Anon's Autistic Conspiracy About the Fifth Class
OR
How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Incompetence

https://ibb.co/jgytk7T

--- For more than two years now there has been a constant, consistent debate concerning the inclusion of a fifth class (excuse me: "career") to Darktide. After all, Vermintide has five classes, so why not Darktide?

In this extremely autistic rant I will interconnect various facets of historical information concerning the involved parties, the game, various inevitabilities and my conclusions that fall out of the culmination of these individual factors rubbing up against one another. I am forewarning you now, this is some real Pepe Silvia shit, so if you don't like tinfoil and prefer concrete, you won't find a lot of that here: just supposition, trends, known information, and slim reveals that Fatshark has put into the game already. I also want to clarify that in this document I will make ZERO, NONE, NADA predictions concerning what the fifth class (should it manifest) will be. To do so would obviously bias me toward one conclusion or another, and perhaps make ever more tenuous links that bind this theory together with tinsel where there are none to be found, if there are any to be found in the first place.

To begin let's talk about the three major players, and no -- you, the player nor the playerbase are one fo these these players. You do not matter outside of being viewed as a reliable source of revenue. Unless you're some major streamer who suddenly takes a liking to Darktide and can sick your horde of tens of thousands of subscribers on the devs, they will not give a fig about what it is you have to say or if you personally stop playing. But there are three agents who matter:

-- Games Workshop
-- Fatshark
-- Tencent

I have placed them in a hierarchy that describes who holds the power in this relationship and just how much of it they wield over one another. Games Workshop has the final say in virtually everything that the Swedes want to add to Darktide, but it's up to Fatshark to prod the bear and see if they can get approval for what they want added in the game in the first place. The assets, the animations, the maps, the game simply does not materialize out of thin air. Fatshark must create for there to be a game, but to create they must get permission. I know it seems obvious, but people simply do not take into account the fact that Games Workshop literally wields the power of life or death over Fatshark due to their protectionist policies concerning their IP.

If you are a true oldfag, someone who even describe themselves as a grognard, you know much of what I am about to say, but for the younger readers who need additional stimuli here is a three hour long Family Guy compilation you can put on in the background while you read this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrhFlCoNun0). GW's protectionism goes back literal decades. I remember, and a few of you may as well, back in the mid-2000's there was a German fan-film called Damnatus that was harried for several years by Games Workshop's lawyers, until 2007 when they dropped all attempts at releasing the film due to the legal measures GW was taking to stymy the film's release. There are earlier examples, but this one has a Wikipedia article, so it's earliest and most important one I can recall. You are also possibly aware of the entire Malal legal battle which went on for decades and could take up a 5,000 word news article all on its own.

You're also probably aware of how hard GW tries to crack down on recasts, scans of their models, 3D prints, etc. But for the sake of brevity, I will just mention a few known examples related to video games. Relic (producers of the Dawn of War series) got into trouble because they used the incorrect (according to GW) color for Las Weapons in DoW2. The Storm Bolter is not allowed to be added to Space Marine 2 because Primaris do not use Storm Bolters. The Sister of Battle romance for Rogue Trader was cut because GW required them to do so. The Warrior Priest class in VT2 was not allowed to use a flail as a weapon by itself because there was no model that represented this and as a result, could only utilize a flail with a shield. Darktide had the human character tanktop and shirtless Ogryn options removed because of GW. I am offering up one example I can think of that was stated by the Devs of these various games, as to try and track down every single example of interference by GW for every single Warhammer (40k) game would be virtually impossible.

To put it bluntly: Games Workshop holds the stick, but they do not wield it with an evenhand.

Games Workshop, by all accounts I have read is a bad partner to work with, but they control two very lucrative IPs and thus many devs will bite the bullet and just accept the changes foisted upon them because they have little to no other choice due to the nature of this relationship. Regardless, Fatshark, as I mentioned before, are the ones who make this game. Without Fatshark there is no Darktide, there is no Vermintide. Despite operating in this prohibitive environment they still maintain agency over what they want to try and add to the game, what they want to focus on, the end result, the QUALITY of the things that they are making. Havoc's party finder is dogshit? That's Fatshark. Certain weapons are completely useless because they don't fit a game where you need to kill hundreds upon hundreds of enemies each match? That's Fatshark. Various builds, nodes, abilities are imbalanced, broken, or superfluous? That's Fatshark. The very descriptions of the things that you are being told or not told about the function of some thing or another? That's... Fatshark.

