The potential for Warhammer 40,000: Darktide was never in doubt. The concept of quick and intense co-op multiplayer battles in the beloved Warhammer 40K setting immediately got my interest, and it’s clear that I was not alone. The launch was plagued by technical issues and terrible monetization, yet players like me have patiently waited for these problems to get fixed. Every few months, I’ll log on, check the shop, play a few glitchy games, and then log out, hoping the developers will make the necessary improvements.
I’m the least surprised person on the planet that Patch 1.2 (called Patch #13 by the developers) got fans back into the game. Fatshark rolled out a complete class overhaul and replaced the static feats with more fully fleshed-out talent trees. Weapons have been unbalanced since launch and are now all about equal in all my experiments. There are a few critical changes on the combat side of things, fixing the broken enemy AI and adding more ways for the Conflict Director to spawn hordes of enemies.
Yet, for all the fans eager to call this a 2.0 upgrade, I’m struggling to even see this as a 1.0 release. Darktide made a mess with segmented cash shops, and that’s an issue that persists through this latest update. Live service games are often greedy, but having separate shops for different gamers is a confusing system that has lucky players able to purchase great weapons and upgrades while unlucky gamers simply have to hope their luck improves with their cash shop. Unpolished cash shops are usually signs of dead games, not ones that are supposed to be hitting their stride.
And the issues don’t stop at the shop. Just look above, at the Psyker’s starting ability, Psykinetic’s Wrath, and the “description” of what the skill does. The script is clearly busted, copying some file location or line of code. Looking at the other talents, there are more typos, such as random quotation marks and inconsistent capitalization. This may sound petty, but my point here is that these aren’t new issues; Psykinetic’s Wrath has always had this broken message, and even the game’s biggest update hasn’t taken the time to iron it out. On the other talents, old typos remain while new abilities bring on a new set of scripts to fix (or not fix, based on the game’s history so far).
From a technical standpoint, matches are less likely to crash, but the framerates during the game’s most important moments fall off badly. Freezing is still a regular occurrence when too many opponents spawn. Waypoints sometimes don’t show up or, worse, show up in the wrong location. My game still boots up as a background function, requiring me to Alt+Tab over to it and then, once again, needing me to hit Alt+Enter to get the game to fullscreen despite my attempts to fix this in the settings. The intro screen for missions is currently failing to display the objectives, proving that these patches that bring about fixes are introducing whole new sets of problems for future patches to address.
I want to be as specific as possible about all the bugs and glitches I experienced, but that would take a short novel to detail properly. My last game, for example, had the labels disappear from my teammates, and the game did not end for several minutes despite all objectives being completed and all of our squad in the extraction area. Fatshark, to its credit, seems aware of the problems. Patch 1.2 fixed 49 issues and Patch 1.21 fixed another 10, but there is so much more work to do before this game feels like it’s officially out of the testing period and ready to go live. The bottom line is that every match gives me a mix of the previously mentioned issues as well as some new bugs to try and handle.
The most deadly issue to Darktide’s long-term success has more to do with class philosophy than bug control. Vermintide 2, Fatshark’s last game that employed this same style, is still better than Darktide, in part because its unique builds for each hero are dramatically different. Kerillian’s Handmaiden and Waystalker careers play nothing alike, but both are valid and powerful. Mastering any build with any operative is mastering them all. My melee Ogryn and ranged Veteran can easily be swapped out for one another.
I want to make clear that I’m rooting for Darktide to succeed. Vermintide 2 had issues for its first several months as well, so Fatshark has gone through this same redemption process before. The developers have already changed the loot system for the better, and Darktide has a lot going for it with the exquisite environments and the soundtrack. Unfortunately, players are still waiting for Darktide to get into a passable release state. I share the praise for Patch 1.2, and it’s promising to see that the game is being developed instead of abandoned. But until that promise is realized, Darktide remains a developing game that is still three or four huge patches away from being passable.
