bring us content that people don't play and large-scale overhauls aimed at a minority of players. They are also very slow to add things everyone and their mom tells them to, such as red dust taking over two years to make an actual appearance.

I love Vermintide 2, and I think Darktide will be a kickass game, but I really hope they've figured out their mistakes with post-launch content with 2. Ironically, this wasn't an issue with 1 at all - despite 1 having worse RNG and a worse gameplay loop, 1 had amazing expansions that focused on just adding more missions to the game and that DLC is generally commemorated.

[Super Aggro Crag]

these imperial guards have skipped Leg Day WTF!

[TheWiznard]

why cant we fight/be orks :'(

[legality]

They hardly ever listen to their community, leading to expansions making swathing changes no one asked for or wanted.

Right now they're holding a balance beta for VT2. All of the changes come from a fanmade balance mod. All of them, sans the tweaks they've added to some. That is how stupid they are about these things.

You lose either way with DrPillz it seems.

[Sheodir]

They hardly ever listen to their community, leading to expansions making swathing changes no one asked for or wanted.

Right now they're holding a balance beta for VT2. All of the changes come from a fanmade balance mod. All of them, sans the tweaks they've added to some. That is how stupid they are about these things.

You lose either way with DrPillz it seems.

Pay attention to context.

They've not only done awful betas before, but they've given up and used the balancing of a fan mod after over a full year of the balance being entirely fucked up for no reason. Context is important. The balancing choices from said mod are not even good, mind, they just copied the most popular mod and are ignoring feedback again.

[Timbrewolf]

Posting to temper all this Fatshark hate.

Vermintide was a bigger accomplishment than people give it credit for. Left 4 Dead but melee only sounds like shit on paper but they made it workable. I didn't care for it for reasons people have already discussed; the only real difference between characters was weapons and the system for getting more of them sucked shit. The skeley-bones were good though which lead us to

Vermintide 2. It's fucking good. People in here talking trash on it but they have hundreds of hours in it anyway lol. They managed to finally get really meaningful characterization and gameplay in there to keep up with their really awesome portrayal of a world I wouldn't otherwise give a shit about. The writing for their characters was 10/10 across both games.

Bionic Commando 2. Fucking great yo. Bet you forgot about this one. Awesome soundtrack too but one of the retro-game-remake-for-cash-in properties that's actually a good ass game in its own right. Way better than the shitty 3D character action game they made at the same time.

War of the Roses. I had a lot of fun with this but it fell under the radar for everyone so whatever. Mount and Blade multiplayer optimized for team deathmatch and shit. Progression/Pay-2-Horse system kinda sucked but still fun to style on people with a boar spear or go full on minstrel martial-artist swag with a quarterstaff and deliver endless bonks to the skull of heavy armor knights.

[Sheodir]

Posting to temper all this Fatshark hate.

Vermintide was a bigger accomplishment than people give it credit for. Left 4 Dead but melee only sounds like shit on paper but they made it workable. I didn't care for it for reasons people have already discussed; the only real difference between characters was weapons and the system for getting more of them sucked shit. The skeley-bones were good though which lead us to

Vermintide 2. It's fucking good. People in here talking trash on it but they have hundreds of hours in it anyway lol. They managed to finally get really meaningful characterization and gameplay in there to keep up with their really awesome portrayal of a world I wouldn't otherwise give a shit about. The writing for their characters was 10/10 across both games.

Bionic Commando 2. Fucking great yo. Bet you forgot about this one. Awesome soundtrack too but one of the retro-game-remake-for-cash-in properties that's actually a good ass game in its own right. Way better than the shitty 3D character action game they made at the same time.

War of the Roses. I had a lot of fun with this but it fell under the radar for everyone so whatever. Mount and Blade multiplayer optimized for team deathmatch and shit. Progression/Pay-2-Horse system kinda sucked but still fun to style on people with a boar spear or go full on minstrel martial-artist swag with a quarterstaff and deliver endless bonks to the skull of heavy armor knights.

Did you read any of the actual points people made
People were complaining about the Vermintide 2 post launch support which famously sucked
Bugs up the ass going unsolved for months, heavy gameplay overhauls nobody asked for, extra gamemodes nobody asked for that further divide a dwindling playerbase, taking nearly two years to implement red dust, etc
Vermintide 2 is their most recent product and the fear everyone expressed here is that they pull anotgher VT2 with Vermintide and make a great release product with awful fucking post release support

[Timbrewolf]

Did you read any of the actual points people made

Yes

People were complaining about the Vermintide 2 post launch support which famously sucked

No

I think it's a problem specifically with the Wamham audience that they're cursed to either never be happy or leverage ridiculous demands; always finding something to bitch and moan about. See:

They hardly ever listen to their community, leading to expansions making swathing changes no one asked for or wanted.

Right now they're holding a balance beta for VT2. All of the changes come from a fanmade balance mod. All of them, sans the tweaks they've added to some. That is how stupid they are about these things.

It's not that they didn't support the product it's that you don't like the changes they make, or when you do like an addition they come up with you instead complain about how long it took them to get there.
Failing to a support a product means just up and fucking abandoning it. See Friday the 13th; the devs took the first opportunity to just YEET out of the picture and leave the project dead in the water. Failing to support a product is how so many Steam Early Access titles wind up fueling the meme that EA is a curse and never works.