And then there is Tencent. A quick Google search will tell you that Tencent owns a third of Fatshark. To what extent they impose their will, and various mandates over the company are unknown, but presumed to be minimal beyond the structuring of the MTX. However, I will say this: due to how nebulous the pricing and framework of what items are added to the shop, and how they are added? It leads me to believe that this is also Fatshark. Tencent in all probability are the ones keeping them to the bi-weekly mandate, the FOMO, and price hikes, but the things within the store? That's on Fatshark (and their contractors, can't forget about them!) Strictly because Gacha games, or heavily monetized games that Tencent places a more active interest in are far more intelligently operated in terms of the implementation of said monetization. What we have here is something that could only come from the mind of a Swede that's been given a list of directives but doesn't know how to properly implement these very things they've been told to implement. Leaving us with shit cosmetics, shit rotations, limited rotations, expensive cosmetics, and generally just a system that is as likely to turn people away from purchasing anything as get them to purchase additional things beyond the base game in the first place.

Those are the players and how they interact, but how do they relate to the inclusion of a fifth class? Well, good question.

Many people who take the counter position concerning the inclusion of a fifth class will often cite the "overwhelming" technical burden of including a fifth class. After all, this isn't Vermintide. Let's focus on just one aspect of this that they readily point to because I can't be bothered to try and go through every single potential blocker. The Voice Actors. We have a total of 21 different voices, with potentially more on the way (believe it or not, there is some evidence that a fourth personality for the Ogryn is being made). All of which have to record the same lines. Each of them have to be brought back into the studio (or record from their home studio) to record new lines that are added with new maps, or updates to the storyline (such as it is). It's a lot of coordination, it's a lot of work, it's a lot of money. Now you want to add a new class that could have potentially up to six different voice actors and have all these people retroactively re-record lines from old dialogue to include them? What are you? Insane!? That's the position these people take, and I will admit, there is some merit to this. It's a kind of technical debt. And again, this is just one example of how adding just one additional class in this current system becomes a compounding problem. If you want to know more, read "The Mythical Man-Month" by Fred Brooks or watch some YouTuber explain it to you if you can't be assed to read anymore.

On the other hand, you have people who want a fifth class for spurious reasons like, "It would be cool!" or "Vermintide has five classes, so Darktide should, too!" Some people are a bit more nuanced than that, and so I ought to steelman their argument. A fifth class would certainly bring back many people who have stopped playing the game, or have only ever just considered playing the game. The allure of some exotic, fantastical (not Space Marine) class acts as lure to entice people into coming up with all sorts of ideas for what a fifth class could be ("It could even be a boat!" - if you're still listening to that Family Guy compilation, you'll have come across that clip by now, provided you are reading at the rate of your average American Zoomer).

Either way, I hold none of these positions. I do not desire a fifth class because I fantasize about what it could, I don't rebuff the inclusion of a fifth class because I'd rather have them work on actually make the game more of a game. I, spit on you plebs from my Ivory Tower of Geniusness, because I have realized that a fifth class is inevitable. Like the purple dude from Marvel. See, it is true that adding a fifth class would be a monumental undertaking for Fatshark. Perhaps the biggest single thing they could possibly put their energy toward making for Darktide besides just straight up making a sequel (which they might be doing, by the by). It is also true that adding a fifth class would energize the game's playerbase, open up new options for you to choose from as a player, and potentially generate more money for Fatshark. Both of these stances are true, and not incompatible. It's simply a matter of one group thinking they're more right-er than the other. Neither are right-er, though, they're both correct, but what they are correct about doesn't matter. What matters is that a fifth class is inevitable, as I just stated. It doesn't matter how hard it would be to do, it doesn't matter if it would be cool, none of that shit matters. What matters is content.

