So I got your game a couple weeks ago and I wanted to say that while I know this game had a release with mixed reception I think you guys have done a good job fixing things. That said with all the X factor options and tiers of difficulty your game needs some balance changes to make it more fair and balanced.
the unstoppable pox hound tackle."
This is unbearable. At least with the mutant he throws you after a few bashes but when a pox hound tackles theres nothing you can do about it. This needs changed. There needs to be a way to free yourself because getting tackled and knowing theres nothing you can do has made me furious on more than one run. It serves no real purpose as a mechanic other than to make the player furious. I don’t care if it’s a button mash mechanic just give us a chance to fight back even if you can fail in the attempt.
Weapon upgrade system needs a bit more polish.
So far I’m liking your crafting system. It has promise but it’s still a bit too bare bones. For one thing with how many difficulties there are, how many variables can be added like increased specialist spawns your game is just too hard. I think a very easy way to fix this would be to remove the mod limit. A two mod limit is un-needed in every sense of the word. I’m not saying that we should have the option to increase the DAM, Ammo and Stability stats ect but we should have the option to mod all blessings and bonus sockets as much as we want to. I think this alone could fix almost every balance issue with the game. As of right now the socket limit serves no purpose other than to make an already hard grind nearly impossible and even if this hurt the balance of lower tier missions that’s a problem that can be fixed by simply adding new difficulties which I think the fans would receive it well anyways.
Rework Daemon Hosts, HARD.
Daemon Hosts are devoid of any kind of balance. If you wake it up its a coin flip on a TPK on any difficulty and the rewards aren’t even worth the trauma and effort. They need to be nerfed with a nuke. 9/10 times players just don’t even bother and the 1 is accidents not to mention it normally makes your whole team mad at you which isn’t fun cause then they start yelling at you. As of right now they are one of the worst features of the game and I wouldn’t miss them if you ripped them all together.
That’s about it.
Aside from those gripes and a couple minor bugs that don’t break the game I don’t really have many complaints. Good job on improving it so far and keep at it! You guys have a very special game here that is the first of it’s kind in the entire 40k Genre! You did a good job Devs. Keep up the hard work and I think you guys might make this one of the best shooters made in recent memory. Keep at it!
I can’t tell if you’re trolling or not, but assuming you’re not, these changes would completely wreck the game.
Pox hounds can be dodged, you can push block the lunge, you can attack them to stop the lunge, you can knock them off your team mates with weapons or guns. Hard disables like the pox hound and trappers are a core component of these style of 4 player shooters.
While the crafting does need an overhaul, not in the way you want. Allowing people to stack more bonuses completely destroys balance. The game on higher difficulties is supposed to be hard, and you’re not supposed to weapon grind your way into beating them. Its about improving your skill and team play to beat them. Until that time, you can simply play on lower difficulties.
3.Again, this is an enemy type like the Witch in Left4Dead. You are meant to avoid them, not fight them. IF you do screw up and have to fight them, you had better be ready for an incredibly difficult and unfair fight because that is the point of the enemy type.
The point of this game isn’t really to be FAIR, its meant to be overcome, and the difficulty and chaos of things is meant to push your adrenaline when things are going absolutely crazy and you overcome the odds that are stacked against you. I’m glad you’re enjoying the game and welcome to the community if its not a troll. But I don’t think people will agree with you as your suggestions are aimed at turning it into a different style of game entirely.
The demon host looks like a boss, but it isn’t really, it’s more like an environmental hazard to make you change your pathing, like if a big puddle of toxic sludge has been poured on the ground that you need to navigate around to avoid taking damage.
Aliens: Fireteam Elite has a special called the Prowler that pins you down when it pounces on you, but by succesfully completing a QTE, you can free yourself.
The Poxhound on Darktide just takes you out of the game and turns you into a passive spectator, which is quite boring in my opinion, where you have to wait for a teammate to help or get lucky with a Bomber grenade or Mutant knocking the Poxhound off you.
The Trapper is OK because it’s understandable that we can’t escape out of that net on our own.
My main gripe with the Poxhound has always been that they have much too much health for their intended function.
My only problem with deamonhosts is that they still have couple of spawns that are pretty much impossible to avoid, especially with ogryn in the party. Even so they are still possible to dps down if the guy kiting has even some idea what he is doing.
Dogs health is up for debate, but I also find it odd that it has so much ranged resistance when the vermintide 2 counterpart gutter runner could be killed in 1 or 2 shots. Hard disablers themselves are really not a problem.
In terms of of the pox hounds subjects I disagree in part though re reading my message I could have been clearer. I do think that they need reworked but in terms of the ability’s to resist I stand by that. You should be able to get the pox hound off you on youre own in my option but you make a fair point that doing that without a counterbalance might remove the suspense a bit and hurt the atmosphere. I think a good counter balance to this might be to increase the damage they do a bit so they kill you a little quicker. That would add stress but give the player at least something to do to get free of the pox hounds as of right now you have to admit that waiting for a pox hound to kill is more frustrating then having a shot at it failing of your own agency and getting it over with quicker. Keep in mind I’m not saying a massive increase in damage and the player should really have to work for it to free themself but I feel like it should be an option to either die fast or get free. Then again I’m not a game designer but this has made me frustrated on more than one occasion to the point of quitting for the day. Maybe my suggestion wouldn’t fix it but I feel like there has to be some kind of shake up somehow.
as for the daemon host thing again some fair points though I still think they could be nerfed because at the very least it feels like killing a daemon host is a coinflip. Theres a difference between stacking the odds against the player and stacking them so high it’s basicly impossible and once you hit heresy or harder they border on gods. “YES I KNOW THATS LORE ACCURATE” but in a game sometimes you need to bend the rules a bit for the sake of gameplay. Even if they don’t nuke nerf them at least nerf the damage a little so the players have a bit more time or at the very least make the reward worth the suffering. Right now when you do kill a daemon host I always end up feeling more like “That was more trouble than it was worth and a total waste of time…” and less “HECK YEA WE KILLED A DEAMON HOST!” At the very least you should be pumped when you kill one cause you’re getting something worth your time.