Spending the last two years and change releasing patches and adding content to a title is not "failing to support it" just because you don't agree with some of the changes or think it took too long to get to some of them.

[Super Aggro Crag]

Posting to temper all this Fatshark hate.

Vermintide was a bigger accomplishment than people give it credit for. Left 4 Dead but melee only sounds like shit on paper but they made it workable. I didn't care for it for reasons people have already discussed; the only real difference between characters was weapons and the system for getting more of them sucked shit. The skeley-bones were good though which lead us to

Vermintide 2. It's fucking good. People in here talking trash on it but they have hundreds of hours in it anyway lol. They managed to finally get really meaningful characterization and gameplay in there to keep up with their really awesome portrayal of a world I wouldn't otherwise give a shit about. The writing for their characters was 10/10 across both games.

Bionic Commando 2. Fucking great yo. Bet you forgot about this one. Awesome soundtrack too but one of the retro-game-remake-for-cash-in properties that's actually a good ass game in its own right. Way better than the shitty 3D character action game they made at the same time.

War of the Roses. I had a lot of fun with this but it fell under the radar for everyone so whatever. Mount and Blade multiplayer optimized for team deathmatch and shit. Progression/Pay-2-Horse system kinda sucked but still fun to style on people with a boar spear or go full on minstrel martial-artist swag with a quarterstaff and deliver endless bonks to the skull of heavy armor knights.

bionic commando rearmed 2 is pretty dope

[Timbrewolf]

Like come on tho

The balancing choices from said mod are not even good, mind, they just copied the most popular mod and are ignoring feedback again.

copied the most popular mod
ignoring feedback
the most popular mod
not even good

I know empathy is in short supply but try to think about what they're trying to do here.
If they're incorporating popular changes the community itself made you can't say they're ignoring feedback.
If the changes still suck and it's not good enough for you doesn't that mean the community is itself also responsible for that?

bionic commando rearmed 2 is pretty dope

Hell yeah, that OST tho Oops I goofed Simon didn't come back for the sequel. Still chill tho.

[Sheodir]

wofl man says thing

I'm Beta Tester validated for both Winds of Magic and the current balance patches, see spoiler.

Spoiler:

I've extensively dealt with Fatshark's feedback sessions and they are bullheaded and incredibly stuck on their own ways. Everything everyone and their mom wanted for VT2 were expansions similar to VT1 - more missions, with some bugfixes and red dust. Instead, we got a mini expansion with half the content of a VT1 one (and maps partially recycled from game 1), another micro expansion with a weird gimmick that didn't really work, then they worked for an unnaceptable amount of time on Winds of Magic, which left the game with a dry spell of over a year of content. When we got Winds of Magic, instead of more missions, we got a Waves mode that literally nobody asked for and nobody fucking plays, which served to further divide the queues in matchmaking. The reason you can't just queue with your friends who are in different waves, according to Fatshark, is to make the Leaderboard count. The Leaderboard. Who the fuck cares about the Leaderboard? They also had an absolutely cancerous attempt at making this a sort of e-sport in the beta tester forums I won't get into, but I can say that Versus is that shit again.

On said Winds of Magic beta, the stagger rework was universally panned in the forums, with the Pro thread having 200 posts versus the Cons thread having nearly 4000 replies. Nobody fucking wanted it but a very tiny subsect of players to which the hardest difficulty is much too easy.

They went ahead with it anyway. The constant bug report about the Beastmen enemies were also ignored and took six months to be fixed.

On the mod, your point sounds good until you actually check the mod, and uh, it's not that popular. Rebalancing mods aren't that popular in general, you see, which means blindly implementing them 1:1 is a bad idea. Reddit is full of people telling this is a bad idea, and so do the forums, although I admit the discussion is a bit more nuanced this time. I guarantee you feedback will be ignored again.

Fatshark releases some incredible games but post-launch support for Vermintide 2 has been incredibly trash, and I say this as someone that probably shills Vermintide 2 and has over 400 hours in it. I just hope whoever's on Darktide does a better job.

EDIT: Forgot to mention Versus whilst could be cool will invariably divide queues even further. Welcome to the hell ride without a paddle.

EDIT 2: Winds of Magic also took that long because the team got divided for another project. Now that I think about it, this was probably Darktide.

[DrPillzRedux]

V1 had better atmosphere and character writing, though I much preferred its dark and gritty theme and colors. V2 has them popping the same jokes over and over while running around in the countryside during the day.

V1 also had a far better sound system; the reverb system was fantastic at making tight areas sound actually tight. Gunshots were loud as shit and so were the cries of your comrades as they screamed for help.

[BONERMASTER]

"That moment when 2020 is so shit people are looking forward to being a guardsman in 40k as escapism."

[Super Aggro Crag]

Like come on tho

The balancing choices from said mod are not even good, mind, they just copied the most popular mod and are ignoring feedback again.

copied the most popular mod
ignoring feedback
the most popular mod
not even good

I know empathy is in short supply but try to think about what they're trying to do here.
If they're incorporating popular changes the community itself made you can't say they're ignoring feedback.
If the changes still suck and it's not good enough for you doesn't that mean the community is itself also responsible for that?

bionic commando rearmed 2 is pretty dope

Hell yeah, that OST tho Oops I goofed Simon didn't come back for the sequel. Still chill tho.

Yeah rearmed 1 was made by Grin, not fatshark, and Grin got fucked over and turned into Overkill and then made Payday.