Darktide is a live-service game, or Game as a Service, a GaaS. Their entire model for new player attraction and player retention relies upon their regular inclusion of content. Whatever that content might be. If they can't do that, then their financial model fails, the game becomes a net loss, and eventually it is deprecated. You've seen it happen hundreds of times by now with other live-service games. Even if the devs keep the servers up and running for the diehards who refuse to move on, they (the devs) have long since stopped giving a fuck about the game. So, it is in our best interest (and theirs) that this doesn't happen because making a game is an even more tedious, even more expensive process than making a fifth class. Think about that the next time you want to debate this topic. Which is easier, which is less expensive, which has greater feasibility of actually happening? Making Darktide 2 or continuing to support Darktide?

And that's how we arrive at the inevitability of this. Content is the name of the game, and Fatshark is already running pretty low on content they can add given the classes we have. You have the Veteran, who has access to (in theory) any IG weapon that a single person could run around wielding without the need for power armor. You've got the Psyker, who is restricted by what GW will sign off on in terms of powers (I said I'd only use one example, but recall that GW had Fatshark rename the staffs because they weren't "canon" names.) You've got the Zealot, who... who the hell knows what this guy has left in the tank. And then you've got the Ogryn, a class who was a technical blunder from the start by Fatshark's own admission and is fucked six ways to Sunday because the damn thing has so few options in terms of possible weapons. Additionally, Fatshark (in my estimation) erred by dropping the class system and moving over to the catchall career methodology they have now where you are given one skill tree for one career and that's that. Vermintide 2 took six fucking years to at last put in the final career with Sienna's Necromancer. Had Fatshark stuck to the original plan of just using the Vermintide system, we'd probably only have two options per class at the moment since their initial plan was to release one per quarter, but that would never happen. They're Swedish! All they know how to do is copy game modes (poorly), implement bad systems, and take vacations. Since they sacrificed the old system for this one, they ended up saving a lot of time and effort but in doing so they burned a bunch of content they could have eeked out over years and years.

What, then, does Fatshark have for us in the way of actual content? Maps and Weapons. That's the bulk of it. New maps are very risky. It could be something the playerbase doesn't like, actively loathes, and will skip, leading to bad feelings from all around because you just spend god knows how long making that map and a ton of people could hate it, so they won't play the game for any extended period of time if they came back specifically because they heard you added a new map. That's bad! Weapons are easier, and less risky since you're distributing the potential for failure around (up to) four different classes at once. Likewise, if you withhold a weapon from one or more classes, then those people have a further incentive to stick around playing your game until you do give them that weapon they missed out on. It works well, and people are willing to hype themselves up over any new weapon added to the game. Well, almost any new weapon (looking at you, Autopistol.) Now, while they could theoretically add new maps until the heat death of the universe because you could set a new map virtually anywhere, that can't be your sole source of content. You need to give players new things to try with their characters, if you can't do that, then that character is at the end of its lifespan and eventually people will grow bored.

This is why new weapons are so damn important. And there is two kinds of new weapons. New marks, new families. As you may have realized, a good number of weapons in the game are missing marks. They might only have one version in the game, like the Bolter but if you are nosey you'll see that there are two other marks for the Bolter just kinda sitting there. Adding new marks to existing weapons is good, but it's not ideal, unless a specific mark suddenly takes that weapon family from zero to hero, and makes it extremely viable. If I could pause this diatribe for a moment to talk about marks. Between all of the weapon families currently in the game, there are over 30 marks that are "missing". Since Fatshark has only added a new marks a few times, we don't precisely know how they'd go about adding these to the game. Would they treat them as new weapon families being added, so you could expect at most two or three per year? Would they add many at a time? We simply do not know, but regardless, Fatshark could (if they wanted to) release nothing but missing marks for at least two years if you assume an absolutely bonkers release schedule of in excess of 15 per year. However, the real draw, the real, uncut crack cocaine isn't a new mark. It's a new weapon family, and that's where Fatshark is looking down the barrel of a gun.