last as for modding I still actually disagree. The only difference it would make is that you get the guns you want a bit sooner. I think as long as you raised the cost in plasteel and diammoniate and credits and still made the base stats like DAM, Reload, speed ect something you had to grind for but in terms of mods with the system the way it is now you could spend years of casual gaming to get the guns you want with the specific blessing’s and buffs. Especially since blessing need unlocked in the first place to even be put on. If it really needed balanced even further they could even give us a higher level cap and make us earn them or something but again not a game designer and it’s just a thought on how you could do it.
Something I should also add is my current opinion could change with the next update because with improved skill trees who knows it might address most of my complaints and make this post largely redundant. Like I said the devs have done good work so far and I have a lot of hope for the future of darktide but theres always room for improvement even if it’s in things I haven’t mentioned. That said “Perfect is the enemy of finished” So you have to just do the best you can and I think the devs are doing a good job delivering.
lastly thank you for being polite and the welcome to the community even though you disagree with me. That’s far more civil and polite than 90% of people and 99% of people on the internet. XD
And you could be fighting them in blues and still come on top. Regardless it should not matter how the fighting goes when its clearly designed to be avoided. Yes sucks when you happen to spawn one in a position that is not avoidable.
heck on heresy you’re at the mercy of getting lucky in a draft if you end up with bad players your screwed. I’d say about about one third of my games on heresy will tpk before the half way point and even more of them passed that. Probably half my runs are failed to TPKs by the time I reach the last part of the lvl. Malice is basicly the Fair mode and theres a lot of difficulty to be had passed that point.
I did say that even if they don’t nerf them and they should (at least a little if not a lot) they need to be worth the time. Like I said right now it just makes you mad when someone wakes it up and your team gets mad. At the very least if you are gonna give us a TPK machine for an enemy make killing it worth the work. Right now it’s a pain with no real benefit.
You said you got the game a few weeks ago. Give it time and you won’t struggle to hard carry a terrible team on Heresy as long as you bring a decently versatile loadout.
That is indeed the point, to disincentivise you from trying to fight it. It’s meant to be a hazard to be avoided, rewarding you for fighting it would run entirely counter to that design.
Agree with @hgjw the only problem with them is occasionally unreasonable positions they spawn in.
I heavily disagree about adding an escape from the poxhounds. The game director spawns hounds in two scenarios, the first is randomly to mix in the with other spawns, and the second is when people stray too far from the team. They are meant to punish people who aren’t playing with the group and allowing you to escape them invalidates their design. When the party is grouped up they are basically a non-threat since you can simply push or shoot them off of a team mate.
As for daemon hosts, making them easier and less threatening is also a case of invalidating their design. Like already mentioned by others, its a map hazard designed to punish errant shooting and force you to assess your fighting location / reroute. I think they are mostly fine albight slightly buggy in their hitbox and knockback area on their attacks.
Generally speaking I think the game is in a fairly decent spot balance wise right now. Mass groups of shooters could be less prevalent and I wouldn’t be unhappy, but I have no issue with any of the specials as designed.
If you can free yourself from pox hounds, what’s the point of them? If the behaviour is janky, that should be fixed rather than giving players a get-out-of-jail-free card to try and counteract the jank
Is this a problem though? There’s a range of difficulties to cater to a wide range of players - play at the difficulty you’re comfortable/having fun with, and bump it up if you want to try and break into the next difficulty tier.
Heresy kicked my ass for quite some time, so I played mostly Malice/some Heresy. Then the same happened with Damnation. I haven’t tried Auric/Maelstrom yet because Damnation can still kick my ass when it wants to (esp. modifiers like HISTG) but I’m having fun where I’m at.
Dogs are f*cked rn, that much us true. Us needing a way to free ourselves from a dog? Absolutely not. They are an assassin type like in many other coop horde games and in all others it’s fine that you cannot free yourself.
The only real problematic part about dogs is that they are essentially undodgeable in over 98% of cases and that they can jump at you mid sprint and through geometry. On top of all that, a lot of the times, they will not have any sound cues outside of the pounce which doesn’t help you avoid them even if it was reasonably possible.
It’s gacha and has to go, nothing saving it, no redeeming qualities and don’t @me on that.
The game is far from too difficult and I hate to have to say it like this but this is a “skill issue” situation.
On the rest I can agree, locks and random weapon stats just have to go.
Entirely unwarranted and they are fine the way they are. Outside of the rare spawn that cannot be avoided.
Sometimes, there are stupid situations where you are last one standing and a dog gets you for a bs reason.
As long as their behavior, and occasional missing sounds are not fixed, it would be nice to not have runs ended because the last guy standing gets hit by a bugged out dog, can not do anyting about it and just lies there on the floor until the next horde (or damage dealing special) appears.
So tbh, i wouldn’t mind if the dog would just run off after around 10 sec of sitting on top of you. You would be kicking and slapping it after all.
Same thing with a trapper net or when you dangle from a cliff. If you are trapped/dangling, but do not get killed/saved within 10 sec or so, the player should be able to claw their way out of the net, or pull up their own bodyweight, themselves.
It’s designed to make teamwork mandatory, not optional. No timer, thanks.
I mean, tough luck if you get hit by a bug. Doesn’t happen too often to be a concern for me to demand drastic measures.
Being disabled for max 10-15s, would in no way remove the importance of teammates saving you.
Unless no enemies are around, you would still die if not saved by a teammate.