Even with the most plastic of the classes (the Veteran) with the most weapons potentially available to him, he's running... well, not low, but it's clear that they are going to run into serious problems if they continue to release weapon families at the rate they have been. There aren't very many human-sized weapons left on the table for the Veteran that might run afoul of Games Workshop in terms of exoticism or what their arbitrary rulings may be for what they'll allow the Veteran to get. I can't name them all, obviously, but I will name some of the most obvious ones:
- Melta Gun
- Longlas
- Heavy Stubber (human-sized)
- Hotshot Las/Hellgun
- Grenade Launcher
- Lightning Claw
- Power Fist
I expect to get some pushback on a few of these, but please keep in mind that I am just trying to expand the total number of options available. If Fatshark continues to release families at the rate they have been, this gives them roughly two years of weapons for the Vet and he is, in all likelihood best positioned in terms of weaponry since he has the most options for ranged weapons and can overlap in the melee department with the other classes for the most part. The Zealot is reliant on the Veteran because the Zealot doesn't have any iconic weapons in the tank without stepping on the potential mine of exotic weaponry that GW could simply turn down, and probably would. Fatshark also, for one reason or another, is very averse to adding dual/off-hand weapons to Darktide. There's only one instance of it in the whole game, and that's the Ogryn's Slab Shield/Shock Maul combo. They don't seem to have any interest in trying to add further weapons of this kind. Why this could be is anyone's guess. Balancing? Technical reasons? Games Workshop told them "No"? Who the hell knows. And thus, when they run into this wall of not being able to add any additional weapon families (the Ogryn will be hit by this first in all likelihood), people will start to play that class less because there's nothing to look forward to except maybe hoping on the off-chance that some missing mark turns out to be really swell or has some nifty gimmick (see: the two revolvers).

"Alright then, smarty pants, what's the solution and do you (me) have any supporting evidence for all this bullshit you're writing here?"

The solution, the inevitable one, is that Fatshark will have to add a fifth class. And as for evidence, I kinda have some, MAYBE.

Although I am willing to admit upfront that my "evidence" is mostly suppositional/circumstantial, but I should clarify... also inevitable.

Fatshark at the start of 2024 released the Path of Redemption update, which, as you all know, added Hestia as a character and revamped how penances worked and the reward system. There are two things to focus on here. ONE: This update added over 200 new penances, which mostly covered every single type of content you could conceivably grind in this game. TWO: the progress bar and its rewards. A lot of people hated this update because it was an obvious attempt to put the playerbase on a treadmill to get that sweet, sweet Moebian armor, or that new frame they wanted, or title. Whatever. The point is, Fatshark, with this singular update kind of shit the bed in that they overburdened the playerbase with so many new penances. Practically everything from this point on will become harder to implement because it'll be less obvious/tied to just playing the game. We also have to look at what they did with the bar itself. Under the old penance system, the point cap was around 2700 (don't hold me to this, I am going off what I remember from two years ago, okay?) and Fatshark with this singular update went and doubled the cap. Now it's a bit more than double due to the inclusion of further maps, Havoc, and whatever weapons they put in the game after this update but it's not much more than double.

Alright, so where the hell am I going with this?

At some point, Fatshark is going to update Hestia's grind bar and extend out the total amount of penances you'll need to complete. And with that will come new rewards, but to do that, you'll need new penances. And because you want the playerbase to grind as much as possible so you can hit those metrics you need to show to Tencent, the total number of points you add to the bar has to be a hefty sum. Perhaps even another 2,000ish points. This could be done. As you all remember, when the game was in Open Beta the weapon insignias leaked and that's how we knew (for the most part) what weapons Fatshark had planned. Now, those insignias are gone and probably buried given they aren't even in the files anymore, but what is in the files are weapon frames.

https://ibb.co/nRfHSHW

This is just one example, but there are a couple of others. There's one for the Flamer, one for the Thunder Hammer, one for the Slab Shield, and one for what appears to be the Voidblast Force Staff. There are a few others that could possibly indicate other weapons, but they are too vague to be certain as to what they're intended to represent so I won't make any wild assertions. The one I posted is clearly for the Plasma Gun. That's just what it is. And what is missing from the current library of penances? Weapon kill penances. We have kill X number of Y mob. We have level up Z weapon to 20. But we don't have any penances related to actually using the weapon to kill things. It wouldn't exactly be trivial, but it would be obvious of them to add a frame for every single weapon family in the game and create penances for them that require you to kill X number of bullshit. They could even do multiple penances for each one if they really felt that was required, just like they did with the penances related to killing enemies.

What else is there?

Well, we have penances related to Monstrosities coming:

https://ibb.co/0nCdft3

This will also, in all likelihood, also include Scab Captains since you can now kill them outside of Assassination missions via Havoc, and killing a ton of each monstrosity isn't exactly trivial but it is achievable given that we have a whole modifier dedicated to this in Maelstrom missions.

We also have Zone or Mission based penances coming as well:

https://ibb.co/QXwZDNM

Could this be an addon to the current "Do X Zone mission Y number of times" penances? Maybe. Could be something else? Sure, why not. Point is, it's a penance frame related to a specific zone. Hell, it might even be mission specific as I mentioned. They could add "Do Relay Station TRS-150 100 Times and you'll get a frame that looks like a satellite dish!" and several in-progress penances along the way for 10, 25, 50 mission completions. Which of course wouldn't track your current progress, just like when they updated Hestia the first go around.

And finally, to support my argument that this is happening: ALL OF THESE HESTIA FRAMES.

https://ibb.co/HncSLpk
https://ibb.co/2NDwTsf
https://ibb.co/N2MMhCb
https://ibb.co/5vvHLT1
https://ibb.co/p4XRcbd

All of them, save one, are already flagged as being rewards from Hestia. You can probably guess which one isn't (HINT: IT'S THE ONE WITHOUT A PROPER NAME.) And this isn't a bug either. I've checked the code, they're already set up to come from Hestia.

"But what the fuck does this have to do with a fifth class?"

Well, my dear Anon, if Fatshark are going to extensively increase the total number of penances required to max out the bar's progress and get all the rewards like they did the first go around, then they'll need lots of penances. And what's an easy source of penances? A class. I do not doubt that Fatshark will somehow contrive a way to add at least 10 more penances to each existing class, but if they really need the points, and they just might - a fifth class would be a shortcut to this. Because a fifth class would offer up at least 60 penances that are class specific, plus whatever weapons it brings along with it needing to hit Rank 20, plus the penances for killing things with those weapons. That's a lot of points, but Fatshark doesn't have many options if you look at how slow they are with releasing things that provide additional penances passively. A new map? You get penances for each difficulty you can beat it on, plus, perhaps an easter egg penance (such as the shooting range, the fan, the three samples). And you eventually could build out a Zone so it becomes a proper area that you can include all the necessary penances on it (see: The Interzone being stuck with six penances because it's just one map currently.) But I cannot stress this enough, that isn't very many points, certainly not enough to cause Hestia to see an update since the goal of updating Hestia would be to put you back on that treadmill, as I stated before. It doesn't serve Fatshark whatsoever if you are automatically capped out when they do the update because they didn't add enough points to the bar, and you passively got the cap by doing every penance they added just by playing the game.

Thus, a fifth class. A fifth class, if you are starting from zero on it, could potentially take you upwards of 100 hours to complete all of the class specific penances. I've fished around for numbers, and certain ones do take this long because one or two niggling penances that are just not something you can knock out in a dozen or even two dozen games (see: kill 500 armored enemies with Krak Grenades) all while fighting with your teammates for those same kills, or achievements to complete the penance. If they can get the average player who is drawn back into Darktide (or is new to Darktide) to play because of this new class, that's a huge boost to their metrics for at least a month or two, during that time a fifth class would see FOUR rotations in the slop shop, where everyone and their mother would buy every item that that class can use. I don't even need to guess that this will happen because that's precisely what happened when the game launched because there were so few cosmetics. Put in a new class with just the base penance cosmetics and you can bet your sweet behind that people will throw money at Fatshark for whatever shit they cobble together for the class due to FOMO, due to wanting to have more than just the penance gear, due to not being good with money. Whatever the excuse may be, that is simply what will happen. And of course, even after these numbers subside, you will have people who will just buy items for that class because it exists and they like the look of that set/item and MAYBE they'll use it one day. That's how Fatshark wins, with whales and people who chip in a few bucks here and there.

So as the purple man said:

https://ibb.co/D4WDN5L

Also, I didn't proofread any of this shit. It was purely stream of conscious, and I don't intend to elaborate any further. Fuck you.

Edit

Pub: 02 Jan 2025 22:36 UTC

Views: 56